Utopia Membership has increased and funded more hours of police patrol in Utopia village. Together, with the increased efforts of the Miami Police Department, we are making Utopia and our surrounding neighborhoods a safer place to live, work, and play. Please review Commander Morales report on overall crime reduction in the Grove.
Dear residents and crime watchers,
In January 2015, our team set a goal to keep Coconut Grove as one of the safest neighborhoods in the City of Miami. In order to meet our goal, we aimed to increase our community involvement to build a strong partnership with the community we serve and to reduce the effect of crime on our residents and visitors. I have highlighted some of our accomplishments.
On our community engagement front, Neighborhood Resource Officers Maguffey and Vasquez spearhead our Youth Empowerment Program. The program aimed to build a strong bond between the police and youth in the Grove by working together during an intense 13 week personal and professional enrichment journey. I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who helped with suit donations and volunteered to help us in the program. In addition, we strived for increased transparency and communication by providing community updates via email, Next Door App, and on Twitter (@CGCommanderMo).
Our crime fighting efforts have been incredibly successful, the Grove has led all neighborhoods in the City of Miami in crime reduction for the past two years. The reduction is in large part due to the work performed by the Grove Problem Solving Team (PST), under the leadership of Sergeant Pacheco. The team was able to identify several locations used for the sale of narcotics and executed search warrants that led to the recovery of trafficking amounts of cocaine and heroin. More importantly, as part of our Anti-Gun Violence initiative the team seized 12 firearms in the Village West. Our PST also compile the Top 10 repeat offender list and with the assistance of our partners in the State Attorney’s Office and the Court Watch volunteers of the All-Grove Crime Watch, we were able to secure enhanced prosecution of several of our most notorious criminals.
In order to give you perspective of our performance, I compared our statistics this year to the rest of this decade and have listed the results below:
| Year |
Total reported crimes |
% change from previous year |
| 2010 |
1449 |
– |
| 2011 |
1356 |
-6% |
| 2012 |
1407 |
4% |
| 2013 |
1399 |
-.5% |
| 2014 |
1173 |
-16% |
| 2015 |
906 |
-23% |
The research revealed that since our team took responsibility of police services in Coconut Grove in mid-2013, crime has been reduced an incredible 36% (from 1407 crimes in 2012 to 906 in 2015). Our greatest successes this year came in the prevention of robberies and burglaries, where we saw a 32% and 26% reductions from last year. The reductions are a testament to the incredible community commitment to call 911 when witnessing suspicious and criminal activity. We know that the crime drop is dramatic, but are cognizant that we still have plenty of work to do, especially in the prevention of violent crime in the Village West.
As we look forward to a great 2016, we will continue to improve our crime prevention strategies and fine tune our tactics to keep you safe. I want to encourage you to get to know the officers that work for you by taking advantage of our “Cruise with a Cop” initiative, which gives Grove residents the opportunity to go on a ride-along with one of your neighborhood officers. On behalf of Chief Llanes and the entire Coconut Grove police team, I want to wish you a Safe and Happy Holiday Season.
Commander Manuel Morales
