Northern Virginia may be seeing a significant drop in gang crime, if early figures released by Fairfax County on Monday are any indication.
A top official in the county’s anti-gang program gave a glimpse — though scant — of an upcoming report that shows the crimes dropped 9 percent throughout the region in May, the latest month for which the statistics were available, over the same time last year.
Fairfax County, the largest of the more than a dozen local governments participating in the Northern Virginia Regional Gang Task Force, saw a corresponding 16 percent drop in gang crime that month and an overall 32 percent decline from 2005 to 2006, according to Gang Prevention Coordinator Bob Bermingham, who presented the findings at Monday’s Board of Supervisors meeting.
A deeper assessment of the region’s gang activity in recent years is expected next month from the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, and officials were hesitant to discuss the most recent statistics pending the release of that study.
The exact causes of the decline are unclear, although some point to increased regional cooperation in gang suppression and prevention.
Monday’s report in Fairfax cites an expansion of middle school after-school programs, whose attendance has grown from fewer than 2,000 students per week in 2001 to nearly 12,000 this year. Bermingham, however, acknowledged the difficulty of pointing to a single source to explain the decline.
“[The after-school expansion] is another stepping stone in that direction,” he said. “And it’s an indication of one of many things that could be working here.”
Officials also credit the work of the task force, which offers cross-jurisdictional support to local law enforcement agencies, for the drop in gang crime.
“The old story of ‘criminals know no jurisdictional boundaries’ is particularly true with gangs,” Prince William County Police Chief Charlie Deane said. “We’ve had a number of cases where it has been most beneficial for us to have the regional approach and the exchanging of information, and having people work in the same office in a task force atmosphere is helpful.”
