Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer spoke to community leaders at Omaha 360 regarding recent gun violence. Watch his full remarks in the video above.
1. “First of all, I want to thank the community. Thank them for working with the police department, stepping forward and helping us bring Dontevous Loyd to justice. I’m going to mention his name a few times because I have to to make some points, but Dontevous is proven – he’s innocent until he is proven guilty. Second to that is I want to thank the community – so far we haven’t had any retaliation. And I want to thank the community for denouncing the violence. The movement and the things are taking place in this room, took place, and the message that’s being sent at prayer walks, the message that’s coming up in the community is very positive. That’s how Omaha will move forward. That’s how we’ll move past this incident and become stronger in the process.”
2. “The incident involving Ms. Straughn and her daughter and the three shooting victims has more to do with an act of domestic violence than it does as it relates to gang violence.”
3. “…What is plaguing the city of Omaha in 2015 is repeat violent offenders. The numbers will shot that our shootings, overall are at a real strong low.”
4. “So far, we’ve had 44 homicides this year. That’s a high number. The reason they’re so high – we’ve had seven instances – six occasions of double homicides, one occasion of a triple homicide. That’s going to take your numbers higher any given time.”
5. “What is hurting the city of Omaha is repeat violent offenders.”
6. “I’m not going to mention any names, but I challenge the media here. There’s been numerous individuals that we have apprehended this year and charged with murder only to go back later and charge with additional murders. You do your homework on that because I’m not going to mention their names here today. It’s those violent offenders that we have to get in front of and bring to justice after the first shooting, after the first robbery, after the first homicide.”
7. “I said from the start that Dontevous Loyd is innocent until proven guilty, but that doesn’t stop me from saying that the Omaha Police Department is looking at him for some other violent crimes that have occurred in the past.”
8. “Weapons are coming onto Omaha streets predominately in two ways. They’re being taken in the course of burglaries, and straw purchases are very prevalent. That’s when a legal gun purchaser buys it for a violent offender. Those are the two main ways. On rare occasions, are guns being shipped in. That’s not the prevalent mode.”
9. “Our clearance rate is 70 percent this year for homicides. That includes the rest, for homicides that occurred in previous years, but that will always happen because it takes time to investigate these crimes. That clearance rate is because the police and the community are working together.”
10. “Everybody knows that the police department monitors Facebook. Beyond that, I’m not going to get into our tactics as what we do with it. That’s just something that I’m going to keep to myself because I don’t want anybody to alter what they do based on what I said. Because there will be other crimes in the future and Facebook will be very important to us to resolve – and not just Facebook, but all social media.”
11. “For every one of the most violent offenders, there’s somebody that wants to harbor them. There’s somebody that Mr. Loyd stayed with that night. There’s somebody that drove him to corrections. I appreciate the assistance getting him to corrections, I do. But I don’t appreciate harboring him for a night. The community has to say that’s not acceptable either.”
12. “On the next 911 call – I believe it occurred at 6:50 p.m., two Omaha police officers did show up to the call and did have direct contact with Ms. Straughn and Dontevous Loyd. The nature of my internal investigation is to determine what that contact was, were our policies and procedures adhered to during that call, and what steps were taken, and what information was at those officers’ disposal. That’s the course of this investigation right now. And I just want the community to know, we’ve done major investigations of our own before, I hope that everybody knows that if I find wrongdoing, I will address it. I very much will.”
Schmaderer's statistics were given before a Wednesday afternoon double homicide.
