Homicides in the city of Cleveland were up in 2007 compared with 2006, and police are investigating what might be the city’s first homicide of 2008.

Cleveland City Councilman Kevin Conwell said intensive police effort was needed — the number of homicides rose from 119 in 2006 to at least 133 in 2007. One New Year’s Eve death was under investigation as a possible homicide.

Mayor Frank Jackson said city police coordination with federal authorities to fight organized crime, drugs and guns would eventually bring down Cleveland’s homicide rate.

In two other large cities, Cincinnati and Columbus, homicides dropped 24 percent in 2007, according to police statistics, but officers and others stop short of celebrating the declines, saying it’s way too early to declare any kind of turnaround.

“You can only do good after a bad year,” said Lt. Col. James Whalen of the Cincinnati police department, which handled 68 homicides in 2007 compared with 89 in 2006. The 2006 number was the highest in more than half a century.

However, “there are still people out there on the streets that scare other people,” Whalen said.

In Columbus, police homicide Sgt. Dana Norman dismissed 2007 as an unusual year in which there were 79 homicides, down from 104 in each of the previous two years.

“I really don’t see this as a trend to continue,” Norman said. “I hope it does.”

Even as they downplayed the declines in killings, authorities gave stepped-up police tactics part of the credit. A task force’s crime crackdown in Columbus last summer confiscated more than 200 guns, along with drugs, cash and vehicles, Norman said.

A special police unit’s sweep of high-crime neighborhoods in Cincinnati took criminals off the streets and put them behind bars, according to police officials.

There usually isn’t once answer why killings go up or down, said Ed Latessa, head of the criminal justice program at the University of Cincinnati. Changes in the numbers typically result from combinations of factors, including crime prevention programs, the economy and demographics.

Authorities looking at the lower homicide rates in Cincinnati and Columbus also cite 21st century emergency medical care that gives victims of shootings and other violence a better chance of surviving with their injuries.

“There’s still carnage,” said Dr. Jay Johannigman, director of the trauma center at University Hospital in Cincinnati. “We are still not to the point where we are able to raise our heads above water and catch a deep breath.” 

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