Over the past several years, the Wilmington Police Department has adopted a range of research-based, proven crime reduction strategies that form the foundation of our plan to enhance public safety in Delaware's largest city.

Our core strategies include the following:

• Community Policing - The community is at the heart of our service to Wilmington, and a key partner in our efforts to make our City safer and improve the quality of life for all of our residents. Under our strategy adopted in 2017, each and every member of our police department - from the Chief to our newest officer - serves as a community policing officer. Our police officers attend every community meeting in their assigned areas, and conduct directed patrols (foot patrols) between calls for service to help facilitate relationship building with residents. In 2023, we expanded these efforts through forming a Community Engagement Unit, which includes an officer assigned to each of our 9 patrol districts. These officers work with residents to troubleshoot community concerns and engage to help support the community as we serve each of our neighborhoods.
• District Integrity - A critical supplement to our strategy of Community Policing, District Integrity involves assigning the same officers to the same neighborhood each time they report for duty. In the past, officers might be assigned to different areas each shift. Ensuring consistent assignment of officers helps to build and strengthen relationships with residents in each of our neighborhoods, and increases familiarity between residents and the officers who serve their area.
• CompStat Methodology - Through applying business management principles to policing, our CompStat methodology helps to ensure greater levels of focus and accountability. This includes holding supervisors accountable for crime in their respective areas, with weekly CompStat meetings and presentations on crime data, investigations, trends and resource mobilization to ensure our department is responding in the most efficient and effective way to crimes that occur, and that we work to prevent further crime. You can learn more about CompStat and review our CompStat reports, which are updated weekly, here.
• Intelligence-Led Policing - Through this strategy, we leverage our department's Real Time Crime Center - the first in a Delaware police department - to help gather and disseminate intelligence to all personnel. This means all of our police officers - including patrol officers, supervisors, investigators and members of specialized units - are aware of this information. This strategy also includes facilitating information sharing through electronic platforms available to officers in their patrol vehicles.
• Crime Gun Intelligence - Our department leverages National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) firearm and ballistic tracing and analysis, and we have launched an embedded Crime Gun Intelligence Center in partnership with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). This partnership, and our strategy of Crime Gun Intelligence, has proven to be invaluable in leveraging ballistic evidence to help identify groups and individuals who are responsible for driving violence in our community.
• Group Violence Intervention - This strategy, which has been proven to be effective in communities across the country, blends traditional law enforcement techniques and the provision of social services into a holistic crime prevention strategy. This centers on identifying those groups of individuals who are driving violence in Wilmington, and working to steer them away from crime by offering a range of social services. At the same time, law enforcement and prosecutorial resources are committed to ensure those who do not heed this call are held responsible through enforcement efforts. This strategy is carried out in partnership with the State of Delaware Department of Health and Social Services and various law enforcement and government partners, with technical support and guidance from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
• GunStat - For a number of years, the Wilmington Police Department has tracked gun offenders through our GunStat initiative. Following an increase in gun crime and repeat offenders in 2021, we have launched an Enhanced GunStat initiative, which includes embedded prosecutors from the United States Attorney's Office and the Delaware Department of Justice. This includes several meetings each month, during which investigators, members of our command staff and prosecutors review every gun arrest and offender. This review includes a discussion about the status of each case, an assessment of any law enforcement needs and an evaluation of whether state or federal prosecution could yield a harsher penalty. We have seen the results of this strategy, notably in the focus on holding gun offenders accountable at every stage of the criminal justice system.
• Community Partnerships - Recognizing that not every challenge in our community is best addressed through traditional law enforcement action, the Wilmington Police Department works closely with dozens of community partners, who provide substance abuse, mental health, physical health and other critical services to Wilmingtonians. These relationships have resulted in a number of new community initiatives - including our Community Resource Fairs, which represent an evolution of our department's observance of National Night Out in the form of events in each of our three sectors involving both police officers and a number of government, nonprofit and community organizations extending resources to our residents throughout Wilmington. Additionally, we have launched Community Outreach Walks, which take place weekly and are held in locations throughout the city. These involve police officers, who are joined by outreach workers offering social service and public health services to our residents.
• Partners in Care Co-Responder Program - Launched in March 2024, our Partners in Care Co-Responder Program pairs trained mental health clinicians with police officers, who respond as a team to calls for service and conduct proactive outreach to support those in need in our community. A partnership with ChristianaCare, our pilot program includes a case manager and two clinicians at this time. 
• Recruitment, Retention and Training - Our recruitment team works year-round to recruit future Wilmington Police officers and to continue to increase the diversity of our agency. As police departments across the country have struggled to attract applicants and fill academy classes, over the past several years we have exceeded 100 applications for each of our classes, and our 101st Wilmington Police Academy class that graduated in August 2022 was the most diverse in at least a decade. You can learn more about our recruitment efforts and successes, and connect with a member of our recruitment team, by visiting our online recruitment hub. Another key component of these efforts is the extensive training we provide to each of our officers in our Wilmington Police Academy and through regular in-service training - encompassing deescalation, law enforcement legitimacy, procedural justice, implicit bias, cultural diversity and more. We also provide Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) and opportunities for our officers to participate in our Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team, our Veterans Response Team, Crisis Intervention Team and a number of specialized teams that assist both members of the public and our employees, with a focus on health and wellness for officers and non-sworn professional staff. Collectively, these opportunities have contributed to our successful retention of police officers, and have helped to prevent our agency from struggling with the same retention issues faced by departments across the country.
• Law Enforcement Partnerships - Our multi-jurisdictional partnerships and collaborations involve sharing intelligence daily, and working collectively to enhance public safety in all of our communities. This is also a critical component of our overall public safety strategy, given the small size of our City and the tendency for crime and criminal activity to cross jurisdictional boundaries. We work closely with partner agencies at the local, state, regional and national levels, and have served as a hub for information sharing regionally.

These core, layered crime  strategies each play a key role in our efforts to make Wilmington a safer community, and they allow for our department to continuously assess crime data and statistics, identify any possible trends, and best leverage and mobilize resources to respond to crime in real time. They also allow for effective adaptations to significant trends - notably, the increase in gun violence in 2021 that led to our launch of an Enhanced GunStat initiative to embed prosecutors in our existing effort to help ensure harsher penalties for those arrested on gun offenses in Wilmington.

We invite you to explore our website to learn more about our crime prevention and community engagement initiatives, review crime statistics and view resources available to those affected by crime and violence.