By Annette Gallagher
Coorespondent

According to Sgt. Mark Fowke, Manchester Police spokesman, the department needs and relies on community reports of crime. (File Photos)

Editor’s Note: Many people who were approached for their thoughts and opinions were afraid of retribution if their names were printed in a story about crime, and manydeclined to comment at all. Some had even been victims of a violent crime in the city within the last year.

The recent increase in violent crime in Manchester has been one of the hot topics of conversation this summer.

A fatal shooting outside Three Cousins Pizza, two more shootings on the West Side, a Jeep shot up on Lowell Street and a shooter on the corner of Cedar and Belmont streets ­ all in the past four months ­ have made the Queen City seem a little like Dodge City.

Manchester residents are concerned and some are changing their behavior in response to recent events.

Lucille, who did not wish to give her last name, has lived in her home on the West Side for 50 years. Some of the recent shootings were close to where she lives.

“I tell you we have had some really disturbing changes in this city,” Lucille said. “It used to be all families in my neighborhood, and now it’s a mix of people. There are a lot of drugs and a lot of immigrants. Everything is very noisy now where there used to be a nice, quiet street to live on.”

She said some are afraid to leave a window open while at home for fear someone may try to get in.

While the police respond well if there is a problem, Lucille said, they don’t come by on a regular basis as they did in the past.

“There used to be an officer who swept our street regularly, and that kept the trouble down, but he’s gone now and it doesn’t happen,” she said. “Especially if you’re older, it’s very scary and very unsettling. We have even had our guests’ cars vandalized while they visited us.”

Jeannette, who also wanted to go only by her first name, agrees that there have been a lot of changes in the Queen City. The longtime Manchester resident has lived here for 63 years.

“This is such a nice city to live in, and I think that fact makes it attractive to riff-raff,” she said. “It used to be that the East Side had more problems than the West. I’m just sorry that the trouble has moved over here. It is scary sometimes.”

But not all city residents believe Manchester has changed so much. Donald Brunelle lived here in mid-1980s as a teenager, left and returned about three years ago. He said he didn’t think Manchester is all that different than it was when he left.

“They’ve cleaned up Elm Street a lot, I guess, but there was always crime if you knew where to look,” Brunelle said. “I think people just know about it more now. There are more guns, it seems like, but that’s true everywhere.”

His cousin, Robert Brodeur, who also moved back into the area three years ago, disagrees. He previously lived in Concord, attending high school there, but remembers coming down to Manchester to cruise Elm Street and have fun.

“Now Elm Street is nicer than it was in the ’80s, but the rest of the city has gone downhill from what I remember,” he said. “It just seems like things are dirtier and not as well taken care of, and there are a lot more bad elements around.”

While opinions may differ throughout the area, Manchester police maintain that residents should feel confident they are doing everything possible to handle crime in the city, according to Police Department spokesman Sgt. Mark Fowke.

“We have people who criticize us for making traffic stops and writing tickets when violent crime is making the news a lot, but the truth is that you have a much higher chance of being in a car accident in Manchester than being a victim of a violent crime,” he said. “We have to take care of everything, not just the things that make headlines.”

Fowke said police do their best to prevent violent crimes rather than having to solve them afterward. They use a lot of data and community-provided information to make models and see where crimes are most likely to happen, and then try to increase police presence in that area before the crimes begin.

“As a department, we have a great closure rate for solving crimes, but we really would prefer to be able to prevent them,” he said.

As for people who are concerned that their reporting of a crime, such as drug activity, in their neighborhoods falls on deaf ears, Fowke said to keep those calls coming in.

“The officer who gets a report of a drug dealer on a corner may not find anything by the time he gets there, or may get called to a more immediate type of emergency and not have time to get to the call,” he said. “The next person on the shift may or may not have time to follow up. We need and rely on community reports, so when people see the same issue come up repeatedly in their neighborhoods, we want them to call us as many times as it takes and to call before the situation gets to a point of frustration.”