New major crime unit created in South Monterey County

The King City and Greenfield Police Departments are cracking down on major crimes in South Monterey County. This week both police departments agreed to share resources to keep their cities safe and put criminals behind bars.

The Major Crime unit has four members right now: two detectives (one from each department), a Greenfield crime scene investigator and an investigations supervisor from King City. It’s mirrored after a similar unit on the Monterey Peninsula: The Peninsula Regional Violence and Narcotics Team (PRVNT). The team has hit the ground running.

Its first case is the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy on Oak Avenue this past week. One of five homicides between the two cities this year. King City police said they’ve had 30 shootings so far this year.

Greenfield Police Chief Tony Sollecito said when crime occurs in one city, many times, the investigation leads to the other and vice versa.

“Basically sharing resources between a couple of agencies, in this case we look to King City and King City looks to us and we are in close proximity, ten miles between the two cities, but a lot of the same people show up in both towns. And so it just made sense that if we’re going to combine efforts for major crime investigations, it would initially be with King City,” said Chief Sollecito.

Police believe the additional resources will allow them to suppress violent crimes like, homicides, rapes, and manslaughter. And at this point, the crime unit is just between Greenfield and King City but Soledad and Gonzales could be added to the mix as well.

“We’ll see how it works at this scale, if it’s working well at this scale then yeah, we’d certainly be open to doing that. So we’re starting with the most obvious partnership and that’s Greenfield and King City, and yeah there’s always the likelihood to expand but that would be up to those entities if that’s something they’d be interested in,” said Chief Sollecito.

“I’ve been living in Greenfield for 32 years, I have seen some violence. I think the joining of King City and Greenfield Police is something good,” said Greenfield resident, Socorro Pizarro.

Angel Hernandez of Greenfield said, “It’s a good idea, that there’s less crime because there’s a lot of problems. I’ve been here 45 years living in the city, I’ve seen a jump in crime in the last ten years. The city has grown, and the crime has grown. As residents of the city, we should be working together to report suspicious activity.”

The major crime unit won’t cost the cities any money. These are budgeted positions and they’ll be working out of the Greenfield Police Department.