Salinas police and community members respond to city’s high homicide rate

One Central Coast city is inching closer to breaking the highest number of homicides seen in one year. Another deadly shooting on Saturday night tied the record at 29 homicides this year alone. Salinas is seeing its deadliest year since 2009.

City council members are looking for ways to prevent more violence. The Salinas police department said it’s struggling to keep up with this year’s homicide cases and being understaffed isn’t helping. Councilman Tony Barrera said something must change. He’s hoping to see police officers dedicated to specific neighborhoods, to build positive relationships within the community.

Guadalupe Navarro and her friends live in Salinas and knew one of the victims of last week’s triple homicide. On Monday, they came back to Del Monte and Elkington, where 17-year-old Bryan Hernandez was killed.

“I just broke down I couldn’t handle it. I just started crying,” said Guadalupe Hernandez.

Navarro and her friends wanted to hear councilman Barrera’s idea for neighborhood policing.

“We can patrol the whole city but until you start establishing relationships than people will feel confident enough to come and tell you what they saw,” said Barrera.

Chief Kelly McMillin said the city has been dealing with a gang problem for many years. Back in July, the department was restructured and McMillin was forced to put his gang task force on hold. NewsChannel 5 asked the Chief with the spike in crime, could the department reinstate the task force?

“The answer is when we are able to hire to the point where we can overfill the patrol unit and pull some officers to do that special work,” said Chief McMillin.

The department has 133 police officers and McMillin said they’re looking to reach 170 before designating any neighborhood officers. So for now they’ll stick to their strategy.

“We are looking right now for a couple of people we know have done some shootings. We are investigating the other shootings with information we have. We have reached out to some other agencies and we’ll continue to for their support,” said McMillin.

But with an uptick in violence, also comes fear, and when it comes to sharing information with police, Councilman Barrera said many people choose to stay silent. Navarro and her friends joined in on a prayer circle hoping the violence will end. She also thinks designating an officer to her neighborhood might be a good idea.

“I don’t feel safe at all because just for the fact that anyone can pass by like right now and shoot at us is like a weird feeling inside of me,” said Navarro.

That uncomfortable feeling is one that remains with family members of many homicide victims.

“Is it scary for parents with kids? Oh hell yes. You know but it’s because we allow these people that continue to develop the anger that hatred within our own community,” said Salinas resident Deliah Alvarado.

McMillin is asking the community for information on this year’s homicides so cases can be solved before they go cold.