More than 100 murders in the city of Louisville this year has people asking if we are becoming the next Chicago.  Questions arise: How did we let this happen, or how did this come to be?  Louisville has been regarded as a nice city in the middle of the Bluegrass State, but the shocking crime numbers have many wondering what’s in store for the place referred to as “the city of love” by the Dalai Lama a couple of years back?

According to the Louisville Metro Police Department, Louisville has seen a 44 percent rise in homicides and a 39 percent rise in shootings in the past year. There has also been a 71 percent increase in illegal firearms.

Chris Poynter, director of communications for Mayor Greg Fischer, told The Courier-Journal in May that the mayor and Chief of Police Steve Conrad regularly discuss the rise in crime, especially violent crime. He pointed out the strategy for fighting the increase, involving LMPD patrols, the mobile 9th division and the Office of Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods.

Has the crime increase in Louisville and in many large cities around the country extended into St. Matthews, which is policed by its own department? With a population around 12,000, St. Matthews is a city within a city, with its own government, infrastructure and services.

“We don’t have the volume (of crime) like cities that are larger than us,” said Detective Dennis McDonald of the St. Matthews Police Department.

McDonald said the main reason for the rise of crime in Louisville and St. Matthews “is drugs, especially heroine. If there is a rise in crime in St. Matthews, there is a direct correlation to the rise in illegal drug abuse, namely heroin. We have a drug problem here — not to say that the people of St. Matthews do heroine — but rather people who do drugs are more likely to come into St. Matthews because it has the highest number of stores and businesses, mostly middle class, and criminals go where there is money.”

What crimes are these criminals committing in St. Matthews? Data provided by the SMPD shows overall crime in St. Matthews has gone down since 2011, but there have been some spikes in 2013 and 2015.

For Part I crimes — murder and non-negligent homicide, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, motor vehicle theft, larceny-theft, and arson — the only increase for this year was arson, which went from 0 to 1.

McDonald said the St. Matthew’s community and the SMPD are taking steps to combat the rise in crime in Louisville “through direct patrols, and those patrols are intended to prevent certain crimes that we are seeing. We are also using more tick up and aggressive investigations. The number-one thing we are proud of is the neighborhood watch. It empowers the community to be another set of eyes and ears for the police. They make people aware and look out for each other, and a lot of those programs are forming now.”

With crimes in St. Matthews going down and the St. Matthews community getting more involved in crime control, this leads to another question: How many crimes get solved? McDonald said, “We have a pretty high rate of arrests. As far as criminal investigation, we are running in the 70-78 percent range, which is well above average. We have an extremely high success rate in Part I cases.”