Omaha police talk about plans to deal with outbreak of violence

OMAHA, Neb. (WOWT) - Omaha police believe street gangs are responsible for the shooting and killing that’s caused an outbreak of violence in the city.

Police are making progress in rounding up suspects. Omaha police say they have made some arrests and have suspects in four of the five homicides.

Omaha Police Captain Jeremy Christensen says spikes in violent crime are not uncommon in Omaha and police do have a plan to deal with the violence.

“It’s hard to come up with one reason why this spike happened one of the homicides was down in South Omaha the others are kind of in the northern parts of the city kind of across the board geographically, it’s not anything we haven’t seen before, the nice thing is they’re not connected there’s no indication we have an ongoing war of violence or anything like that,” said Christensen.

Police are making progress in solving the crimes. Investigators have made two arrests and they have another suspect waiting to be extradited. Police credit the success to good police work and a lot of help from the community.

“Over the weekend we had just an influx of Crimestoppers tips our witnesses are forthcoming with what they’re seeing, it makes our job a lot easier just having that trust with the community and things of that nature,” said Christensen.

Omaha police say they are fortunate to have a good working relationship with the community, police tell us over the weekend they received a number of tips to help identify suspects.

They point out that this year the number of homicides in the city is on the decline.

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