With an increasing number of violent incidents threatening to tear his city apart, the Mayor of Wilmington took to the radio airwaves Tuesday morning and expressed his frustrations.
“If I have to start looking and make some adjustments, I’m gonna do that,” said Mayor Dennis Williams during an appearance on WDEL.
The year isn’t even over yet but Wilmington has already broken its record for annual shootings with 142. Those incidents include the unsolved shooting of a Delaware State Trooper in broad daylight and the double shooting of two women who were caught in the middle of a gunfight.
During his radio appearance, Williams not only claimed he was fed up with the violence but also threatened to make some major leadership changes in the police department if the problem continued.
“I’m talking about the command staff of the police department,” Williams said. “I had a meeting with them yesterday and brought them in and told them this can’t go on any longer. We need to make some adjustments and things have to change. If things don’t change I will be looking for new leadership. You can put me on record as saying that.”
Williams, who is also a former Wilmington Police officer, centered his campaign around the promise of making the city safer. Yet that hasn’t happened during his term with some neighborhoods currently more dangerous than they’ve ever been.
Williams says if Police Chief Christine Dunning and other leaders within the department can’t bring down the violence, he’ll find other people who can. He also called upon Wilmington residents to do their part.
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“People who live in these communities need to start anteing up and telling us who these shooters are because they know who they are,” Williams said.
NBC10 tried to reach out to Mayor Williams as well as Chief Dunning. We have not yet heard back from either of them however.
