(Photo courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department) Members of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department in front of the department’s offices in Marietta.

PARKERSBURG — Despite the loss of jobs when various industries left the Mid-Ohio Valley, local law enforcement officials say the area is still safe and secure.

Violent crime is low locally, but there are instances of property theft, and like in many areas there are concerns over drug abuse.

Parkersburg Police Chief Matthew Board said the loss of jobs and places to work have not had any obvious impact on crimes in the area.

“Crime trends always ebb and flow in different areas, regardless of whether you want to evaluate it from an economical standpoint or drug types coming in the area,” he said. “There’s a lot of things on the periphery of society that affect society itself.

“So to definitively say that, you know, the loss of industries has caused crime, I cannot, but there are some things that have gone up over the last few years.”

According to the FBI National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) the number of total offenses in the city has been on a downward trend from 2,676 in 2021 to 2,128 last year.

According to NIBRS, one of the highest number of reported incidents were property crimes with 1,420 reported last year. In 2020 there were 1,842 property crimes.

Breaking and entering dropped from 251 in 2020 to 86 in 2024. After a spike to 323 incidents in 2021, destruction of property reports in the city have dropped to 270 for 2024.

Wood County Sheriff Rick Woodyard said he has not seen many changes in the types of calls his department handles. Numbers from NIBRS shows the department reported 888 incidents in 2020; that number declined to 751 by 2024.

“We get property crimes and things such as that. We also get our spike alerts for high-intensity drug use,” he said. “You see an increase in some property crimes, theft crimes … most of the time we just maintain an even keel with the calls.”

Wood County had 362 property crime incidents last year down from 530 for 2020. There was an decrease in destruction of property incidents, 75 in 2024 compared to 110 in 2020 and 115 in 2021.

Washington County Sheriff Mark A. Warden agreed there have not been many changes in the types of calls.

“I don’t think we see any difference in crimes. Actually, I mean, if you look at our statistics, it looks like crime is dropping,” he said.

According to NIBRS the total number of incidents for the Washington County Sheriff’s Department was at 560 for 2020 then dropped to 385 for 2021. After an increase to 597 incidents in 2022, the number dropped to 483 last year.

Drug offenses went from 93 in 2020 to 135 in 2023 and 2024.

Board said there is help available to those who may be affected by the closing of a business.

“I don’t think everybody that gets laid off is going to go out and start breaking into houses and breaking into cars,” he said. “I don’t want to categorize somebody that is facing a hardship in their work life as a criminal, but we have seen property crimes trend up.”

Board said some of the department’s data revealed there could be a large component that is comprised of those who have been brought to this area for drug rehabilitation.

“They have not been rehoused after exiting programs, whether it be through successful completion or being removed by whatever facility,” he said. “You know that could be a portion of it, addiction, in and of itself, lends to the type of activity that produces property crime, whether it be, you know, stealing property to sell, to facilitate a habit, or, you know, having money to facilitate the habit, but not having money to facilitate life’s needs, whether it be food or sustenance or whatever.”

Board said when he was hired 23 years ago, the main battle law enforcement had was with methamphetamine.

“Methamphetamine is still here, but make no mistake, right now heroin and fentanyl is what we are dealing with more predominantly,” he said. “You get into the fentanyl getting mixed in with drugs that people don’t even intentionally ingest. You have people trying to buy marijuana, which is still illegal, but laced with fentanyl and that one mistake can take your life. I think we’ve, we’ve put a spotlight on it, and have become more aggressive.”

According to the NIBRS, Parkersburg reported 234 drug offenses in 2004. Drug or narcotic offenses to more than 300 in 2021, and 2023, but that number has decreased to 234 reported in 2024. In 2022, 360 incidents were recorded, the highest number.

In Marietta there are no NIBRS numbers for 2021 and 2024. However, there were 336 total offenses in 2020; 384 in 2022 and 330 for 2023.

Marietta police reported 79 incidents of shiplifting in 2023, which was down from 153 in 2022. In 2020 there were 56 incidents.

Vienna Police Chief Carl Powell said they are starting to see a larger homeless population.

“In the end, we’re starting to see more folks panhandling for money in some of the intersections. So I don’t know what the cause of that is. I don’t know if it’s the loss of jobs in the area.

“My opinion is, we do have some rehab centers in the area.”

Powell said he did not have a problem with treatment centers.

“I think everybody should have a shot at getting their life back in order,” he said. “The problem that I have with it is we bring them in from all the different states, all over, from clear out west to clear down south of Florida. They bring it in, and that’s great, but as soon as they fail out of the rehab facility … they just put them out the back door.”

Overall, Powell said Vienna does have its share of property crimes ranging from shoplifting to cars being broken into, and things like bicycles and other big items stolen out of yards.

“That’s the blessing we have,” he said. “As far as crime itself, we’re very low on crime. I don’t know why, maybe there is just a magic wall down there that keeps it out of the city.”

According to NIBRS the highest numbers in the City of Vienna were for property crimes and for shoplifting.

Powell said it could also be a reputation built up over the years.

“The oldest officers built a reputation, you just don’t want to mess around in Vienna,” he said. “I don’t know what the difference is, but we definitely have a low crime rate.”

There were 407 property crimes in 2024 and 263 shoplifting incidents. Shoplifting also counts as a property crime. For Vienna the highest numbers for property crimes was in 2022 with 498 incidents.

Former Parkersburg Mayor and Chief of Police Bob Newell said the 1970s and 80s were the two of the most violent decades in the country and locally.

“And as far as violent crime, robberies were not uncommon. I mean gun robberies at stores, convenience stores, all that were not uncommon at all,” he said. “There were times where we even had to stake out grocery stores because of it.”

In 2024 the city recorded six robberies, which was down from previous years. There were 23 in 2020; 16 in 2021; nine in 2022 and 11 in 2023.

Newell said during that time, the city could have appeared more violent.

“We had shootings of stabbings and people lived; if they’d all died, we’d (have) had the murder rate of a Third World country. You know, it wasn’t unusual to have one or two on weekends.”

Newell added the rate was lower when he was chief in the early 2000s. There have been eight murders in Parkersburg since 2020, according to NIBRS.

“I think we may have had one or two a year, and it may be that or less now. So the violent crime has really, really gone down,” he said. “Believe it or not, people don’t believe that.”

Woodyard said an area he sees increasing is crimes against children.

“You know, 46% of the crimes we investigate down here are crimes against children,” Woodyard said. “I think child crimes are being reported more now than they ever were in the past. … Due to mandatory reporting and facilities like North Star and more court assets, we have more things we have … reported more now the crimes against the children. It’s not necessarily increasing, just more awareness.”

Woodyard said there has also been an increase in fraudulent schemes and scams.

“I guess those are the old-fashioned, somebody calls you up with something crazy or, I guess, on things over the Internet now too,” he said.

Warden said Washington County is also seeing an increase in the abuse of children.

“When I was a detective, what you see is those types of crimes come in waves,” he said. “It just seems like you’ll have a rash of them. Then you’ll have time to work those through Children’s Services, they’ll look at the initial intake of one of them.”

Warden said there is one area where reports have increased.

“Dog bites seem to be up a little bit,” he said. “Now, what do you attribute that to? I don’t know, it’s certainly changed from five to 10 years ago.”

Washington County Prosecutor Nicole Coil said the cases her office handles involve drugs for the most part.

“I would say that still, the majority of our cases are either drug-based or there’s a component of drug usage which is causing the crime to occur,” she said. “So I do think that is probably our most predominant issue in Washington County, I will say that we do have a fair number of our cases which come from stops on the interstate.”

Coil said those individuals are not necessarily living in Washington County, but they are driving through or bringing drugs into the county.

Coil said the number of cases do not fluctuate wildly from year to year.

“I checked to see where we were in terms of numbers. We are on pace for last year, or maybe a little under where we were in terms of our numbers,” she said. “We ended up with over 600 cases last year, and we’re at about the 380s at the end of August, so we’re maybe just a little bit under where we were.”

Coil added her office is down a prosecutor right now.

“Ideally, we would like to have two more prosecutors,” she said. “We’ve hired a new prosecutor, and he’ll be starting in September.”

Wood County Prosecuting Attorney Pat Lefebure said his office is dealing more with drug crimes as well.

“The increase that we’ve seen is more in line with drugs and the type of drugs that we’ve seen over the years, it’s primarily focused on drugs,” he said. “It’s all methamphetamine and fentanyl, is what we’re primarily seeing.”

Lefebure said back in the 2000s they had a lot of the bath salts and synthetic controlled substances coming through.

“Before that, it was the older meth, where you would have actual meth labs, where people are cooking and making meth,” he said. “But now it’s the finished product. So there’s much more availability of methamphetamine here currently, they can mass produce it, and it’s just brought into the community, and it’s much more easily and widely distributed here in our community, than previously.”

Lefebure said the primary increases would be in drug usage and the types of drugs that were used.

“Certainly we had that period of time where you had the opioids in the pill problem; now with more stringent legislation that has been curtailed,” he said. “But it developed into, initially heroin, and then from heroin onto fentanyl, which is what we’re seeing currently. We’ve always had drug problems.”

Child abuse cases often involve parents who are abusing drugs, he said.

“They are unable to … be a proper parent to their children,” he said. “We’ve seen a significant increase in the number of abuse (and) neglect cases over the last five-plus years.”