Wichita ? Although serious crimes including homicide, rape and robbery are down 15 percent in Wichita during the first two months of the year, drive-by shootings in the state’s largest city have nearly tripled, police report.

There have been 27 drive-by shootings so far this year, Deputy Police Chief Robert Lee said Wednesday, compared with only 10 for the same period last year.

Police think 21 of this year’s drive-by shootings are gang-related. Lee’s report on the crime statistics came a day after Lt. Jeff Easter told a neighborhood group there has been a spike in gang activity in Wichita. But Lee said he didn’t want people to get the impression gang crimes were out of control.

“We have a plan in place, and we’re executing that plan and seeing results,” the deputy chief said. He pointed to “numerous arrests” and weapon seizures by police in the past 10 days.

Lee wouldn’t specifically discuss police strategy for dealing with gangs but said it involved extensive communication within the department, meetings with community groups and rapid response by officers.

The 27 drive-by shootings have come in every quadrant of the city, with most of them in the northern section. On one block there were two such incidents this week, one Sunday and another Monday. Nobody was injured.

A few blocks away, Pastor Lincoln Montgomery of Tabernacle Baptist Church said it seemed drive-bys increased with the warmer weather. He said dealing with the problem was something for the community at-large, not just police. His church sponsors sports leagues for youths, and he said it planned to stay in the neighborhood.

But Gwen Stanford, who lives on the street that had the two drive-bys this week, said she planned to move because of crime in the neighborhood.

Cedell Owens, who rushed out Monday evening when he heard a shot as his son and nephew were playing basketball in front of the house, said things had seemed fairly mellow on his block until then. Neither boy was hurt.

Owens said something was wrong when two children couldn’t play basketball in front of a house without the potential for gunfire.

“I don’t want to live like that,” he said. “We all need to try to get to the root of this.”