Although overall incidents in Stillwater were up last year, serious crimes were down compared to previous years. (Graph taken from Stillwater police 2014 annual report)
Stillwater police responded to more incidents in 2014 than 2013, but the number of serious crimes went down, according to the department’s annual report. Traffic-related incidents were the driver of the increase.
Overall, police responded to 12,688 incidents last year — an average of 34.8 calls for service per day. That’s up 722 incidents compared to 2013. The last time call volume reached that level was in 2010, when the department had 13,737 calls.
“Incident reports can be anything from a lockout to a homicide,” said Sgt. Jeff Magler, who presented the report to the city council last week. Magler also noted that not every contact an officer has with members of the public results in an incident report. That means in practice the department has more than 35 contacts with the public on an average day.
Serious crime, however, has continued to decline.
“Part I offenses, which are more serious offenses, have gone down by 22 percent,” Magler said.
Part I crimes are defined by the FBI to include murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft and arson. Last year Stillwater police responded to 492 Part I offenses, down from 632 the previous year.
Part II crimes were also down 2 percent, from 801 offenses in 2013 to 785 last year. These crimes range from simple assaults to fraud and from vandalism to liquor law violations.
Magler said the department has been seeing a lot of cases related to technology and fraud.
“Definitely a lot with technology, with computers, with identity theft still,” he said, noting that one scheme on the rise is filing fraudulent taxes in other people’s names.
But, unquestionably, the main cause of the department’s increased number of incidents last year was traffic events. Officers responded to 2,908 traffic incidents in 2014 — up 689 incidents over 2013.
“That’s an increase of 31 percent from the previous year,” Magler said.
Chief John Gannaway said he had officers begin to be more proactive in traffic enforcement.
“The numbers were down in previous years, so I asked the officers to step it up a bit,” he said.
He also said the department is being more proactive in general.
“We’re dong a lot more with nuisance properties, problem properties,” he said, adding that may be part of the reason for the reduction in serious crimes. “If you’re dealing with problem properties, with nuisance properties, you’re dealing with some of the little things that help fix the big things.”
One area council members would like to see more enforcement is motorcycle noise — specifically for bikes not equipped with a muffler that “blends the exhaust noise into the overall vehicle noise” as required by state law.
“That’s the one thing we get the real complaints about is motorcycle noise downtown,” Councilmember Mike Polehna said.
“I find it frustrating,” Councilmember Tom Weidner said.
Gannaway said he directed the department to start enforcing motorcycle noise limits about a month ago.
During his report, Magler also highlighted the accomplishments of the department’s K9, Buzz, and his handler, Officer Dave Wulfing. Last year Buzz was involved in eight narcotics searches and recovered more than $7,000 worth of stolen property.
Department initiatives for 2015 include designing a new police department facility for use after the fire department moves into its new station, and implementation of a new records management system.
Contact Jonathan Young at jonathan.young@ecm-inc.com