Sean C. Morgan
Of The New Era
Halfway through the year, the number of property crimes in Sweet Home has fallen dramatically from one year earlier.
By June 30, 2018, Sweet Home Police Department had received 320 reports of property crimes, which include, burglary, larceny, theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, shoplifting and vandalism. As of June 30 of this year, the department had received just 185 reports of such crimes, a reduction of 42.19 percent.
“We had reductions across the board, but our property crime, we’ve seen a significant improvement,” said Police Chief Jeff Lynn, noting that reported crimes had ticked up in the past month.
Person crimes were down 44 percent, from 90 as of June 30 last year to 56 this year.
Dispatchers handled 8,459 calls, down from 8,970 last year, a reduction of 5.7 percent. Police officers responded to 4,060 calls, down from 4,658 calls last year, a reduction of 12.83 percent.
While remarkable, Lynn is hesitant to take credit for the plummeting property crime rate.
The numbers can be significantly impacted by just a few people, he said. “A couple of bad apples can create a whole lot of work for our department.”
They can steal a lot in a couple of days, Lynn said. To be a realist, it could be a handful of people being incarcerated that is keeping the rate down.
“Officers are out there as often as they can to be a deterrent,” Lynn said. It could play a role. “I would like for our department to take all the credit for it. I can’t. We’ll take the good as long as we can get the good.”
Sgt. Ryan Cummings earlier this year developed a plan to address unauthorized entries into motor vehicle, Lynn said. He split the city into zones for targeted patrols, based on statistics.
“We’ve seen a reduction since we introduced that,” Lynn said, although, again, he cannot say that it’s the cause of the decline in property crimes.
Police officers are trying to pay attention to where the crimes are occurring, Lynn said. “They’re trying to be as proactive as possible. We know we’re getting it here, so maybe, let’s move over here.”
The department is getting up to full staffing again, Lynn said. Two new officers recently went solo, and one new officer has a couple of weeks of field training left.
Getting them on the road solo will help free up time for proactive police work, Lynn said. “Our stats are still above where we want them to be, despite this reduction.”
Department personnel will continue to focus on statistics and locations for property crimes and adjust patrols accordingly, he said.
With the new officers working, Lynn said the department is preparing to move an officer into a detective position, bringing the total number of detectives to two.
He hopes that will address another statistic, the property crime clearance rate. Last year, by June 30, police had cleared 113 property crime cases. This year, it cleared just 43 cases, a 62-percent reduction in the number of crimes cleared.
The number of cleared person crimes fell from 57 to 56, a 1.8-percent decrease.
A crime is cleared when officers are able to identify and arrest or issue a warrant for a suspect, Lynn said.
The clearance rate for property crimes is around 23 to 24 percent, Lynn said. As one of the department’s performance indicators, he wants to see it back up around 35 percent.
The new detective will handle child abuse calls, Lynn said, and the new detective will take on some of the investigations that officers have been handling, focusing on burglaries and major assaults.
That will free up officers on patrol, the backbone of any police agency, to handle more minor crimes, Lynn said. The new detective also will assist the other detective with drug and street crime cases.
The department still has a lot of cases with known suspects, Lynn said, and it needs to close them.
Lynn said that private surveillance systems have become a big help to police officers investigating crimes.
He is planning to roll out “My Civic Eye” in late August. In the program, citizens can voluntarily register their surveillance systems with the police.
The department maintains a database of systems, Lynn said. When an officer is investigating a crime, the officer can use it to see what surveillance systems may be in range of the crime. The officer can then contact the owner of the video system and request the owner look for specific footage.
The entire program is completely voluntary, Lynn said. No one is required to register or supply video footage.
“It’s a way for citizens to help protect their own community,” Lynn said.