Lakeport Police chief reports on call volume, response times for past year
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKEPORT, Calif. – Lakeport Police’s chief on Tuesday gave the Lakeport City Council his annual update on response times and the call volume for the past year.
Chief Brad Rasmussen said he was very pleased with the response times for calendar year 2018, which are better than 2017.
His report begins in the video above at the 4:56 mark.
Rasmussen broke down calls into different priority levels, and also outlined the types of crimes his officers investigated in 2018.
Regarding response times, he said priority one calls – which are emergencies – had an average of three minutes, while priority two, nonemergencies that need to be deal with as soon as possible, are 11 minutes, and priority three, which are cold calls to be handled when available, average 18 minutes.
Overall, Rasmussen said Lakeport Police officers responded to 9,971 incidents in 2018. Of those, 4,968 were community-generated calls for service, the other half were officer-initiated activity in which officers saw something, responded or assisted.
The incidents that were initiated by officers included 2,689 traffic stops and the remaining 2,314 included pedestrian contacts, helping community members or responding to suspicious activity, he said.
Regarding part one crimes, which the agency has to report to the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Justice, Rasmussen offered the following statistics: homicide, 0; rape, 1; robberies, five; assaults, 62, of which 21 were aggravated; burglaries, 48; larcenies, 114; stolen vehicles, 13; arsons, 0; domestic violence cases, 34.
He said they made 91 felony arrests and 482 arrests on misdemeanor warrants.
Rasmussen said they investigated 147 crimes relating to driving under the influence and made 95 arrests. Almost half of those arrests were made by one officer, Casey DeBolt, who Rasmussen said is very skilled at dealing with DUI and for most of the year was working on the weekend night shift, which lends itself to more DUI arrests.
Debolt is going to be submitted for consideration for a law enforcement award from the California Mothers Against Drunk Drivers this spring, Rasmussen said.
Lakeport Police officers’ other traffic-related work included responding to 50 collisions, of which 35 required investigations and another 15 resulted in property damage only with no investigations. Rasmussen said there also were 289 moving citations, 50 other infractions and 123 parking cites.
He said their detective, Dale Stoebe, was referred 72 serious criminal investigations, “which most of the time are serious felony crimes, serious assaults, burglaries, sex offenses, things of that nature.”
In the course of investigating those 72 cases, Rasmussen said Stoebe wrote 20 affidavits for search warrants to seize evidence.
Councilman Kenny Parlet asked how many of the misdemeanors would formerly have been felonies but have been reduced due to proposition 47 and 57.
Rasmussen acknowledged that some would have been felonies, but he said he didn't have a breakdown.
“Great work,” Mayor Tim Barnes told Rasmussen.
Parlet also lauded Rasmussen’s agency for “great response times.”
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