Calls for service and crimes trend down during quarantine
Jeremy McClure
By Sgt. Jeremy McClure, Community Policing Sergeant
CORRECTION: Figures for Calls for Service, Dispatched, Self-initiated, and Traffic Stops were stated to cover April 1-15 but actually cover April 1-14. The article has been updated to reflect that change.
The efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19 have created an interesting time in law enforcement. With the Governor’s order to close most businesses and Iowans quarantining themselves, we wanted to track how this affects crime rates and calls for service in Sioux City.
To do this, our Crime Analysis and Community Policing sections have been tracking calls for service, officers self-initiated activity, and certain crime reports in two-week intervals. We started with looking at the first two weeks in March before the Governor’s order took effect and compared it to the last two weeks of March after quarantine started. We also compared those numbers to the first two weeks of April.
Typically, we do not look at crime trends in such small-time frames as the numbers may not be statistically relevant in analyzing trends. We obtain more relevant and actionable data by looking at longer periods of time, but the quarantine has presented an interesting point in time to be able to compare some numbers. These are not the official numbers reported to the FBI on a yearly basis and a more accurate picture of how quarantine has affected crime in Sioux City will be obtained next year.
We started with looking at calls for service. This includes calls officers are dispatched to, officers self-initiated activity, and traffic stops. During quarantine, we have experienced a decrease in these areas. Officers were dispatched to 59 fewer calls in the beginning of April as compared to the beginning of March. Officers have still remained proactive in addressing issues on their own. There were 1,004 self-initiated calls made by officers in the beginning of April. This is only down by 16 as compared to the beginning of March with 1020 contacts.
With fewer motorist on the streets, there has been a dramatic decrease in traffic stops. In the beginning of March, officers stopped 986 cars. That number has steadily decreased and the first part of April, only 506 cars were stopped. The quarantine also seems to have affected drunk driving or OWI.
In February of this year, officers investigated 52 OWI’s. The first part of March started with 19 OWI’s and the last part only had 7 for a total of 24. So far, April’s numbers remain low at 8 OWI’s for the first part of the month.
When quarantine started, we were concerned that domestic violence and other crimes would increase. In February, officers investigated 25 incidents of domestic assault and March had 28 incidents. Initially, domestic assault reports dipped after the start of the quarantine by have come back up slightly. Although we hope to see no domestic violence, overall it appears to not be trending higher then we normally see.
Assaults seem to have decrease slightly as well. Officers took 51 reports of assaults in February. The first and last parts of March saw near similar numbers and the month ended with 47 reports. The first part of April seems to be trending down and only had 13 reports.
Disturbances, which are reports of arguments with no assault reported, initially started to trend up when quarantine started. These reports jumped from 92 in the beginning of March to 131 in the end of March with a total of 223 disturbances reported. February only had 158 of these incidents. However, the numbers are coming back down and the first part of April only had 82 reports.
We also wanted to look at the effect on property crimes such as burglary and shoplifting. At the start of the quarantine, business burglaries jumped up but the totals for March were only 6 which was less than the business burglaries reported in February. April so far has seen less business burglaries with only 2 reported so far for the month. Even though reports of business burglaries have decreased, officer continue to aggressively patrol closed businesses to deter burglars.
With more people at home, we had expected to see residential burglaries decrease and they appear to be doing that. February had 23 residential burglaries reported. The first part of March had 11, the second part 9, and April has only had 5 reports so far.
Lastly, we looked at shoplifting reports. The numbers have steadily decreased from 52 in February to 30 in March. April has only had 9 reports come in.
With a lighter call load during the shift, officers patrolling the streets have been able to respond to non-emergency calls for service faster. Priority 2 calls, which are non-emergency calls to report a crime with a suspect, have had officers respond to them over 4 minutes faster. Priority 3 calls, nuisance issues and minor crimes with no suspects, have had officers respond over 10 minutes faster.
As the quarantine continues and as we come out of it, we will continue to analyze the trends we see. We continually look at the data we collect to ensure that we are providing the best policing service possible and are meeting the needs of our community. This is an unprecedented time in our history but our commitment serving the community is unchanged.