First budget hearing

With the release on Monday of the Mayor’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2009-2010, individual City agencies have begun their budget hearings with the City Council.

The police department was first out of the chute, at 1:00 PM Wednesday. With 30 minutes to hit the highlights of our $35 million budget (the largest general tax funded agency), I had to scoot right along.

In preparation, I gathered a few simple handouts, and wrote our a short outline for my own use. I couldn’t monopolize the entire half hour for a presentation, so I timed this to be only ten minutes. I think I went a couple minutes over. Here’s my notes, in case you’re interested:

Bottom dollar: despite the toughest economy in recent memory, and the only time I can ever recall that the City’s two tax streams (sales and property) have both declined, we fared pretty doggone well. Our cuts are small, and we are not the only providers of the two services that are reduced. We will do just fine, and keep our powder dry until the economic picture is brighter. When the sun eventually shines, the City's got to get moving on increasing the size of this department if citizens want the services.

Forty cent theft

When you compare Lincoln’s crime data with other cities of around our size, you find some interesting details. Compared to most, Lincoln has a very low rate of murder, robbery and auto theft—yet a rather high rate of aggravated assault and larceny-theft. In order to accept these data, you have to believe that:

1. People in Lincoln are quite prone to seriously assault one another, but strangely unable to inflict deadly injuries.
2. People in Lincoln have a unusually strong penchant for theft, but they are comparatively unlikely to steal by employing violence or threatened violence, and they don’t steal many cars.

Neither of these propositions makes much sense. I have opined about this before, but it is my belief that reporting practices at LPD account for seemingly high rates of larceny-theft and aggravated assault.

Over the weekend, we investigated this FBI Part 1 Crime: a larceny-theft by UCR guidelines. It counts one—the same as a murder.

I wonder how many police departments in cities of a quarter million would produce an incident report on this offense. I also wonder how many police officers would use the phrase “neighborhood miscreants.” Nicely done.

Crimestoppers makeover

We’ve changed our Crimestoppers site and process dramatically in the past few weeks. I mentioned this briefly a couple weeks ago, but now we are prepared to engage in much more vigorous promotion of this site.

Previously, our Crimestoppers page was pretty generic—a few crimes highlighted in classic police-speak, accompanied by a few surveillance photos. We redesigned the site to make entry of new cases easy (using Blogger, no less!), and to include much more photo and video content.

The result is not only pleasing to the eye, but ramps up our ability to get these images in front of more eyes. We acquired a simple domain name, lincolncrimestoppers.com, in order to avoid a more cumbersome URL.

We are hoping this site grows in popularity, and that the improved content (along with the new ability to leave online and text tips) results in more and better information. We've already had three cases where tipsters have looked at the upgraded site, spotted a photo, and identified our suspect. I’d like to see more people subscribing to or bookmarking the site, checking it from time to time.

We’ve got a long-term partnership with KOLN /KGIN TV, a nice story last night on our other local TV station, KLKN, and we have weekly gigs on several area radio shows. I’m still looking for promotional concepts, though, if any readers have an idea about how we might get the evidence in front of more people.

Things that go boom in the night

The Fourth of July weekend is normally the busiest time of the year for us, occasionally eclipsed by the first home football game for the University of Nebraska/State Fair/Labor day weekend. It will be interesting to see how the move of the State Fair to Grand Island changes that dynamic. Here’s the particulars on fireworks complaints this year:

Looks like mother nature accomplished what police admonitions failed to achieve last year. The showers over the weekend seem to have reduced the overall number of complaints.

Not just law enforcement

If you ever hear me referring to my line of work as law enforcement, or to the Lincoln Police Department as a law enforcement agency, you should correct me. I seldom use those terms. My professional field is policing, and we are a police agency. The two are not the same, irrespective of what you see on TV. Police departments enforce laws, yes, but that’s just part of the picture—and a comparatively small part. We are much more. We are a general service government agency that provides a variety of services aimed at promoting safety and security.

Last year, LPD investigated 1,278 violent crimes--the five offenses the FBI tracks in the Uniform Crime Report: murder and non-negligent homicide, forcible rape, aggravated assault, and robbery. Here’s how that stacked up against some of the other things we investigated last year (click to enlarge):

If you add in the 10,103 property crimes, we handled a total 11,381 Part 1 crimes last year. That’s out of 128,063 total incidents we responded to, or just 8.9%.

Crime is only part of what we do.

Nice job on the crashes

The possibility of cutting the police investigation of non-injury traffic crashes was floated this year during budget deliberations, and there has been a lot of discussion (including here on my blog) of the upsides, downsides, and practicality of handling minor crashes differently.

Regardless of what you think, it’s hard to argue that this isn’t a nice service for citizens. Bringing a little order to chaos is a task at which police officers excel. Whether it survives the budget knives…? Standby, the Mayor releases his proposed 2009-2010 budget on Monday.

In what must be a single-day record, I received three phone calls yesterday from citizens who took the time and effort to reach me personally to pass on their thanks and appreciation to officers who investigated traffic crashes in the past few days. One of those even came from a citizen who was ticketed in the accident. The compliments have been passed on to the investigating officers and their supervisors.

Manhattan project

Last Wednesday was the third one of the month, and that means it was our regularly scheduled ACUDAT meeting to review crime trends and progress towards our goals. The June meeting was attended by visitors from the Riley County (Kansas) Police Department. Chief Brad Schoen and his command staff came up for the afternoon.

Capt. Tim Hegarty, who heads their patrol division, had arranged the visit after he was here a couple of months ago. The Riley County Police Department is unique in our part of the country, as an integrated police agency that covers the entire county. The largest cities are Ogden and Manhattan--home of Kansas State University. Way back in 1974 the Ogden Police Department, Manhattan Police Department, and Riley County Sheriff's Office were merged into a single police agency. That must have been quite the project, given the politics that swirl around such matters.

A non-political project--an effort to improve information and analysis--brought Riley County to Lincoln Wednesday. RCPD is in the process of acquiring the same geographic crime analysis software we use, CrimeView. They were interested in seeing how we use this in our department, and particularly how analysis of patterns, trends, and crimes is used to guide our strategies. We host visits like this a few times each year, and it's a great opportunity to share ideas.

You’ve won the lottery!

So far this year, LPD has investigated at least 67 Internet frauds. There may be a few more buried in our records with a different location code—I just didn’t have time to check there. Here’s a recap of a few of the successful cons that have relieved Lincoln residents of their cash this year. The demographics on the victims will be a little different than you might imagine.

A9-001497

85 year-old women was contacted by a man claiming to be in Ghana. He needed her help in collecting $23.5 million dollars on deposit here in the States. In return for her wiring him $3,655, she would receive one third of his fortune.

A9-OO4283

A 37 year-old man lost $3,505 after after responding to a job offer he found on craigslist. The person offering the job mailed him a bogus check, with instructions to cash the check then wire the bulk of the cash to a non-existent “travel agent” in the Philippines, who would be making arrangements.

A9-008044

A 20 year-old man was separated from $2,850 that he wired to the seller of a car on eBay. The car never arrived. The seller does not exist. The eBay listing was spoofed.

A9-012910

An 18 and 19 year-old couple found some concert tickets on craigslist, and contacted the seller by phone. The seller said she was in Laurel, NE, and would mail the tickets if the victim would wire her the $250. No tickies. Turns out the phone number the victim called (no longer in service) is in Santa Rosa, CA.

A9-015865

A 25 year-old man saw a good price on a 2006 Ford Expedition posted on craigslist and offered by a seller named Sarah in Quebec. “Send a moneygram for $4,800 to my eBay agent, David Wright.” No Expedition, no eBay agent, no Sarah, no David Wright, no more $4,800.

A9-041582

An 80 year-old women received a phone call from a male who called her “grandma.” He explained that while job hunting in Atlanta, he had been involved in a traffic crash, and needed to borrow $5,400 to pay his medical and vehicle expenses. She wired that amount to him in Atlanta, with the expectation that he would repay her after he received his insurance settlement. It wasn’t her grandson.

A9-043799

A 26 year-old man sent a $2,200 moneygram to Damian (was that a clue?) in San Diego for a motorcycle advertised on ebay. You know the rest.

A9-049191

The 36 year-old victim advertised her Blackberry on craigslist. She received an offer to buy from “Terry” who wanted her to ship the Blackberry to his daughter in Nigeria, and he would pay for the device and shipping through PayPal. She subsequently received an email from PayPal confirming a $160 transfer to her account, so she shipped the Blackberry off. The PayPal email was a fake.

A9-049845

A 24 year-old victim purchased a spyware program from a website for $49.95. The program turned out to be malware that has seriously fouled her computer. The company doesn’t exist, and the IP address resolves to the Netherlands.

A9-052547

The 19 year-old victim responded to a craigslist ad for a 2001 Honda motorcycle. The seller was in the United Kingdom, but said the motorcycle was at a business in Denver. The seller had the buyer wire $2,850 to a third party in London. Obviously, no Honda.

A9-052576

A 30 year old man was informed via email that if he would only wire the sender $300, the victim would in turn receive $50,000 for his trouble. Walmart’s fee for the $300 wire was an added $22.92.

A9-053932

A 27 year-old victim won the eBay auction of a 2004 GMC Envoy that was supposedly in Rock Rapids, Iowa. Curiously, she was required to wire $3,000 to London in order to consummate the transaction. No vehicle exists, and the seller has mysteriously disappeared from eBay and from the email address he employed.

A9-057403

A 27 year-old Lincoln woman won the Nigerian Lottery! She was notified of her good fortune via email on her Blackberry. All she needed to do to claim her prize was to send four separate wires from two separate Moneygram locations to Mr. Sunday Olasunkanmi in Sagamu, Nigeria. The total take was $2,635.

Let’s review:

1. You haven’t won any lotteries for which you bought no tickets. If you actually did win a lottery, they wouldn’t be contacting you by email, and you wouldn’t be required to send money to claim your prize.
2. You never pay for anything in advance, upon the expectation that it will actually be delivered, unless you can independently confirm its existence and deliverability--except a college education, in which case you have no other choice.
3. No legitimate buyer sends you a check for more than the purchase price and asks you to wire the excess to them, much less to a third party in another country.
4. Anyone can cut and paste the logo from PayPal or eBay and make that email you receive look legitimate, if you don’t have your…detector activated.

Fortunately, in several of the 67 cases, victims sensed something wasn’t right, and didn’t fall for the scam. There were some close calls, though. Caveat emptor.