Just another day

Last Friday, I blogged about the two big events that kept our officers occupied on Wednesday of last week: a tense standoff with an armed subject firing a high-powered rifle, and a huge full-scale exercise simulating a campus shooting.  But those were just the most high-profile of the days events.  On Thursday, I had a speaking engagement with the Leadership Lincoln fellows.  I thought it might be interesting to tell them about the events of the preceding day that did not grab the headlines. So I took along the data, as well as a few highlights from the reports. Here's the synopsis:

Last Wednesday, we responded to about 300 other events.  That's a fairly slow day for us.  Among those were 15 assaults, eight of which were domestic assaults.  Two of those assaults occurred shortly after midnight when a man came home to discover his wife in bed with another man.  At about the same time, officers responded to an assault in which a drunken man was chasing his wife around the house with a meat cleaver while she cradled the couple's 2-month old baby.

There were 10 child abuse/neglect cases on Wednesday.  In one, officers investigated a report that a parent and her friends had smoked meth in the company of four children ages 1 to 11. In another, Officer Chris Howard investigated a report of possible human trafficking.  An 11 year old girl reported that the woman posing as her mother had actually purchased her from her biological parents in Africa, as a means of obtaining refugee status, and was forcing her into all the household labor.

We investigated two death cases, one of which was the untimely death of one of our retired officers, and both of which consumed considerable investigative effort, even though there was no obvious evidence of foul play.  You cannot act on assumptions when an unattended body is discovered.

There were six missing person cases. One of those was a 14 year old boy.  This is the 8th time he has been reported missing, and he has been arrested 7 times for such crimes as shoplifting, marijuana, and skulking around inside other people's cars in the dark of night.  A 22 year old women was also missing.  She, too, had been reported as a missing person 8 times previously.  She has also been the subject of five prior mental health investigations involving suicidal ideation or suicide attempts during the sort time (3 years) she has been in Lincoln.

There were only three narcotics cases, probably because we were too busy to engage in much proactive activity.  In one, an 10 year old girl brought her mom's stash of marijuana to school and gave it to a teacher.

There were two rapes.  In one, the victim went to an apartment to do some drinking and hang out.  After passing out, she awoke to found a man engaged in an an act of sexual penetration, and it appeared that he was not the first to assault her during her unconciousness.  Although she is in her early twenties has been the victim in over a dozen assaults and three sexual assaults.  She has worked for an escort service, and advertised as a massuese on craigslist. Her drug of choice appears to be meth, as she has a felony charge pending in District Court for possession of methamphetamine.

There were 11 medical emergencies, of which nine were mental health crises, all involving either an attempted suicide or suicidal ideation that required evaluation.  Looks like that might be getting even worse.

There were also 13 parking complaints, 46 disturbances, 20 prowlers, 9 vandalisms, 16 larcenies, 20 traffic accidents,three French hens,two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

While the TERREX exercise unfolded, and the SWAT Team performed their apex job, it was just another day at the office for the remainder of the Lincoln Police Department.