Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Party data
The topic of party disturbances is no stranger to the pages of the Director's Desk. Last week, I put together the end-of-the year data for Nancy Hicks, a Lincoln Journal Star reporter. She mentioned this in the second half of her weekly column. Here's the graphs on an incredible trend.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
As I have mentioned multiple times in the past, I was impressed with how quickly LPD helped in ridding my block of the negative consequences of a party house. Now, if we could continue along that track to get the rundown houses repaired, stop parking in the grass of the front yards, and a few other minor issues, our neighborhoods would start to look and feel like they did when I was growing up. I think just the appearance of a neighborhood has a lot to do with how well the neighbors get along and keep an eye out for each other. This would go a long way toward reducing overall crime as well. I see a lot of repeat calls to the same blocks for the same kinds of offenses on my crime alerts.
Off the subject, and I don't mean to be critical without knowing all the details, but was it really wise to be serving the arrest warrants on the individual living in the suspected meth lab near 20th and South yesterday at the same time all those elementary school children were passign by on their way to school? It appeared the task force was prepared for violence, and if that was expected, I would have thought waiting until the school children were all in the building, or better yet, after school hours would have been a better choice. I was on my way to the school to mentor a second grader when I saw the commotion and was somewhat concerned. Thankfully nothing bad happened, but I'm curious about the need or wisdom of the timing.
I wonder if the perception (and perhaps the reality) that throwing a wild party increasingly invites violence and/or robbery/larceny against the host (perpetrated by groups of roving criminal opportunists) might have something to do with this trend. Back in my salad days, when Lincoln held about 150,000 residents and was demographically a bit different, throwing a wild party perhaps held the risk of vomit on the carpet or a small punch-out at worst, but it's not that mundane these days.
Steve,
The Task Force is the responsibility of the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office not the Lincoln Police Department. Everyone is scratching their heads at this and questioning LSO's timing.
1:44
Yes, I wasn't totally sure what entity was in charge of this operation, but I didn't really think it was LPD. I just figured Tom might have some comment on the situation. I'm sure there were some LPD officers involved later in the operation, but the only thing I saw at the beginning were people with uniforms identifying them as U. S. Marshals. As I said, nothing bad happened that I know of, but I'd still like to hear some justification for the timing given the circumstances.
The way I understood it was the Task Force was there to serve a 'routine' arrest warrant and discovered the meth lab by accident. They then backed off and waited for the assistance they needed.
If they were aware there was a meth lab there before hand trust me, they would have had the appropriate help to begin with.
Everyone wants to second guess everything now days. Are we going to now say you can only serve warrants during certain hours? It happens and this instance shows there is never anything 'routine' about police work.
I'm trying not to jump to any conclusions or to even suggest any wrong doing, but from the information I have, it appears questionable to have made the "raid" at that time. I read somewhere that the authorities were called by a neighbor in the other half of the duplex, as I understand it, prior to the event in question, about the odor coming from next door. That would seem to indicate they at least had some idea what was going on.
Also, since the guy had previous convictions for drugs, weapons, and domestic abuse, it seems reasonable to assume he may have resisted with violence.
I'm certainly not saying we need to put unneccessary restrictions on law enforcement, but this case is troubling for me as I see it right now. Often times, I'm on the other side of this issue when the public outcry is for more care on the part of police. There are some recent examples where people were upset that schools weren't notified or locked down, and in those cases I didn't think it was necessary or appropriate.
I'd just like to know more about this case.
I don't know where you are getting that there was a 'raid' on this house. Maybe the media is making it look like that but their job is not only to report the news but to make it look exciting so people will watch. This is something the Task Force does nearly every single day and uniform officers do on a less frequent but regular basis. They go out looking for people with warrants and check out addresses where the bad guys might be, like old hang outs, a girlfriend's house, Mom's house etc. Officers position themselves so they can see all sides of the house in case, like in this instance, the perp runs then knock on the door and see if someone answers that will cooperate. No 'raid' happened. If there is going to be a 'raid', the SWAT team is assembled ahead of time and they take care of things.
Sure there is a chance the bad guy might react violently and it's always in the backs of Officer's minds which goes back to nothing being 'routine.' The warrant files are full of wanted people who have violent histories. Cops go to calls everyday that involve people with violent histories. The fact is, there aren't very many people with warrants that are your everyday run of the mill citizen and they aren't being sought by the Task Force.
Steve,
Did you miss the info that LSO, not LPD, ran that operation? If you want more info, LSO would likely be a better place to get it. Their number is 402-441-6500.
No, I did not miss that LSO was in charge of the operation. As I said, I just wondered what the Dirctor thought about it or if he was willing to comment. As for calling it a raid, you can call it whatever you want. It was several officers, and it appeared that "perhaps" they were preparing to make a forcible entry. That would be a raid in my vocabulary. Now, the forcible entry may not have occurred. It just appeared to me that it might be imminent. I apologize if I offended anyone by calling it a raid.
Again, I'm not accusing anyone of any wrong doing here. The biggest question in my mind is whether or not waiting a few minutes would have made it a safer situation all the way around. (The kids would have all been inside the school rather than all over the neighborhood.)
Steve,
Not my operation, and I frankly don't know enough to pass judgement. 10:39 is basically correct: this task force, as well as individual LPD officers, are searching for people with arrest warrants throughout the day. At any given time we hold around 6,000 to 7,000 arrest warrants here in Lincoln. It wouldn't be practical to lock down schools every time an officer stops to check if Joe is at home. On the other hand, if you knew you were going to try to serve a felony warrant on a subject with a significant history of violence, or bust a meth lab, you'd certainly want to take into account nearby schools and school dismissal time in your planning. Hindsight is always 20-20.
Director:
Understood, and agreed. Thanks.
Post a Comment