Police car wrong solution

The tragic story of a single mom coping with a mentally ill 12 year old son appeared in yesterday's Lincoln Journal Star. I have incredible sympathy for what she is going through. I talked to her a few weeks ago, when she called me to express her displeasure that a police officer would not transport her handcuffed child in a patrol car to the hospital. LPD took a bit of criticism in the comments. The very first commenter misinterpreted this passage in the article:

"His mother knew he needed to go to the hospital. But the officer, although sympathetic, said Lincoln Police Department policy wouldn’t allow her to take the boy to the hospital."

The "her" in the excerpt is the police officer--not the mother. The police officer would not transport the child to the hospital. We most certainly did not prevent mom from taking the child to the hospital, which, under the circumstances, sounds like a pretty reasonable course of action.

As I explained to the child's mother, we do not think it is either safe or good public policy to transport people in acute mental health crises to hospitals or elsewhere restrained in the back seat of police cars, if this can be avoided. This practice poses known risks, and is also ethically dubious. For what other medical condition would the solution to a critical episode of the illness be to call the police? An asthma attack? Anaphylactic shock from an allergy? A severe diabetic reaction? I think not. As I told her, I believe her son needed an ambulance, medical professionals, and a hospital bed--not a set of handcuffs and the back seat of a patrol car.

I'll grant you this, though, if neither the mother nor the principal had the presence of mind to call an ambulance for this emergency, the police officer probably should have suggested it. We'll try to make sure we do that more reliably, when the care-givers don't think of it.

Searching the Chief's Corner

There are well over 300 posts on The Chief's Corner so far, and I am loosing track of what I've already blogged about. I've been thinking about re-posting some older ones just to see if anyone notices. It could be a sort of "best of" series sometime when I'm suffering from writer's block.

I wanted to point out, though, the blogger search box, at the top-left of the masthead, just above the words "The Chief's Corner." Don't confuse it with your browser's search box on the toolbar. Put in a couple of key words, and all the posts containing those words will be returned. It's a handy tool I use often when I'm trying to find some tidbit that is lost in space. It doesn't search comments, though, only the posts themselves.

Domestic assaults and football

Speaking of stuff on game days, Sgt. Chad Barrett emailed me earlier this week. He has an intern who is interested in the relationship between sports events and domestic violence. Specifically, are there more domestic assaults when Nebraska loses football games, as opposed to days when the Cornhuskers win? I sent a quick reply back to him, and included a decade's worth of data about domestic assaults occurring on Saturdays. I suggested our intern could figure out which ones were game days and of those, which were wins and which were losses. That's the makings of a great semester project in a research methods class. Play your cards right, and you could parlay that into a master's thesis.

The entire file was 2,300 records on the dot, and it covered 451 Saturdays from the year 2000 through this past weekend, October 4, 2008. That means there is an average of just over five domestic assaults per Saturday. I predict there will be a slightly higher-than-average number on game days, but I'll be surprised if there's enough data here to reach any meaningful conclusion. The hypothesis seems to be that there will be more domestic violence on days that the Cornhusker's lose than on days the team wins. My own guess is that it won't make any difference. If there is enough data to prove anything, I think this will prove to be a myth, with the caveat that there is just more crime in general on football game days than on non-game days. I'll let you know the outcome when I know. Here's some other links on the topic:

England v. Croatia

Super Bull Sunday

Freakonomics on college football

Kickoff effect

Unless you've been to Lincoln on certain fall Saturdays, it's hard to understand how consumed this City and State are with University of Nebraska football (despite the Present Crisis.) Memorial Stadium has seen 294 consecutive sell outs. When you bring 85,000 people downtown in a City of 250,000 it is quite an event, and one that taxes the police.

I noted last week that September 27, the Saturday of the Nebraska v. Virginia Tech game, was our busiest day of the year so far, with 517 police dispatches. This past Saturday, October 4, is close behind, with 493. Win, lose, or get completely dismantled, I don't think it makes much difference. Game days are just plain busy. Alcohol-related events are a chief contributor.

There is, however, a lull in the action. Check over these two charts. You can click to enlarge them, but the hours of the day start at midnight, on the left. The first is the distribution of police dispatches on Saturdays during 2008, sans football game days. The second is the distribution last Saturday, Nebraska v. Missouri; a nationally televised game with an 8:00 PM kickoff.



As you can see, the radio becomes a bit more quiet as the populace becomes glued to the tube. I wonder if last night's presidential debates caused the same effect.

Bad year for bank robbers

It started with this one, cleared in record time: 6 minutes. Then on Friday, this pair made the bad mistake of (allegedly) robbing People's Choice Credit Union, formerly known as the City-County Employee's Credit Union. Then Monday, visitors from the Northeast came to Lincoln, and ended up staying in our local graybar hotel.

Great work by Lancaster County Deputy Sheriff Kirk Price, who dropped what he was doing serving civil process, headed for the highway to give the hairy eyeball to passers-by, and spotted the suspects trying to be inconspicuously evasive. Not the first time that's happened: Sheriff's Captain Gary Juilfs spotted the suspects in similar circumstances (and not very far away) back in March, 2000 . The Nebraska State Patrol's helicopter also came in very handy, as the last of the three suspects ran into a rather isolated and desolate area of the county. There's a certain comfort in having that baby hovering overhead as you take a bank robber into custody.

If you were going to pick a place for your suspect to run into a field, you couldn't do much better than this flat, treeless triangle of land bounded by Highway 6, Interstate 80, and the Warner Wetlands.

Wait a minute. Yes, come to think of it, you could do better.

Financial institution robberies are a very bad thing. The risk is great, and although three is a very low number, it is three too many. The good news is that the clearance rate this year is 100% and the average time between the robbery and the arrest is about an hour.

Why would you assume that?

I received this email a few weeks ago, meant to blog about it, and never quite got it done until today.

"I just wanted to share with you something I saw last night that
concerned me. Around 11:30 PM, I was traveling east on Cornhusker
Highway, approaching 48th St. In the right turn lane (turning east),
stopped at the stop light, was a police cruiser (it may have been a
State Patrol vehicle, I cannot say for sure). As I was turning on to
48th, I saw the cruiser's lights switch on as he drove through the red
light. Immediately after he cleared the light, the flashers went off.

I don't know if there is an exact policy on this or not, but I find
that kind of behavior very troubling. This is the kind of thing that
helps to fuel the negative feelings so many Lincolnites have about law
enforcement officers. Regardless of whether it is a condoned practice,
I wanted to bring it to your attention. Thank you."

I get calls or correspondence like this from time to time. Back when I worked in Internal Affairs I would take an occasional complaint of the same nature. I just don't understand why someone, having observed an officer turn his or her lights on and tap the siren to clear an intersection, would automatically assume that the officer had no good reason to do so.

From looking at dispatches during this time frame back on Sept. 11, I surmised that it was probably one of the Northeast Team's officers was on the way to an alarm at Dyno Sport, a nearby business. I explained to this correspondent that officers sometimes are on their way to events that are not quite full-bore emergencies, yet require an expedited response without a 45 second delay--as well as one which does not broadcast the officer's approach too dramatically in advance of his or her arrival. I suppose if you've never feathered the emergency brake, you just don't understand the need for stealth in approaching a potential crime in progress.

I never heard anything back after sending the reply. I imagine given this mind set that the writer now just figures I'm just covering up for an officer who was in a rush to get a taco.

Annual reports back to 1941

It started with Case number one, posted the Chief's Corner on March 21st, 2008. The fourth comment was from flyover living, and was followed by an off-blog email telling me about the Nebraska Memories project at the Nebraska Library Commission. Never one to pass up an offer of free help, we got in touch with the Commission, and they helped us a great deal in getting our archive of Annual Reports scanned as .pdf files. Along with additional assistance from Chris Plock at the City Information Services Department, and our Management Services Unit intern, Jonna, we have completed a remarkable online archive.

You will now find the Annual Reports of the Lincoln Police Department back to 1941 available online, at the police department's web site, and at Nebraska Memories. The 66 year archive contains an 11 yearr gap, however. No annual report was produced from 1974 thorugh 1984 1985.

There are some memorable and historic moments in those old annual reports. Here are a few samples (I'm using the Adobe Acrobat page number in these page references):

Casady is not the only chief with a chart, 1941, p. 25.

...or a confusing chart, 1948, p. 19-20.

...or an incident map, 1945, p. 21.

The impact of WWII on the police department, 1942, p.2.

Two-way radio system inaugurated, 1942, p. 10.

Policewomen added to the force, 1944, p.6, 12, 13.

Turnover rate tops one-third, 1945, p. 7.

The 60 hour, six day work week is replaced with a 48 hour, six day week , 1946, p. 3.

The 48 hour, six-day work week is replaced with a 40 hour, five day week, 1963, p. 8.

The ongoing saga of being a very small force , 1949, p. 8.

University of Nebraska students start as part-time police officers, 1951, p. 7.

Officer William J. Hill dies after one day on the job, 1953, p. 9.

Meter maids introduced, 1958, p. 5.

Not a single mention of Charles Starkweather... , 1958, p. 8-9

...but he committed all six of the murders in the table, 1958, p. 14.

The history of the Lincoln Police Department in the City's centennial year, 1967, p. 6-8.

A 35.8% increase in Part 1 Crime, 1968, p. 8.

Chief: Supreme Court "ties the hands" of police, 1968 p. 3.

Law students and varsity athletes used as police officers, 1968, p. 13.

Last day for 323 N. 10th Street, 1968, p. 20.

First day for 550 S. 9th Street, 1969, p. 3.

Best motor photo, 1970, p. 6.

We still own that typewriter, 1971, p 10.

He's now the mayor of Billings, MT, 1972, p. 21.

He's now the Grand Island police chief, 1973, p. 1.

Best photo ever in an Annual Report, 1973, p. 5.

Officer Richard E. Leyden killed in the line of duty, 1949, p.6.

Lt. Frank Soukup is killed in the line of duty, 1965-1966, p. 7

Det. Paul B. Whitehead is killed in the line of duty, 1967, p. 10.

Officer George W. Welter killed in the line of duty, 1968, p. 6.

Crime alerts available

Back on June 12, we announced the availability of a new incident mapping service, crimemapping.com. There is a crime alert feature included in this service that is really quite nice, and I've decided to promote that service a little more proactively. There are links to crime alerts at the top of the main page at crimemapping.com and in the middle of our public web site, or you can just go directly to the sign up page. Once you are signed up for crime alerts, you will receive an automatic email with the brief details of any new police incident reports that show up in the area where you have subscribed. Here's a sample (click to enlarge):

Most people who use the crime alerts feature will want to subscribe to the area around their business or home. You can choose various distances, but I would be cautious about picking a 1 mile or 2 mile buffer. This city is much busier than most people realize, and you might be getting a lot of stuff in those emails, if you get carried away. It's easy to unsubscribe if you decide you need to throttle back.

Usually, incident reports are processed, geocoded, uploaded to the Omega Group, and available within a shift of the initial report. This varies, though, because sometimes officers are authorized to hold-over reports to their following tour of duty. One caveat: although there are choices for DUI and Disturbing the Peace cases in crimemapping.com, these two incident types are not contained within our data.

Crime alerts are a nice addition to the department's many resources for keeping you informed, including two incident mapping choices, crimemapping.com and CrimeView Community, and our daily log of police incidents. The key advantage of crime alerts is that the information is "pushed" to you: you don't have to go get it.

The more you know, the better you are prepared to act. When you are more aware of what's going on in your own neck of the woods, you will be more likely to close your garage door, park all your cars in the driveway, make sure nothing is visible from the outside, get a higher security lock, call us immediately when you spot suspicious behavior, and so forth.