Delivery intercepted

Continuing on yesterday’s subject of holiday thefts, there is another type of crime that we have been seeing in recent years: intercepted delivery of the United States mail.  Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, a lot of grandmas send that card containing a five spot or a gift card.  During the past few years, we have had several cases where mail was stolen from curbside boxes, probably by thieves hoping to score a gift card or cash.  My guess is that there were many more of these offenses that went undetected and unreported. 

Make those gifts in person if you can, check to make sure the recipient actually received the card, and help us keep an eye out for anyone fooling around your neighbor’s mailbox.

Parcel security

Officer Steve Standley, a skilled veteran of 36 years, has intitiated a problem-oriented policing (POP) project aimed at a crime type that surfaced last year: theft of parcel deliveries.  In Steve's Southeast Lincoln team area alone, there was a loss of goods valued at over $5,000 during the holiday season in 2009.  The M.O. is pretty straightforward: the thieves watch the courier make a delivery, then sneak up and snatch the parcel off the porch or patio.

Creating more awareness of this crime is part of Steve's strategy.  Yesterday, he alerted his fellow officers to be on the look out for anyone lurking in a residential neighborhood while FedEx and UPS drivers are making their rounds.  He's especially interested in anyone who might be parked in a car or idling at the curb a block or so down the street as a delivery is made. 

Today, he has enlisted my help to spread this same word to the general public. You are our eyes and ears.  There are only 321 of us, but there are 255,000 residents in Lincoln, who are far more likely to spot this kind of suspicious behavior.  If you are retired, a stay-at-home parent, or a shift worker who is around the house during the daytime, you are a particularly valuable crime prevention asset right now.  These deliveries are almost always between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, and that's when the snatches occur. 

Keep your eyes peeled, and please call us ASAP if you see anything that looks like a parcel theft, surveillance of a delivery, or anything else that appears odd.  It could be the set up to one of these thefts.  Don't worry about bothering us, and don't hesitate because of uncertainty--we'll check it out, and if there is a legitimate explanation, no harm has been done. 

Good luck, Steve.

Peaks in summer

A local member of the news media was aiming to do a story about the uptick in domestic violence that accompanies the holiday season.  It is a topic I’ve blogged about before.  The assumption underlying this reporter's story idea is a myth.  Contrary to popular belief, domestic violence (like most crime) actually peaks during the middle of summer.  Here’s the monthly breakdown on 15,134 domestic assaults in Lincoln over the past decade:

Dramatic improvement

Fifteen years ago my boss, Mayor Mike Johanns (now Senator Johanns) decided to commit some City resources and time to a project to improve the community’s response to domestic violence.  In collaboration with several stakeholders, the Family Violence Council was formed, following a year of strategic planning. 

Earlier this month, the director of the FVC, Bob Moyer, was among the testifiers at the public hearing held by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies regarding the Lincoln Police Department’s application for reaccreditation.  Mr. Moyer testified about the police department’s partnership with other organizations in the community on a variety of strategies to improve the response to domestic violence. 

During his testimony, Bob presented some statistics that were really rather mind-boggling.  I’ve watched them from year to year, but to look back over the life of the Family Violence Council is quite a different perspective.  Here’s a snapshot of some of that data:

	1996	2009
Dual arrests	176	41
Percent of arrests being custodial arrests	43%	77%
Number of repeat offenders	196	57
Number of offenses committed by repeat offenders	324	103
Number of offenders committing 4 or more offenses in year	24	4
Number of perpetrators ordered into intervention programs	0	465
Number of perpetrators sentenced to jail	126	318

This reflects a remarkable accomplishment in combatting violent crime in the City of Lincoln.  Consider that during this same time period, the population of the City has increased by about 47,000 and the change becomes even more dramatic.  While the police department did not cause this effect, we were a critical component in the improved community response that led to these results, and this is something we can all be proud of.

Online research revealing

A comment was posted at 10:40 AM yesterday on my blog post from Friday.  It had nothing to do with Friday's topic, but was an interesting question demonstrating that the reader has mastered the art of online research.  I will repeat the comment here to save you a couple clicks:

"Chief,

Here's an unrelated, but timely, item of information tangential to a current suspect. The prostitution charge seems minor, at least in contrast to this earlier conviction. Since most accessory to murder convictions were most likely reduced from a stiffer charge, I bet there's a story behind that one."

Indeed, there is a story, and I suspect the reader who made the comment knows more about the underlying crime than he or she reveals.  The reader has made good use of a simple Google search, combined with an inquiry into the public inmate locator maintained by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services.  I suspect that the reader who posted the comment knows more than he or she lets on, because the basic details of the conviction that landed her and others in prison are not hard to find. 

My, how the world has changed.  There is no place to hide.

If you wore a gray shirt…

…then you ought to be able to describe these phrases:

• time…time…time…time
• OMUFP
• 40 – 40
• Motor 8½
• Car 25
• 842
• Dime check

You also ought to know these people:

• Topper
• Pappy
• Crash
• Uncle Neil
• Hardrock
• Clean Gene
• Boo Boo

Things you haven’t seen

Okay, here’s another one many officers would not recognize. You might have found this on a Pinto, a Pacer, or a Vega.

KAB463

During yesterday's staff meeting one of our senior members of the management staff blurted out "KAB463" as we were discussing the rather interesting adaptations required by some of our officers when we reverted to a less computer-based way of doing business for a time during the upgrade to the City Communications Center's computer-aided dispatch system.

So, what is KAB463, a phrase burned into the cerebral cortex of all of our personnel with employee numbers less than _____?