City Council gets positive news on crime - it's down in nearly all major categories

By Ed Martin, Editor
City Council gets positive news on crime - it's down in nearly all major categories

The good news is that the Lemoore Police Department’s annual report for 2016, revealed that crime in just about every category in Lemoore is way down. The bad news – well there really isn’t any bad news other than crime still occurs, but not at quite the same levels as in previous years.

The report was delivered to the Lemoore City Council at Tuesday’s meeting, and it was well received. “This is a success for the entire community and not just the Lemoore Police Department,” said Police Commander Maggie Ochoa. “This is the effort of an entire community that caused the decrease in crime, including Neighborhood Watch groups (Lemoore has 101 such neighborhoods), families, schools, outreach programs such as Explorers and PAL (Police Activities League), and certainly smart policing – taking a progressive approach for changes our community may be faced with.”

There certainly was plenty of good news. For example, felonies decreased from the previous year, 2015, and were down 15.3 percent. Misdemeanors also fell, down 15.8 percent as 1,699 misdemeanors were reported in 2016. Lemoore officers also responded to a total of 39,973 calls for service in 2016, a decrease of 12.8 percent from 2015.

Lemoore police responded to 45,858 calls for service the previous year and 46,897 calls in 2014.

Adult arrests decreased by 3.9 percent while juvenile arrests fell by 26.9 percent in 2016.

The major crimes, as classified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): homicide, assault, larceny, auto theft, burglary, and robbery were all down – only rapes went up. There were 19 rapes reported in 2016 compared to 18 in 2015.

Burglaries went down dramatically, from 160 in 2015 to 111 in 2016, a drop of 30.6 percent. Police reported a 29.5 percent drop in assaults with 274 reported in 2016 compared to 389 in 2015.

Lemoore’s detective unit was assigned 219 cases and cleared 91 percent of them, leaving just 9 percent of the cases open.

Traffic accidents were reduced in 2016. There were 206 accidents reported in 2016, compared to 233 in 2015. There were no fatal accidents in 2016.  

“The Lemoore Police Department is committed to combating crime and Chief Smith is very proud of his staff and the partnerships they have developed with the community,” said Ochoa.

 

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