Stability was a theme in the Hutchinson Police Services 2019 annual report presented to City Council Tuesday night.

How stable were things? Well, in 2019 there were just 74 fewer calls than in 2018. There were also 458 arrests in 2019, only 23 less than the prior year.

“It’s been pretty consistent,” Police Chief Tom Gifferson said. “We’ve gone up in calls for service over the last four years. We went down a little bit from 2018, but the minimum amount that we went down is … such a close number.”

Calls for service were defined as more than calls to the dispatch center and included people walking up to the dispatch window, officers initiating traffic stops or any other type of incident that occurred during the year.

Thefts were another area that remained consistent as there were only two more reported in 2019 than in 2018, but Gifferson sees it differently.

“The thing that strikes me is that we still have 223 thefts last year, and a lot of those I think are crimes of opportunity,” Gifferson said. “I think if community members would just take a little bit more time and lock their cars for instance, or lock their garage if they’re in a detached garage, they could just do some things to help … us prevent those crimes from happening. I don’t want that to be construed that I think it’s their fault that they’re being burglarized, because that’s not the case. I’m just asking for a little bit of help from the community to protect their own property.”

When it came to calls for service in 2019, the numbers remained largely consistent but there tended to be fewer calls January through June than there were July through December. Police received the fewest calls by far in February (1,474) and the most in October (1,814). Weekly, police received the fewest number of calls for service on weekends, with 2,661 on Saturdays and 2,253 on Sundays, while Fridays (3,099) and Tuesdays (3,079) were the busiest days. The busiest call time was 7 p.m., while the slowest times were 3-5 a.m.

While calls were down overall, police saw increases in domestics, from 41 in 2018 to more than twice that with 85 in 2019. There was also a jump in burglaries from 17 in 2018 to 32 in 2019. Despite the one-year increase in burglaries, Gifferson pointed out that 2019 remained consistent with the previous five-year statistics. As for domestics, he attributed the increase to better reporting and advocacy services rather than more actual instances of domestic violence.

“We have victims who are reporting more often and giving us the opportunity to investigate those,” he said. “Unfortunately, domestic violence cases aren’t one of those things we can proactively enforce. We have to be reactionary to those, and that really relies on the victim or an advocate of the victim reporting it to us so we can investigate it.”

Another area that saw an increase was the number of citations issued with 892 in 2019, 47 more than in 2018.

Part 1 crimes, defined as more serious crimes such as homicide, forcible rape, robbery, theft and burglary, continued an overall six-year downward pattern from a high of 401 in 2014 to 306 last year, a 23 percent decrease. There was still a slight increase from 2018 when there were only 278 Part 1 crimes reported.

Part 2 crimes, defined as less serious crimes such as disturbance, controlled substance, criminal damage and other assault, took a dip after two straight years of increases. It went from a six-year low of 579 in 2016 to 687 in 2017, then a six-year high of 832 in 2018, and then down to 744 in 2019.

Traffic crashes also went down slightly from 310 in 2018 to 305 in 2019. That continues another positive trend after a five-year high of 357 crashes in 2017. It was also the fourth straight year without a fatal crash in the city.

Another area of stability was in child protection. Police had 299 child protection intakes in 2019, a slight increase from 289 in 2018. Of those 2019 intakes, police worked with Social Services on 50 investigations, which resulted in six health and welfare holds placed and 11 children removed from their residence. At schools, there was a 20 percent increase in calls to the resource officer, from 341 in 2018 to 410 in 2019. The two most popular types of calls related to citations and suspicious behavior.

Among the accomplishments in 2019, Gifferson highlighted the department’s new Facebook page as an asset.

“We’ve had a couple cases where we’ve been able to receive a lot of information by crowdsourcing through Facebook.” he said. “We’ve certainly been able to get a lot of information from it from the community, so that helps. It also helps us get our message out there regarding certain things, and then at times we’ve used it to help dispel rumors as well.”

Hutchinson police also upgraded body cameras and safety equipment, started using new scheduling software and implemented a new physical fitness assessment as well as promoting total officer wellness, including psychological, spiritual and financial wellness.

“If an officer is well in all those areas, when they come to work they’re going to be more alert and do a better job,” Gifferson said.