The Cop Column
May 2008
Sgt. Rick Hord
Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office
What Keeps Cops Busy?
“Why
aren’t you out chasing bank robbers?”
That line has been both a sarcastic retort and an innocent inquiry for years. It
points out an important truth: most people have no idea what keeps cops busy.
Even a cop, won’t be able to give a simple answer to that question.
In Okaloosa County, Deputies log an average of 482 calls per day.
Our computer counted 175,882 incidents
last year. Of those, 175,881, or 99.99943 percent, did not involve bank robbers.
Most criminals aren’t very smart, but even the robbers are usually smart enough
to rob something other than a bank. Less than one call per day, a total of 207
last year, involved a report of a robbery… and only one of those was a bank
robbery. What do crooks rob instead
of bank? Mostly individuals: 130 last year, followed by 29
home invasions, 24 convenience stores, 16
other businesses, and 7 carjackings.
Deputies sometimes hear the “you should be out chasing bank robbers” comment
while talking to people involved in some sort of assault, battery, fight, or
disturbance. Those events occupy a great deal of our time… more than 16 times
per day, on the average. Fortunately, only a small minority of these incidents
turn out to be serious criminal events. The people involved don’t always welcome
law enforcement intervention.
If you include domestic violence incidents, the
fight/disturbance average increases to almost
21 per day. Violations of domestic violence restraining orders are not included
in that figure. Those complaints alone come in at the rate of four and a half
times per day.
What else keeps Okaloosa County Deputies busy?
You may be surprised just how often Deputies make arrests: an average of one
every 50 minutes, for a total of 10,500 arrests last year.
About two thirds of those arrests are misdemeanor-level. One arrest every
18 hours and 45 minutes last year was for DUI. Theft arrests are common: one
every 8 hours and 42 minutes. Almost 60-percent of all theft arrests are for
shoplifting.
Here are few more samples from the almost 176,000 incidents
logged in our computer last year:
Cops and robbers? This job is not easily reduced to such a simple phrase.
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