Police Chief presents annual report to commissioners

Police Chief Don Bohon on Monday presented the Police Department 2016 Annual Report to City Commissioners

He calls the report a statistical snapshot of the previous year, prepared with Police Analyst Laura Hanson.

Ponca City’s estimated population for 2016 was 25,066. The Police Department has 55 sworn officers, 27 civilian employees, 17 tact team officers, one K9 unit, and 26 Extra Eyes personnel.

Bohon said that in Fiscal Year 2016, officers drove 451,071 miles and responded to 18,943 police calls for service.

For the year, officers received 5,312 total CLEET certified hours, 145 in-service hours, and 172 mental health training hours, for an average of 91.6 training hours per officer.

“That is much higher than what’s required,” Bohon said. “The state’s budget has affected the number of CLEET hours available, and the majority of training is now done in house or we bring trainers here.”

Civilians in the department received a total of 1050 training hours, with 815.5 hours for dispatchers; 177 hours for booking; 110.5 hours for an analyst, and 52 total for volunteers, averaging 1.8 hours.

In total there were 25,114 calls for service received through dispatch. That included the 18,943 calls for police service; 4,860 EMS/ Fire department calls; and 1,221 calls for service for other agencies.

Dispatchers received an average of three calls for service per hour, but dispatchers answered the phone nearly  100,000 times in 2016, Bohon said.

 

Over the past five years, the number of calls for police service have shown a steady decline.

Each year, the most dangerous crimes are recorded as Part 1 crimes. These include criminal homicide; forcible rape; robbery; aggravated assault; burglary; larceny and motor vehicle theft.

The total of these crimes in 2016 was the lowest in 20 years, Bohon said.

“We’re in the middle of the statistics for Oklahoma cities,” Bohon said. He said the rate of Part 1 crimes in Ponca City is 47.29 crimes per 1,000 residents.

The clearance rates for these crimes is 25.1, which is above the national average, Bohon said.

Part 1 juvenile crime are those cases which are cleared by the arrest of a juvenile, Bohon said. There were 91 juvenile arrests in all categories in 2016, he said, and 30.6 percent of Part 1 crimes were  cleared by the arrest of a juvenile.

 

Cases handled in juvenile city court has trended down for the previous five years, but jumped sharply in 2016, he said. Some crimes have been added to the cases heard in Juvenile Court over the past few years, he said.

Arrests made and booked through the Ponca City Municipal Jail decreased in 2016, with 2,234 recorded, down from 2,347 posted in 2015.

“That number could include some people who arrested multiple times,” he said.

In traffic enforcement, a total of 8,676 citations were issued in 2016, Bohon said. Of those, 3,586 were violations filed, compared to 4,500 in 2015. The remainder of contacts, 5,090, were issued warnings, compared to 6,991 in 2015.

There were 690 traffic collisions in 2016, compared to 727 in 2015.