LAKEPORT— The Lakeport City Council, during their regular Tuesday meeting, received a report on the crime statistics in the city of Lakeport for 2022.
This report covers response times, number of incidents, types of crimes, number of arrests, use of force reporting and hours and types of officer and staff training.
Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen said most of the statistics are similar to that of 2021. One difference Rasmussen pointed out was the response time to 911 calls.
Call response times to Priority 1 crimes for 2022 were four minutes, whereas in 2021 the response times for Priority 1 crimes were closer to the three-minute mark Rasmussen said.
“It is still pretty good when responding to emergencies. I would like to see it closer to the three minute (time) that we saw in 2021. As of right now, we are down to seven staff members due to various reasons,” Rasmussen said.
There was a total of 8,522 incidents that the Lakeport Police Department handled. 6,452 of those were calls from the community. There were 303 arrests, 70 of those were felony crimes. There were zero homicides in Lakeport.
“Our biggest challenge right now is dealing with the homelessness and the mentally ill individuals. We are doing a lot, but this is a very complicated situation, there are laws and court decisions we need to take into account before we can take action,” Rasmussen said.
He added that over the past couple of weeks the department has made a huge impact but there is still some work to do. The Lakeport Police Department is working with Lake County Behavioral Health to integrate their services to help address some of these issues.
The city’s efforts also include the work done by the Crisis Responder Program that started in November 2021.
Another focus of the police department is training the staff. In 2022, the police department staff completed 3,000 hours of various trainings.
“One year of staff hours equates to 2,080 hours. What this means is, at all times we have at least one person in training at any given time because of the amount of training we have to keep up on. The most significant part of it is the daily policy training,” Rasmussen said.
He added that this helps officers know the policies and to keep the city from having any liability issues.
The next Lakeport City Council meeting will be canceled since it falls on the July 4 holiday. City Council meetings are held on the first and third Tuesday of each month. Regular Council meetings begin at 6 p.m. in the City Council Chamber, 225 Park Street. The public is invited to attend all Council meetings.
