State Police release 2017 crime report

By CHANSE WATSON

Managing Editor

WALLACE — If anything can be taken from the latest “Crime in Idaho” report for 2017 regarding Shoshone County, it’s that local agencies have been keeping busy.

Compiled by Idaho State Police and released on Sept. 1, the yearly crime report allows the public to see what their local law enforcement agency was up to the previous year. While many of the statistics included could (and should) be taken with a grain of salt due to several different factors (depending on the category), most agencies agree that this report gives a good general idea of what they deal with on a day-to-day basis.

Regarding Shoshone County as a whole (meaning the combined statistics of the Kellogg Police Department, Pinehurst Police Department, Osburn Police Department and the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Office), the number of total reported offenses has remained relatively consistent with previous years.

According to the report, local law enforcement received a total of 855 group “A” offense reports in 2017. This number is slightly up (1.42 percent) from the previous year when there were 843 reported “A” offenses in 2016.

As a result of responding to all these “A” offenses, arrests were made on a total of 230 individuals (222 adults, eight juveniles). On top of that, deputies and officers also made 231 arrests (219 adults, 12 juveniles) when dealing with group “B” offenses.

This grand total of 461 arrests is down (13.83 percent) from 2016’s total of 535.

Group “A” offenses are made up of 30 different categories that include various violent, property, sexual and drug related crimes. In contrast, group “B” offenses include more general/minor crimes such as DUIs, runaways, disorderly conduct and trespassing. Due to the sheer number of “B” offense reports, only the number of arrests made as a result of those calls are included in the crime report.

Compared to other counties in the state, Shoshone County sports the third-highest “A” offense crime rate per 100,000 in the population with 68.37. This is slightly lower than Adams County (68.82) and Clark County (73.03).

The high crime rate does not suggest that more crimes occur in Shoshone County as compared to more populated counties (i.e. Kootenai and Ada), but it does give a good idea of how much crime goes on for a county its size.

Shoshone County Sheriff Mike Gunderson, who’s agency accounts for the bulk of the total reports and arrests, believes that “the numbers are very clear. We are extremely busy.”

“As a sheriff’s office, we are taking more reports than any other sheriff’s office in the state of Idaho (for our size),” he added.

The statistics support Gunderson’s claim, as offense report numbers from comparable counties/sheriff’s offices (such as Bonner County with a population of 32,135) are lower than the SCSO.

Of the 855 total “A” offenses reported in the county, SCSO Deputies took the lead in 565 them (approximately 66 percent). They also made 326 of the total 461 arrests (approximately 71 percent).

Although SCSO does shoulder most of the calls and arrests in the county, they (and the county as a whole) did report an 18 percent decrease in arrests this year (326) compared to the previous year (398).

Gunderson explains that there could be several explanations for the drop, including limited staffing and user error in reporting arrests.

“We are trying to fight the problem of keeping employees and part of that is burn-out rate,” he said. “These guys are running from the time they check into service to the time until they get home, sometimes even with overtime.”

To combat this long-standing problem at SCSO, Gunderson said that he is working with the county to rework his agency’s pay matrix to boost morale and give deputies more incentive to stick around.

The other explanation he cited was user error, or more specifically, poor communication with the court house.

“The problem was we weren’t talking well enough where (the prosecutor) would move forward and then we didn’t go back into that original report and say ‘prosecution accepted — they’ve been arrested/summonsed.”

For example, if the sheriff’s office refers a criminal case to the county prosecutor’s office and then they (the prosecutor) follow up on it, deputies must then go back into the reporting system and indicate that an arrest was made for it to be reflected in the crime report.

“We’ve rectified that this year and now we’re getting dispositions and everything from the court and prosecutor’s office … so now we’ll be able to report a lot of that,” Gunderson said.

Looking at what specifically is keeping SCSO busy, the top five reported “A” offenses that deputies handled in 2017 were Destruction of Property (61 reports), Drug Equipment Violations (66), Drug/Narcotic Violations (68), Simple Assault (100) and Larceny/Theft Offenses (113). These aforementioned offenses have consistently ranked in the top five over the years for not only SCSO, but other agencies as well.

“I think in any department, if you go and look at the city of Coeur d’Alene or Post Falls, that’s mostly going to be their top five as well,” Gunderson said.

As for what influences many of these top crimes, you need only look to numbers four and five.

“It’s safe to assume that there’s quite a few of them that are (drug related),” Gunderson said. “(For example) we just took down a burglary ring responsible for roughly 15 burglaries that we’ve arrested a couple of young men for. We suspect that narcotics were probably one of the reasons for those crimes. If they are local burglaries, a lot of that stuff is being sold or pawned for cash for drugs.”

Another statistic that can be used as a measuring stick for an agency’s performance is case clearance rate. As defined by the United States Department of Justice, “A law enforcement agency reports that an offense is cleared … when three specific conditions have been met. The three conditions are that at least one person has been: 1. Arrested, 2. Charged with the commissioner of the offense, and 3. Turned over to the court for prosecution.”

Of the 565 “A” offenses that SCSO handled, 272 (or 48.14 percent) were cleared. A clearance rate of (or around) 50 percent is generally considered good or excellent.

Watching over the most populated city in Shoshone County, the Kellogg Police Department is the second largest local law enforcement agency in the area. As such, it makes sense that they would be handling the second-highest number of reports and making the second highest number of arrests.

Police Chief Dave Wuolle said that, aside from some user errors, the crime report is a good general representation of what he sees on the ground.

“Status quo is what we have been dealing with.”

Similar to SCSO, KPD’s statistics show very little change in their call volume compared to the previous year. Showing 169 reported “A” offenses for 2017, this number is a 4.32 percent increase from 2016 (162 reported).

Also similar to SCSO, Kellogg experienced a nearly 20 percent decrease in total arrests (100 in 2016 to 81 in 2017).

Wuolle said that this drop in arrests for his agency could be due to their reporting system and how it tracks the action taken by the officer.

“When your writing a misdemeanor citation, it doesn’t count as an arrest,” he said.

KPD’s top five reported “A” offenses were Drug/Narcotics Violations (14 reports), Burglary/Breaking and Entering (16), Destruction of Property (22), Larceny/Theft Offenses (39) and Simple Assault (39).

Simple assault has been KPD’s top reported offense for several years now. Wuolle contributes this partially to the city having a higher concentration of bars than the rest of the Silver Valley. Essentially, where alcohol flows, tempers are bound to flare up.

In regard to clearance rate, KPD fell from 40 percent in 2016 (65 of 162) to 33 percent in 2017 (56 of 169).

Currently the smallest of the active local law enforcement agencies, the Osburn Police Department, saw fairly positive trends in their statistics.

From 2016 to 2017, they reported a 10 percent increase in reported “A” offenses and a huge 35 percent increase in total arrests. A closer look though reveals that OPD simply went from 70 offenses and 20 arrests in 2016, to 77 offenses and 27 arrests in 2017.

Police Chief Darell Braaten states that the numbers for his department are fairly accurate, but should not be taken exactly as is.

“Based on this report, this is only Group “A”/Group “B” offenses,” he said. “This doesn’t include all the arrests or all the cases that we had, because not everything gets reported (in the system). But as far as the total offenses go, we are right on track with last year.”

A big explanation for the improved numbers was that OPD boasted a full staff (2 officers) throughout 2017 — something that could not be said in 2016.

“For about four months, it was just me,” Braaten said. “When there was only one person, the county took some of those calls and they went to their stats.”

Braaten became chief in mid-2016 after former chief Charles “Spike” Angle retired.

Similar to their neighboring agencies, OPD’s top five “A” offenses were Simple Assault (9 reports), Drug Equipment Violations (9), Drug/Narcotics Violations (10), Larceny/ Theft Offenses (12) and Burglary/Breaking and Entering (12).

“With the drug trends that we are seeing and the amount of thefts that are associated with drug use,” Braaten said, “it (the top five) doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Another strong statistic for OPD was their clearance rate, which jumped from 31.4 percent in 2016 to 46.75 percent in 2017.

“For a two-man agency, I’m very pleased with our clearance rate; not that we can’t do better, and we will,” Braaten said. “There’s no doubt that I would certainly like to see an increase with our (cleared) thefts.”

Before it was absorbed into SCSO, Pinehurst Police Department had a short run in 2017 with Mike Gunderson as its chief (before he became sheriff).

During that brief time, PPD had 44 total reported “A” offenses and accounted for 27 arrests. Due to staffing issues in 2016 and its eventual merge in early 2017, a fair year-to-year comparison for PPD was not possible.

Although SCSO, KPD and OPD are Shoshone County’s main law enforcement agencies, Idaho State Police also plays a role locally by patrolling Interstate 90. According to ISP District 1 statistics, Troopers made 18 DUI arrests, five felony drug arrests and 29 misdemeanor drug arrests in the Silver Valley throughout 2017.

To see the full 2017 “Crime in Idaho” report, visit www.nibrs.isp.idaho.gov/CrimeInIdaho.