Home Brentwood Brentwood Police Chief to Report Overall Crime is Down 6.3%

Brentwood Police Chief to Report Overall Crime is Down 6.3%

by ECT

The Brentwood City Council will receive a report from the Brentwood Police Chief on Tuesday which will highlight that crime is down 6.3%.

According to the police Department, between 2012 and 2013, violent crime decreased by 145 incidents, or 22.8%. Brentwood, however, did experience an increase in rape and aggravated assault, but experienced a decrease in robbery, arson, and simple assault. Unlike aggravated assault, simple assault is a misdemeanor where the assault does not include the use of a weapon or the infliction of great bodily injury.

Meanwhile, overall property crime increased by 29 incidents, or 2.4% between 2012 and 2013. The increase is due to the increases in non-residential burglary, theft, and auto theft. Residential burglary remained relatively unchanged.

Brentwood Police staff is still not at full staff with the city budgeted for 66 sworn-staffing and currently have just 49-sworn. The police department currently has 3 sworn vacancies and 4 open over-hire positions, giving the Department a total of 7 sworn positions to fill.

If you go:
Brentwood City Council Meeting
April 22 at 7:00 pm
Brentwood City Council Chambers
150 City Park Way, Brentwood

Here is a portion of the information directly out of the Staff Report – click all graphics to enlarge!

RESPONSE TIMES

Response times are an important performance category of police service. Response times vary greatly depending on the size of the City and department, geographical location and level sof crime. Smaller cities usually have faster response times, due simply to the geography. Calls for service are prioritized into two general categories.

  •  Priority 1 calls involve an immediate threat to life or crimes that are in progress.
  • Priority 2 calls are high priority but do not elevate to the level of an emergency.

Brentwood Average Response Times Listed in Minutes and Seconds 2009 – 2013

 Brentwood PD Response Times 2013

INCIDENTS OF CRIME AND CRIME RATE

Crimes including murder, rape, robbery, arson, assault, burglary, theft and auto theft are categorized as Part 1 crimes, which are the statistics that are tracked by both the FBI and by local jurisdictions. For clarification purposes, robbery is taking property from a person by force or the threat of force. Theft is taking property of another without their permission. Aggravated assault is an assault with a deadly weapon, or an assault likely to cause great bodily injury. Aggravated assault is a felony. Simple assault is an unlawful use of force on another that doesn’t amount to aggravated assault. Simple assault is a misdemeanor. When examining levels of crime in a jurisdiction, both incidents of crime and crime rate must be considered. Incidents of crime are the total number of Part 1 crimes that occurred in a calendar year. Crime rate is the measurement of crime incidents per 1,000 population.

Violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery, arson and aggravated assault, and simple assault. Property crime includes burglary, theft and auto theft.

Brentwood PD Part 1 Crime 2013

City of Brentwood – Part 1 Crimes per 1,000 Population (2004 – 2013)

Brentwood Part 1 Crime Per 1000 Populations

Sworn Staffing
The following information provides an overview of the current sworn staffing levels within the police department.

Brentwood PD Staffing

The police department currently has 3 sworn vacancies and 4 open over-hire positions, giving us a total of 7 sworn positions to fill.

There are 4 sworn officers out on long-term disability leave. Two of them will more than likely retire within the next 60 to 90 days. We expect one to return to full duty by June. We have 1 lateral hire in the Field Training Program, and he should finish his field training in June. We have 3 police recruits who just graduated from the academy and have started their field training. We expect them to finish their field training by September. We just hired 2 police recruits who will begin the academy in April. We plan to have another 5 police officer recruits hired and in the academy by May. These officers should be done with their field training by February 2015.

The police department continues to be aggressive in our recruiting and hiring process while maintain high standards for those we hire. We have more police officer interviews scheduled for April and May.

SUMMARY

As a reminder, the Brentwood Police Department monitors and reacts to ongoing changes in crime numbers throughout the year. This is in accordance with Council’s direction to provide timely responses to crime trends and patterns.

Response Times

In 2013, we experienced a 1 second increase to Priority 1 calls, and an 11 second increase in Priority 2 calls. From a national perspective, Priority 1 response times under 6 minutes are considered good. Our goal is to continue to provide the citizens of Brentwood with a rapid response when they call for police assistance. Our current average response time to Priority 1 calls of 4 minutes and 51 seconds indicates that we are doing very well in this category.

Incidents of Crime and Crime Rates

Our violent crime rate decreased by 145 incidents, or 22.8%. We had no homicides in 2013. We experienced an increase in rapes and aggravated assaults, but we saw drops in robbery, arson, and simple assaults.

Our property crime rate increased by 29 incidents, or 2.4%. Residential burglaries remained relatively unchanged, but we experienced an increase in non-residential burglaries, thefts, and auto thefts. Our overall Part 1 crime rate was down by 116 incidents, or 6.3%.

Workload

Our reactive workload decreased by 0.7% in 2013. Though our calls for service increased by

538 events, we experienced decreases in all other categories. Overall, our reactive workload remained relatively unchanged in 2013. Our proactive workload decreased by 12.4%. We experienced decreases in arrests, citations, and officer initiated stops. Part of the reason for the lower proactive workload numbers can be attributed to the lowing sworn staffing levels we experienced in 2013.

Clearance Rates

Our clearance rates improved in 2013. Though we still need to improve our clearance rates in some categories, we did experience better clearance rates for rape, robbery, arson, and burglary. When compared to the national average, we are still below the average in the categories of burglary and theft. It is difficult to determine what causes the fluctuation in our clearance rates. Our Patrol Officers and Investigations Unit have done, and continue to do, an excellent job investigating their cases.

Current Trends

At the beginning of 2013, we experienced a spike in residential burglaries. Our Investigations Unit worked diligently and tirelessly to identify and arrest those responsible. In addition, we worked closely with our Neighborhood Watch groups to notify residents about good crime prevention strategies, and we used our crime analysis software to deploy patrol officers in the neighborhoods most affected by the burglaries. Fortunately, we saw the trend subside over the summer. There are no other crime trends to report at this time.

Conclusion

In light of the shortages in sworn staffing over the past year, our existing sworn and civilian staff has done a stellar job dealing with those shortages and taking on additional workload. Overall, it is my opinion that the men and women of the Brentwood Police Department continue to provide outstanding police services to the citizens of Brentwood, and we are maintaining a high level of service to our community.

Though the crime rates are trending in a positive direction, any amount of crime is unacceptable. Our department can improve in all areas, and we will continue to work hard to aggressively fight crime and ensure Brentwood remains one of the safest cities in the state.

The full report can be viewed online:
http://www.ci.brentwood.ca.us/citycouncil/ePacket/ccap2014/ccep20140422.pdf

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3 comments

Tara Apr 21, 2014 - 8:48 am

No offense to Brentwood Police, but are they fudging their numbers? Seems like crime is going way up lately.

Kim M Apr 21, 2014 - 8:53 am

There is no reason why Brentwood PD should not be at full staffing. Hire officers ASAP! There is way to much crime in Brentwood.

Chris Johnston Apr 22, 2014 - 12:41 pm

To Brentwood residents: Disregard the report – your city is no longer Mayberry. Brentwood borders one of the biggest arm-pit cities in Contra Costa County, and those fine residents are poaching in and wreaking havoc by committing residential burglaries when you leave for work, as well as other crimes.

Anyone recall the press release just last week in regard to a group of young males driving around robbing victims of cell phones and personal property? Where the heck do you think the suspects came from? If you don’t wake up and rattle the cages of your city leaders to bolster the police department, you’re going to turn into another Antioch.

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