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Friday, March 29, 2024

Wrightsville Beach police report four-year trend of lower crime stats

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Wrightsville Beach Police Chief Daniel House reported falling crime statistics again on Thursday, Jan. 21 in his quarterly Chat with the Chief presentation, with statistics showing lower crime numbers for both the final quarter and for 2015.

The “part one” crimes that include burglary and larceny were down 31 percent from October through December in 2015, compared with the same period in 2014. Reports for “part two” crimes that include charges like assault, fraud, vandalism and driving while intoxicated were down nearly 50 percent in 2015 as compared with 2014 reports, House told the crowd of about a dozen at the Wrightsville Beach town chambers.

There were only 24 part one crimes in 2015’s final quarter, compared with 35 for the same period in 2014. For part two crimes, the reports dropped to 37 in the 2015 final quarter, compared to 74 in 2014.

House also shared statistics covering the past four years. In 2015, part one crimes dropped nearly 40 percent from 2012, down to 188 reports, from 302 four years ago. Part two crimes also dropped nearly 30 percent from 2012, with reports down to 469 in 2015, down from 685 reports four years ago.

It is the third consecutive Chat with the Chief where House has reported lower crime statistics, which covers a period during the summer months where the department was down at least nine officers.

But after a period of hiring, House said the town’s police force is nearly fully staffed again, with only two of 25 positions being unfilled. Those two positions — detective and captain — aren’t likely to be filled until closer to the summer season, House said.

“They’re not critical until April,” House said.

In the meantime, the force will be able to focus on more preventative policing.

“We’re finally back to where we can be proactive,” House said.

The Wrightsville Beach Police Department will soon have more tools to help with its outreach efforts. The police department’s new mobile app is set to be launched in April, House said. The app is part of a network that includes apps servicing Wrightsville Beach and downtown Wilmington.

Police will be able to send out alerts to anyone on the network, even if they haven’t downloaded the police app itself, but have instead installed one of the other related apps on their device. And because the app can “geofence” notifications to a limited area, he said it could be helpful for some common summertime policing issues, like missing children.

“Normally we have four or five officers or lifeguards looking and they’re found within a few minutes,” House said. “But if the child is missing for more than 15 minutes, we could consider sending out a targeted alert for the reported area.”

Another technology tool to help local police will be the “text a tip” technology, which House said the Wrightsville Beach Police Department would be ready to launch soon. It would let people report a message to police through text messaging, similar to what the Wilmington Police Department offers.

The police will have other Internet features that will be coming online soon, House said, including a Facebook page to offer the department other options in providing updates. Additionally, with the launch of a new town website, the police department page will feature an updated history of the force.

“We had the help of several former chiefs to put this together,” House said of the content on the department’s history, which he said would be uploaded soon.

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