Aberdeen Police Department issues 2022 year-end report; number of calls reach record level
The Aberdeen Police Department year-end report for 2022 showed that the city saw a record number of calls for service, but the department saw far more cases cleared.
At their recent City Council meeting, Aberdeen Police Chief Dale Green shared that they recently finalized their 2022 report, placing it in comparison with the 2022 report from the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs (WASPC).
The report looked at the calls, arrests, and other data from the local police department.
According to the report, there were 34,941 calls for service, which Green said was a record breaking year, although looking at the prior 5-year period, the calls for service and offenses logged are all fairly consistent with calls within a few thousand of each other and offenses in the low hundreds of difference.
The report shows that in 2022, Aberdeen Police Officers saw an increase of calls by 6.4%, although reportable crimes decreased from 18% to 17% of all calls for service. While the total percentage dropped, Green notes that there was an increase of 5% of reported offenses from 2021.
Green noted that the department had been seeing an increase in the calls, although 2021 appears to be an outlier.
The report also states that Aberdeen saw increases occurring for specific crime categories, and the WASPC data showed similar growth statewide.
While statewide crime saw an overall increase of 8.% for the year, Aberdeen saw a 5% increase of reported offenses.
Statewide, according to WASPC, murders were up 16.6%, to an all-time high of 394, although there were no murders within Aberdeen for the year.
Vehicle theft calls statewide went up 34.1% for 2022, while Aberdeen saw only a minor increase between 2021 and 2022.
In other specific call statistics, APD responded to 17 reported robberies in the year, up from 12 in 2021.
While residential burglaries locally dropped drastically, with 19 for 2022 and 47 in 2021, commercial burglaries saw a 52% increase from 84 to 128. Many of these were noted as related to the theft of copper.
Overall, there was an increase in theft between the years, from 453 cases in 2021 to 512 in 2022.
While some areas saw increases, Chief Green said that forcible and non-forcible sex offense crimes reported decreased by 12%, down to 41 in 2022 and counterfeits and forgeries cases dropped 60%, to 9 from 23.
Green noted that APD was ranked #1 in the state for clearing cases among all cities greater than 10,000 people, clearing 2.6 times as many cases as the rest of the state.
Despite the statistics showing clearance rates, Green notes that APD suffers from staffing issues like much of the state. With 9 retirements and officers in training, the department is at 32 officers in service while they are budgeted for 38.
Green noted that Washington is ranked 51st in the nation for law enforcement staffing, the 13th straight year of being last in the nation.
The report goes into other parts of the department, including use-of-force, parking violations, animal control, and general operations.