Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

LaGrange Police Chief Garrett Fiveash gave his annual State of the Police Department presentation to the City Council during their work session on Tuesday morning.

Fiveash started by saying that their staffing levels are improving, thanks in part to the raises recently provided by the council, but they are still short-staffed. LPD currently has 88 of 104 available positions filled.

LPD is still short but it’s much better than it was before when they were down to around 70 officers, Fiveash said. He added that three potential new officers are currently in the academy.

For traffic control, Fiveash noted that the increased presence on the street has helped reduce crime and vehicle crashes.

Traffic citations are up 54%, which he noted many residents won’t like, but total crashes are down 20%. Crashes with injuries are down 5% and fatal crashes are down 67%.

“The officers are doing a great job out there being visible. I tell them all the time if you see a violation, give them a ticket or a warning,” Fiveash said. “It doesn’t make a difference to me. It’s not a numbers game. It’s about affecting behavior and making things safer.”

DUI arrests are also up 32%, said Fiveash, noting the department recently did a refresher on field sobriety testing.

Calls for service were also up about 17%. As of the end of June, the department had about 33,500 calls for service.

On the crime side, things are improving, Fiveash said.

“Our homicides are down 86%. At this time last year we had six homicides,” Fiveash said. “Still, one is 12 too many, but we’ve only had one so far this year.”

“We think that’s owed to the visibility and working with some of our community partners, getting out in public and meeting people and establishing contacts,” Fiveash said.

Robberies are also down 36%, he added.

Fiveash said it’s not all good. A change in the way the FBI wants crime statistics reported, makes some of the city and the department’s numbers look astronomical.

He said aggravated assaults are up 143%, but that’s only because of the way the FBI requires it to be reported. He said one incident where an individual fired a gun into a home with six people inside now counts as six aggravated assaults. Making matters worse, it affects their closure rates too.

“If we catch that person, we only get one solve, so we get six crimes and only one solve,” Fiveash said.

Fiveash believes many communities aren’t reporting their numbers according to the new standard, which makes them look better and LaGrange looks worse.

“I pulled 10 different communities that have virtually the same populations with virtually the same number of police officers and our statistics are well above what theirs are. One of the communities I’ve lived in and I know better,” Fiveash said.

“We’re reporting crimes and the way the FBI says we should be but that skews the statistics when we look at aggravated assaults and they’re up 143% when in actuality we only had 42 aggravated assaults this entire year,” Fiveash said. “All of those are not guns. Those included fists and other weapons where the crimes occurred.”