Last night, Cpt. Todd Baer, new PBSO commander for District 14, gave his first quarterly report. I say it was one of the better reports given to the Commission on the state of crime within our city. He still doesn't want to scare people half to death but I got the feeling that he was being direct and not soft-soaping the problems. This time, instead of PBSO reporting on the four positives where stats went down, we heard about the chronic crimes and what to watch for in our city and around our neighborhoods and to Make the Call.
Crime trends were discussed and he said that crime was up 5% for the first six months of this year with four main and chronic problems:
Prostitution--arrests are up 148.1%
Robberies--133 from January through August
Bicycle theft--144 bikes stolen this year. Of that, 67 were locked and all but 10 of the locks were cut off. 77 bicycles were unlocked. Cpt. Baer said to buy a heavy duty lock. As of July, 43 bicycles have been stolen, 3 arrests and 5 suspects.
Other areas of policing:
Traffic stops--179
Citations--78
Warnings--107
Warrant arrests--40
Misdemeanor arrests--90
Felony arrests--23
City ordinance arrests--64
At the moment, there is a surge in Dodge vehicles being stolen. Scooters have been targeted as well.
Lake Worth has a lot of crime and he is making changes within his department. Manpower re-allocation is one of them. He mentioned that Cpt. Silva is prosecuting three different types of cases, one of which is prostitution, so he might be prosecuting someone arrested in Lake Worth. He did say that crime stats are better since the PBSO took over in 2007.
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