Portsmouth ranks number one in the State of Ohio for murders and aggravated assaults. These shocking numbers come from a report the Portsmouth Police Chief Debby Brewer’s office sent in response to a request from Portsmouth City Council and City Manager Sam Sutherland. Council members have been discussing the staffing levels for the police and fire departments.
The shocking crime numbers come from FBI stats ranking cities in the state with populations between 17,000 and 22,000. Portsmouth tops the charts for murder but also ranks #2 for violent crimes, robberies, and burglaries and #3 for rape and property crimes.
When compared to all cities in Ohio, regardless of population, Portsmouth is the 8th most dangerous city to live in. A quick look at the daily police reports easily confirms these statistics.
Brewer said these stats are important when determining the levels of police staffing. While many formulas use population as a guide, Brewer stresses that it’s more important to look at the level of crime.
According to the report, the average ratio of full-time officers to 1,000 residents in Ohio is 2.5. Portsmouth Police staffing is currently below that level.
Technology Takes Longer
While some members of the council had expressed hope that new technology would decrease the need for officers, Portsmouth Police Captain Jason Hedrick, said that in some cases technology actually makes more work for officers, taking them longer to complete investigations. “Systems we are using today, those same basic reports take double the time.
If there is an arrest and evidence that is being impounded, it can take a couple of hours to do the incident report, attach the parties into the report, log and import all the evidence into the report, attach all photographs into the system, download and burn all of the photographs and video for municipal court and common pleas court.
Once everything is loaded into our records management system it then has to be transferred and uploaded into the municipal court’s system or “matrix” which is the system for common pleas court. These systems are fantastic in being able to locate and keep track of investigations, but they are much more time-consuming. The increased technology actually takes our officers off the street longer to complete their cases.”
22,000 Calls a Year
Portsmouth officers are on track to respond to 22,573 calls this year with 1,452 bookings. They’ll also issue 1,200 traffic citations, respond to 600 crashes, and file over 1,900 criminal charges.
The report also points out that Portsmouth officers take part in special projects. Two detectives are assigned to the Drug Task Force and two investigators were assigned full-time to a public corruption task force investigating disgraced attorney Michael Mearan.
According to the report, “These two investigators, from Portsmouth Police, are the sole reason there were charges brought against Michael Mearan.”
“Had Portsmouth Police not assigned these two investigators to the Mearan case, there would not have been an investigation and charges would have never been brought.”