Crime down in Scotts Valley

Scotts Valley’s new police chief, Steve Walpole, last week released the annual “Police Department Activity Report,” also known as the annual crime report, for 2016, and it was all good news.
“Scotts Valley continues to remain a safe city with relatively low crime,” he wrote in the report’s cover letter.
At the same time, Walpole was mindful of the fact that his department remains understaffed.
“The department remained busy as staffing shortages meant we needed to do more with less,” he said.
He reported that three new officers are in the pipeline, and he hopes his staff to be near full capacity, at 20 sworn officers, by this time next year.
Walpole, who is following in his father’s footsteps as chief, credits strong community support and his dedicated staff with continuing to improve public safety in the city of 12.000.
The most serious reported crimes, called “Part I Crimes” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which requires the uniform crime reports of all police agencies, are the crimes against people — homicide, rape, robbery, and assault — and the crimes against property — burglary, larceny (which includes minor crimes like shoplifting), auto theft and arson.
The 2016 Scotts Valley report showed a steep drop in personal crimes from 96 to 65. The vast majority of these are assaults.
In 2016, the reports of property crimes also dropped, from 309 to 258, the lowest number in at least six years.
While burglaries were at the second-highest total in those same six, at 85 compared to 91 in 2015, the numbers of larcenies dropped significantly, to 161, from 205 in 2015.
Scotts Valley was safer on city streets as well, with the lowest number of injury accidents, 16, in years. The total number of injury accidents, and the total number of non-injury accidents, 109, were nearly half the totals of 2011.
The annual report not only lists reported crimes and accidents, but also arrests.
In that statistic, even with fewer officers, Scotts Valley officers made nearly as many arrests in 2016 as they did in 2015, 550.
The small department kept busy, initiating more than 11,000 police actions, responding to nearly 6,400 calls for service and writing more than 1,000 citations.
Also in 2016, citizens of Scotts Valley were more respectful of each other, and more respectful of their neighbor’s property and public property.
Reported domestic violcnce dropped to its lowest level in at least six years, with 24 reported cases, a big drop from the 33 reported in 2015 , and nearly half the number reported in 2013.
Reports of graffiti and other vandalism also dropped substantially, to 103 cases in 2016, compared to 138 in 2015, from the high of 150 in 2013.
Drug use continues to be a problem in the city, with only a slight drop, from 134 cases to 123 in 2016. In 2013 and 2014, police investigated 73 and 70 drug cases.