e welcome to another edition of the richmond police beat it's now mid december and we're basta production the end of the calendar year and from our records this is been the busiest year the richmond police department has ever had right now we're over thirteen hundred cases that we've taken out we take a case number anything out that the officers has to have to go out and handle and i think the most we ever had was just over twelve hundred was last year and this year we're about somewhere around thirteen hundred twenty in two weeks they'll go to go up in a year and one of the big things we've had recently is and i've stressed this before we've had about twenty five vehicles  between december third second december third and over night not one of these vehicles was locked in here again people who left inside their cars they hit esplanade street bridge three church street tilden avenue places like that where road street in some cases prescription medicine was taken small electronics were taken a wallet was taken  a lot of changes taking people off their change one car at about twenty five dollars worth and i've stressed this before but one of the things you got to do if you don't want to lock your car don't make it an easy target these are crimes of opportunity i guess that we've had about twenty five of them and then just last week they had close to twenty of them down and i think that we're sure it's the same crew it's the same m o you know hidden unlocked cars go into one area and just saturate that area going through cars that are locked and taking property out that you know they like trying to answer is really sold it at different places throughout the county and in some cases outside the county you know your your g receivers your i phones i pads i pods and things like that are and cell phones are readily easy to get or really easy to get rid of most people don't have the serial numbers form so even if you know there's these key asked in the university mom or you can just take your phone or i pad or something like that plug it in they tell you how much they'll give you for put it in the dropbox and then they spit you out some cash  there's two of those in south burlington and and one in burlington and it's been such a problem at southpoint the police department as assigned a detective to it full time they get a report that weekly i know everything sold through that and the machine actually takes a photo of the person that's on the problem as if we don't have a serial number one black i pod or i phone looks just like somebody else's black i pod or i phone there's no way for us to track  it so take here again take the stuff out of your vehicles if you're not going to lock it know we've been plainview if you get a sedan put it in the trunk and they're not breaking into anything they're just simply going from car to car that's unlocked and removing things now there's been a lot of talk in town about burglaries we've actually in basically the last six weeks we've had one reported burglaries a home burglary down the road  with the help of the grandson i believe it was of the homeowner officer in the movie the rest of that person and there were rumors going around that we let him go well that's not true and what happened is arraigned and the judge released among conditions so we did our part no we did not let him go we've tied him into that one burglary but today as a matter of fact officer limos will be going to a meeting in heinsberg p d and several other agencies virgin's p d that based on the photographs that officer linda most took we think we've tied him into dozens of burglaries in and around the area covering three counties it's this particular person has a a long history of criminal acts and right now after when it was working on a search warrant to get  phone which we believe contains a lot of information and pictures of stolen property once we get that search warrant granted in the next couple days and the phone is shipped off to the department of public safety lab their computer people and it may take two or three weeks to break down any passwords and pass codes that are in it to get the information out of that phone and we're hoping that the information that's within that phone will tie him into many other burglaries along with his accomplice because we're ninety nine point nine percent sure that he was being driven around dropped off unusual m o knock on a door nobody answers go around back of the house is locked kick the door if it's not locked they just go into it and they're only in their few minutes just guy was caught with the stall the victim's pillowcase until that would items that he was removing when he was caught here again another thing that we've had several leads on to be it all that's been seen but nobody's been able that matches the description that we think he was using but nobody's been able to get us a plate number plate numbers are very important just jotted down if you think you've seen something especially we're looking for a silver car were black top could be a black convertible he sees car like that or saw a car like that hanging around and you did write the plate number down get us the information you can call me here because i asked for officer linda  move we are investigating another burger it happened a couple months ago or jewelry was stolen and some other items we think this thing that one and one earlier were some guns were stolen are all tied into this one guy but knowing it and getting probable cause to charge him with it is two different things right now was he's been charged with the one burglary and after today's meeting we're hoping with the information we gather that he'll be charged would many many more and if we get the search warrant granted by the judge and get the information we think is on the phone we should hopefully clear out some other ones it's now winter time people still don't come out of fact this morning i just stopped a car for doing sixty a result of people not slowing down they're going too fast for the conditions you know just because a speed limit is posted doesn't mean you can do it you know those are the maximum speed for that particular road but the law states that you need to operate  speed that is reasonable improve that's what it says for the conditions that exist or could exist the person jogging in the road to bicyclists in the road snow cover on the road and it's not safe to do forty or fifty miles an hour wherever it is posted for them it happens to be have to slow down and and operate that because every one of these actions takes you off there's a couple of hours generally just between doing the investigation and then writing the report because we have to write a report pages long that we fill in and then the narrative that's done with it and then they're all submitted to agency of transportation where they put them in a master computer and every accident that happens whether it's what they call reportable nine report is entered in that system the difference between that is a report of laxatives anything that there's three thousand dollars damage or more and that's not that's what it would cost to fix the vehicle or vehicles or  guardrails or signs or whatever else gets taken down that's not because you had a five hundred dollar car we have to base it on what it would cost to fix a car to put it back on the road or truck or whatever happens to be so anything that's three thousand dollars or more or there's injury that requires more than basic first aid or death reportable accidents which means the operators involved in those also have to fill out a report to go to the department of motor vehicles along with our report anything that is less than three thousand dollars we still do x to report what it's called and nine reportable and therefore the difference is the operator operators involved do not have to fill out a report it goes in department of motor vehicles normally if it goes to department motor vehicles we're going to tell you that our form has a little box that we circle reportable or non reportable so if we circle that report will d m v will be looking for an ac report from the operator operators and if you don't get a hundred something dollar ticket from the department motor vehicles for now filing it and they're really interested in your insurance information spend busy we've had a lot of cases we've had one hundred eighty nine cases we've handled total the last time we talked the traffic works actually been down we've only written eighty one tickets and eighty nine warnings in that time period  you know that's to be expected when the weather gets bad a lot of people do heed the warnings and slow down with that twelve arrests during that period one thousand charges the difference is we might arrest somebody for instance one of the arrest drugs you have to submit to a breath test if you refuse the breath test or blood test that these drugs you're also charged with refusal and they do a civil suspension the officers do a civil suspension form for alcohol related ones and then within usually eleven days your license is going to be suspended unless you can test it in front of the judge one of the things that will be working on here shortly for for the time report is i'm going to highlight some of the cases this year i do an annual report every year you'll see that in a town report i try to break down you know who the officers are what their you know how long they've been here some of the cases that we've had one of the things i do for the slot board every two weeks i think i basically give us an ops this is what the police department does it goes to the town manager and then a copy goes to the flight board member tell them brought what the charges were for how many written warnings we've done i don't break down the written warnings it's just it would be too tedious for me to try to do that because of what i have to do is get in the computer system and every two weeks and go through every case is to see what's going on takes me three to four hours to do that every two weeks just to so i don't break down the warnings i don't you know if we write parking tickets which reminder right now that they went to parking banned is in effect saturday one of my officers and i'm sure the guy was hunting but not only did he leave it in the roadways truck he left it on a blind curve there so if you're going to park someplace make sure it's in a private parking lot or off the off the public highway and not on the sidewalks were also get a lot of calls t richmond park there right now technically the richmond park or ride is owned by the state or my agency you transportation but every time we have a snowstorm if you look at that parking lot way over in the far corner next those are all designated where parking bans and they actually tell you can that park there from such such a date though i think it's march thirty first and we try not to move things but occasionally like the weather like we just got they can get the plow through there they call us the most what happens we call the local auto trucks and we have the vehicle removed so the plows can get through there is no different than when somebody leaves their always have a problem here on church street and we usually always have a problem over and told and and baker were you know we get called and vehicles get ticketed towed and sometimes they call me to complain but there's not a whole lot we can't clear streets we've got to be able to clear streets for the response vehicles mostly you know the ambulances and the fire trucks because they're big and they have a hard time going over it to get around some of this stuff when you have big snow piles that are still on the mill road or blocking part of the road but we're hope in that after today the next time we talk that i'll be able to give you good news in that this this mail he's not a kid  will be charged for multiple more burglary charges and more kind of hope and that it will solve the two other ones that we've had in town in the last eight nine ten meeting day packet and and hopefully all is well i know one thing i did ask for this year would dislike board in trying to keep the budget down and stand it i asked to replace two or cruisers one we would hold utility all wheel drive sometime after town meeting dave but then if the people vote the budget through and outside of that our budgets pretty flat for what we request we did put in additional money requests for the video cameras for the cruisers right now three of the cameras in the cruisers are about ten years old and they're not working properly they're not designed to last that long or electronics you remember you keep something that in a car twenty four hours a day between hot and cold and they just go bad and the other thing we're going to look for is and we're trying to get some grant money i'm a firm believer in  but it's not that is yours and the thing is they're much bigger than this we will not be going through the ones that you're wearing glasses are attached to your ear the biggest reason is even though clarity sometimes on those is better except for when the officers turn their head a lot this is the weakest part of your skull where they ride and the doctors have said it's not a good place to have it because if somebody hits it they don't have to hit hard push that temple bone and they can kill you like that so we're the ones i'll be looking for are the ones that are usually attached down here on the bat someplace there's drawbacks to both kinds if your hands are out sometimes they block if you will but hopefully would between the cruiser cameras which don't move so if the camera's not pointing at whatever the incident is it's only going to pick up audio and  this for law enforcement to to where video cameras and i don't disagree with it but we'll come up would have to write some rules and regs and and basically i think the biggest thing is when we enter a property home or something for whatever reason we'll tell you that it's going to be recorded world record everything you know we might have to edit some of it after for instance because some of the scenes we go to the stuff in there that's not appropriate for the public to see especially with crime victims and we'll have to work out but hopefully by this time next year or sooner we'll get the grant and then we'll get the video cameras supposedly congress us congress is pushing to at least have the federal government fund fifty percent of it haven't seen the final bill or the actual bill at all but we'll see how that goes and then working with some of the other grants i write that we get each year for equipment hopefully that will be in there i bought some last year but they were real cheap because we didn't have a lot of money and they're basically throwaways and they don't work well in the dark because they're so cheap can't really see anything but the only thing you get out of them is audio and they just don't last long they only got about an hour on it and you get to erase the memory or download it and start recording over and so it was something we tried it's a good idea or it's just not doing what we want to do i hope everybody has a pleasant how day coming up don't forget we just started another governor's highway safety program that runs through the new year's eve were required to do so many hours to to get well this one if we do the hours we'll  get fifteen hundred hours in grant money toward equipment for next year we do the four programs which we do every year between christmas and thanksgiving and labor day and those type of things where we get up to five thousand dollars and requires us to do so many hours of active patrol looking for duis or speed enforcement or whatever it is and that and it will do that because of the weather this week really i think we've got a total of four and a half hours in the thirty some odd hours we need to do by january this is an answer patrol and mop the work a little harder now between now and new years eve to make sure we get our required hours and we have a look at that fifteen hundred dollars grand so if you're going to drink don't drive your designated driver call a cab call a friend don't get behind  wheel because we will be out there we have to do you i grants overtime grants where the guys have been working overtime after scheduled ships or sometimes in between or scheduled shifts looking for drunk drivers they've actually i think it's working we've probably hit an all time high this year in this department for the number of dio i arrest i know officer lance martell has broken the individual record for an officer in this town for dui arrest i think he's up there around twenty five which is which is a lot because it's a lot of paperwork you're talking anywhere from two and a half to in one case it was about seven hours when it was  drugs to process and and get a blood test to do all that good stuff to get the results so there again enjoy your holidays and we'll see you probably in about six weeks