Crime analysis for December: Total calls, reports of robbery, sex crimes down

Lawrence Police Department

The number of calls received by the Lawrence Police Department in December has hit a three-month low.

Each morning, the Journal-World receives a list of the Lawrence Police Department’s activities over the previous 24 hours. At the end of the month, those logs are compiled and compared.

The logs don’t list every single call LPD has received in a given day, but they’re a good starting point. In addition, each incident listed offers only a short description of the call, which may change as investigations continue. Calls do not necessarily result in citations or arrests.

For the month of December, LPD’s officers responded to 6,056 individual calls, down from 6,518 in November and 7,110 in October.

Put another way, calls have decreased by about 15 percent in the last quarter. On average, officers responded to 195 individual calls each day in December compared with 217 in November and 229 in October.

The top five most common calls remain the same, though their order is subject to a bit of fluctuation. They are as follows:

• Traffic stops — 1,366 calls, approximately 23 percent of the total, averaging 44 per day. This number is an increase from November and October, which saw an average of 41 and 42 stops per day, respectively.

• Request to speak with officers — 707 calls, approximately 12 percent of the total, averaging 23 per day. This number is a decrease from November and October, which saw an average of 30 and 31 requests per day, respectively.

• Auto accidents — 312 calls, approximately 5 percent of the total, averaging 10 each day. This number remained constant when compared with November and is a decrease from October, which saw 10 and 11 accidents, respectively.

• Animal-related calls — 302 calls, approximately 5 percent of the total, averaging 10 each day. This number is a decrease from November and October, when the department responded to 11 and 12 animal-related calls each day, respectively.

• Parking violations — 275 calls, approximately 5 percent of the total, averaging nine each day. This is fairly constant compared with November and October, which averaged nine and 10 violations a day, respectively.

For the past two months the single incident requiring the highest number of officers to respond has stood alone. In December, however, there was a three-way tie with 15 officers responding to each incident. Only one of those was reported in the Journal-World as a crime, however.

On Dec. 1, 15 officers responded to an apartment at 2511 W. 31st St. for a reported armed robbery. Christopher Hinson, 19, of Leavenworth, was arrested nearly two weeks later.

Hinson is accused of robbing four people inside the apartment of money, phones and other electronics, according to a criminal complaint filed in Douglas County District Court. He faces four felony counts of aggravated robbery and one felony count of aggravated burglary.

Hinson is currently being held in the Douglas County Jail in lieu of a $35,000 bond. He is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 24, when a judge will determine if enough evidence exists for him to stand trial.

The other two incidents requiring 15 officers were Lawrence’s Old-Fashioned Christmas Parade on Dec. 3 and a suicide threat on Dec. 14.

A few other notes from December:

• Another incident that required a heavy police presence was a Dec. 2 fatal crash on West Ninth Street.

Just before 9:30 p.m., 58-year-old Bruce Coburn, of Lawrence, was hit and killed by a car as he was walking south across West Ninth Street near the intersection of Illinois Street.

A Lawrence Police Department accident report indicated Coburn may have crossed the street improperly and that his dark clothing may have made him difficult to see.

The car’s driver, Paul Adams, of Lawrence, was neither arrested nor cited at the scene. On Dec. 19, Lawrence Police Spokeswoman Kim Murphree said the accident report remained under review.

As of Friday morning, no charges had been filed against Adams in Douglas County District Court.

• Just two robberies were reported in December, a decrease from the seven reported in both November and October. The first robbery reported involved Hinson, and Murphree said the second report was not a robbery at all, but rather a battery.

• For the entire month of December, Lawrence police officers responded to 10 sex-crime calls, a sharp decrease from the 22 calls the department received in November.

Last month Lawrence Police Sgt. Amy Rhoads reiterated that not every sex-crime report equals a crime. Sometimes investigators find sex-crime reports to be unfounded or to have taken place outside of the department’s jurisdiction.

At least one of December’s 10 sex-crime reports was discovered to be unfounded, Rhoads said.

Of the remaining nine, two men were arrested for separate incidents, though only one of those arrests resulted in a sex-crime charge.

On Dec. 25, Mark Meyer, 56, was arrested at the Lawrence Community Shelter after he was accused of sexually touching two people and battering a third. He faces two misdemeanor charges of sexual battery and a single misdemeanor charge of battery.

As of Friday morning, no other arrests listed in the Douglas County Jail booking logs bore an incident number matching any of the reported sex crimes.

• As fall turned to winter, the number of reported indecent exposures fell. Both November and October each saw seven reports of indecent exposure while December saw only four.