The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page has been just a wealth of information since the department’s new spokeswoman Sgt. Kristen Dymacek took over.

I had always heard about law enforcement officers needing to make certain traffic ticket quotas in a month, but the sheriff’s office cleared that up in a recent sheriff’s office Facebook post.

While other municipalities’ officers might have quotas — or maybe it’s an just an urban myth — the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office does not, according to the post. Lawrence police officer Rob Neff told me at the citizens’ Fair & Impartial Policing event a few weeks back that the same was true for the Lawrence Police Department.

The sheriff’s office post says that tickets, at least for sheriff’s deputies, are “written at the discretion of the deputies and often depend on the nature of the traffic infraction. The fees on those traffic tickets vary, as well; the fines depend on the violation at hand.

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Now for some blotter items:

Monday, 2:55 a.m.

A Lawrence police officer in the Wal-Mart parking lot at 3300 Iowa St. noticed one of the fire emergency doors near the pharmacy was open. When the officer looked a little closer, the officer saw a man flee to a waiting vehicle in the lot, Lawrence police spokesman Sgt. Trent McKinley said.

The officer flipped on his emergency lights and the car stopped, but the man jumped out and allegedly tried to run away on foot. The suspect ran north, but then re-entered the store.

The officer followed after the man as he ran through Wal-Mart. The suspect eventually surrendered, and the officer handcuffed him and put him in a police car.

When examined, the man was allegedly found to have three prepaid cellphones he’d taken from the store, plus possession of “drugs and drug paraphernalia,” as well as a tool used to deactivate store theft-detection devices on electronics.

The officer arrested the man on suspicion of theft, manufacturing a theft-detection shield, drug and drug paraphernalia possession and obstruction of the legal process. He remained in the Douglas County Jail Wednesday.
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Saturday, 12:47 p.m.

Remember that shooting in the 2100 block of Carolina Street last month? Well, I guess sometime after that happened city inspectors condemned the home, but I’m not sure of the reason at this point.

Anyway, McKinley said that a burglary in progress was reported early Saturday at the home. Officers investigated and ended up finding three people inside the condemned home.

The people said they were at the house on behalf of its owner to retrieve items left inside, McKinley said. Officers documented the incident and sent their reports to the city prosecutor for charging review.
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And finally, the tallies from the Lawrence Police Department’s 911 call log.

As always, I’ll remind you that this is a list of noteworthy calls I pulled from the Lawrence Police Department call log. Not all calls yielded police reports, and many may have gone unsubstantiated. The list is meant to give you an idea of what kinds of calls police are responding to within a given time period.

This list is a collection of calls that police responded to between Tuesday and Wednesday mornings:

Violence

– Disturbance (verbal or physical arguments): 8

– Domestic disturbance: 2

– Fight in progress: 1

– Battery: 1

Traffic

• Noninjury accident: 11

• Injury accident: 2

Medical

– Medical: 7

• Suicide threat: 1

Miscellaneous

• Harassment: 2

• Suspicious activity: 2

• Noise or Nuisance: 5

• Vicious animal: 1

Welfare

• Adult welfare check: 4

• Child welfare check: 2

– Runaway: 1

Property crimes

• Burglary: 2

• Theft: 10

• Criminal damage: 1

• Trespassing: 4

• Stolen vehicle: 2