A stormy overnight led to a pretty active night for Police and Fire throughout Douglas County.

The night started off rainy and Police were already busy with the same call types that they face every night, noise complaints, animal complaints and a few minor disturbances. Once the weather intensified, Police started receiving calls of power outages that were effecting traffic signals. Several intersections lost power, rendering the signals useless and forcing Police to direct traffic. Police also responded to the 3000 block of Kasold Drive just after 12:15 a.m. to direct traffic past a roadway obstruction.

The winds from the storm also were responsible for knocking out power in parts of Lawrence after tree branches fell on power lines. One of these calls was in the 1600 block of Cadet Avenue just before 12:30 a.m. The Fire Department was also called to that scene on reports that the line had started the tree on fire. Units responded to find that there was a small fire in the tree and the power line, although damaged, was still active. As of 6 a.m. this morning Westar’s website shows just under 3,500 Douglas County customers without power.

Wind is also believed to be the source of an extremely large number of Burglary alarms for Police to respond on during the storm. I counted just shy of 20 alarm calls to Police between Midnight and 6 a.m.

At 2:30 a.m. this morning KU Police were flagged down by a subject in the 1300 block of West Campus Drive. The subject pointed out two males that were running away from the address who had just walked into a fraternity house and ran back out carrying several items including trophies. The suspects were last seen running through the Potter’s Lake area. Since the address for the fraternity where the theft occurred is not in KUPD’s jurisdiction, Lawrence Police were called and took over the investigation. To the best of my knowledge the two male suspects remain at large this morning.

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