Traverse City Crime By The Numbers

What’s the status of crime and law enforcement in Traverse City and Grand Traverse County? To find out, The Ticker dives into recent data to learn where crime is happening, how often, and when.

Calls for service
In 2018, the Traverse City Police Department (TCPD) logged 28,727 calls for service – up slightly from 27,726 the year before. The Grand Traverse County Sheriffs Office (GTSO), meanwhile, reported 40,644 calls for service in 2018, down from 41,508 in 2017.

While 2018’s figures represent just small shifts from the prior year, both TCPD and GTSO have tracked a significant overall uptick in calls over the past 15 years. According to Chris Clark, captain of the GTSO’s Patrol Services Division, the department’s 2018 service call total is 75 percent higher than 2003’s, when GTSO only received 23,187 service calls.

At TCPD, the number of criminal-related calls notched small increases every year from 2014 (4,098) to 2017 (4,782); 2018’s figure dipped slightly to 4,651.

Number of officers
Clark says one of the big challenges for local law enforcement is that these increases have occurred even as the number of officers in the area has held mostly constant. In 2003, the Patrol Services Division had 68 sworn deputies. In 2018, despite the 75 percent leap in call volume, the division only had 66. Clark expects that number to be back up to 68 by this October, but also says that statistics for things like traffic stops would have likely been higher over the past few years if the department had more officers.

In the same 15-year timeframe, Grand Traverse County’s population has increased by more than 12 percent.

Types of calls and investigations
Assaults are consistently the most common crime in Grand Traverse County. The GTSO recorded some 600 of these types of cases in 2017 alone, and more than 550 in 2018. Other top categories include shoplifting, drug cases, and fraud.

Clark notes that these categories don’t necessarily reflect where the GTSO spends most of its time; the Patrol Division has an “electronic daily” system that tracks hours for the different types of crimes officers are dealing with when on the road. In 2018, that program tracked 11,427 hours total. OWI crimes (operating while intoxicated) accounted for the biggest chunk of that, with 1,170 hours. VCSA offenses (violations of controlled substances) were second, with 1,119 hours; larcenies were third, with 989. Only 263 hours were spent on assault cases, despite their prevalence in the community.

Within the GTSO’s Detective Bureau, Captain Randy Fewless says 23 percent of his department’s investigation cases last year pertained to matters of child abuse or child sexual conduct – more than on any other type of crime.

The TCPD, meanwhile, breaks its service calls into four different categories: criminal matters, non-criminal matters, traffic crashes, and other (things like 911 hang-ups, police complaint followups, etc). In 2018, the “other” category accounted for 54.2 percent of the department’s total service calls. 16.2 percent concerned criminal matters, 25.6 percent were non-criminal, and about four percent had to do with traffic crashes.

When and where
GTSO tracks its calls for service based on month, time of day, and location. Unsurprisingly, Clark says that July and August are consistently the department’s busiest time of year. The busiest times of day tend to fall either in the mid-afternoon (2-4pm) or late evening (9-11pm). The department designs its shift schedules so it can have as many deputies on duty at those times as possible: 16 around 2pm and 14 from 9-11pm. The TCPD tracks similar peak times but stays consistent with four officers on duty at all hours of the day.

In terms of location, Garfield Township accounts for by far the most calls into the GTSO: 43 percent in 2018. The only other townships in the county with more than five percent of the pie were Blair (14 percent), East Bay (8 percent), and Acme and Green Lake (both 6 percent).

Notable trends
Local law enforcement is now doing a lot more work with digital evidence; the GTSO has one employee assigned to a computer lab and in charge of working with cellphones, computers, and other digital assets to access potential evidence. Fewless says he’s put in a request to add another full-time employee for 2020 to meet growing demand.

“We saw over a 100 percent increase in the number of digital evidence investigations we were doing between 2017 and 2018,” Fewless says. He adds that the growth has created a backlog and slowed down evidence processing, making it difficult for the Detective Bureau to act as quickly as it wants to. “Our main goal is to be able to take the criminals off the street as fast as we can, so that we eliminate the risk of there being more victims.”

Another recent trend is a shift in the types of drug investigations local law enforcement officials are seeing. Since the legalization of marijuana, local officers have pivoted from eyeing possession offences to keeping an eye out for minor-in-possession cases or situations in which marijuana is affecting driving. A new K9 dog is now being trained, but Clark says it won’t even be trained to detect marijuana.

Fewless has seen fewer drug cases across the board, including a significant drop in the number of opioid-related death investigations. Clark adds that overdose calls to the GTSO peaked in 2015 and have been on the decline since. He credits the drop to the easy availability of naloxone (or Narcan), a medication that can be used to counter the effects of an overdose. In 2016, Michigan passed a law that allows pharmacists “to dispense naloxone without an individual prescription and without identifying a particular patient.” The law makes it easy for friends or family members to obtain naloxone in an emergency situation where a loved one has overdosed.