Story posted Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Comparing Police, Fire Requests For Service
By RICHARD MAYER Assistant Managing Editor
To date, the Mt. Prospect Police Dept. has received approximately 25,000 calls for service, compared to 25,631 in all of 2008. Of those 25,000 calls, about 4,100 were crime related. All of last year, there were 4,242 crimes in the village.
In 2007, there were about 4,300 crimes but the year before that, there were approximately 1,000 less at 3,247.
In 2010, the police department expects to respond to 25,500 calls with 4,200 of them crime related.
Arrests of adults are slightly up this year compared to last year. The police department so far has arrested approximately 1,700 adults and 125 juveniles. In 2008, there were 1,633 adults and 144 juveniles taken in by officers.
Next year, the police department is anticipating 1,750 adult and 130 juvenile arrests.
The number of motorists caught driving under the influence of alcohol is also up this year from approximately 175 so far to 165 last year. However, this number has decreased in recent years. In 2007, there were 196 DUI arrests and 313 in 2006. The police department is expecting about 175 DUI arrests again in 2010.
According to Police Chief John Dahlberg, approximately $27,935 has been collected this year in DUI fines. A total of $145,409 has been collected since May 23, 2000.
Moving violations are up this year, but parking violations are down. This year, there have been approximately 8,750 reported moving violations compared to 8,723 all of last year. This number has increased over the years with 7,985 recorded in 2007 and 6,522 in 2006.
So far in 2009, there have been 10,100 parking violations reported. All of last year there were 10,690 recorded violations. This is the first decrease in recent years. In 2006, there were 7,641 violations and 9,438 in 2007.
Through the end of this past October, the fire department responded to 4,511 calls, one shy of the total calls through the first 10 months of 2008. Total calls for 2008 were 5,506.
According to Fire Chief Mike Figolah, firefighters/paramedics have carried out approximately 2,000 Advanced Life Support (ALS) services for people in need. They have also performed about 1,200 Basic Life Support (BLS) procedures on individuals who needed vitals checked or needed to be bandaged up for injuries they incurred. Additionally, there have been about 400 people who needed no treatment when crews arrived on the scene.
For the first time ever, the fire department reached its goal of responding to more than 90% of the calls within six minutes or less. As of today, 91% of this year's call response times were under six minutes.
The average time for crews to respond to a call is 4:16. That was the same average time last year. In 2007, the average time was 4:35. Fire officials are projecting this year's time to decrease by one additional second next year.
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