Police calls down 3.3% in first half of 2014

With crime rates low on Longboat Key, all it takes is one person to skew stats.

Take larceny incidents, which were up 78.1% year over year, according to the police department’s semi-annual statistics. Released by Longboat Key Police Chief Pete Cumming last week, the statistics cover crime for January through June.

In June, police arrested 25-year-old Daniel Lee Upton, who allegedly confessed to a string of incidents in which he broke into condo storage sheds and stole bicycles throughout Longboat Key and Holmes Beach. Those incidents helped drive up larcenies substantially.

“Otherwise, in these mid-year reports, our crimes are pretty static,” Cumming said.

The highest percentage of service calls fell under the category of fire department assistance, with a total of 623 calls during the first half of 2014, a 23.5% decrease over last year. Burglar alarm responses were up 15.1%, with 428 this year, compared with 372 in 2013.

The first six months included 84 burglary and larceny cases, up 42.9% from last year. All traffic-related activity, including accidents and stops were up to 842 for 2014, a 26.6% increase that police attribute to the license-camera system that began operating last August. Crimes of violence, including battery and sexual offenses, rose from four cases to five during the first half of 2014.

Other noteworthy stats, according to Cumming:

Trespassing incidents fell by 51.8%, to 14 for January through June, from 29 during the same period in 2013 — a drop that police attribute to the fence that the Colony Beach & Tennis Association erected around the vacant resort.

Code enforcement activity rose by 60%, from 20 incidents in 2013 to 32 in 2014, which Cumming believes is the result of an organizational change made earlier this year in which the code enforcement officer reports directly to the police department, although the code enforcement position is currently vacant.

Contact Robin Hartill at [email protected]