This April the Parsons Police Department rolled out their latest Annual Report. "Annual Reports in policing are critical not only for the leadership of the community and our stakeholders, the Citizens, but also to the police department itself. If we cannot speak from a position of fact how can we invest resources, target community problems, and spend taxpayers' dollars wisely? The simple answer is, we cannot," according to Parsons Police Chief Robert Spinks

On April 21st, Chief Spinks presented the 2019 Annual Report to the Parsons City Commission. Chief Spinks reported to the Commission the updates in crimes statistics for 2019 and reported that the department again received the 'AAA' Platinum Award for traffic safety.

Chief Spinks said "SE Kansas is renowned for historically having a higher crime rate than other rural areas of the State. Unfortunately, that reality continues today. Except that Parsons sustained a drop in our crime rate this past year that makes our community the safest city of size in our region. Independence (71.3 down from 73.9), Pittsburg (54.5 up from 52.9) and Coffeyville (57.4 up from 52.7) all out stripped us in having a higher per capita crime rate than Parsons (46.2 from 54.1). This is data from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR), that data tracks a year behind, so that is for calendar year 2018. The 2019 UCR data won't be published until later this Summer."

"We saw less total UCR crime in actual offenses reported to the police than our comparable cities of Coffeyville, Independence and Pittsburg, and less actual property crime as well. The rate of violent crime per capita continues to run higher than our local comparable cities - that is attributable in large part to the number of domestic violence aggravated assaults or felony domestic assaults that our community generates. If we could reduce or eliminate felony family-based crimes - our violent crime rate would plummet" Spinks continued.

Other statistics that was addressed in the report is that in 2019, patrol handled 16,202 total incidents vs 17.927 the prior year. This was a drop of 10%. This may also reflect a decrease in officer observed policing because most of last year we had open patrol positions caused by staff turnover - so we lost those extra proactive eyes on the street. This is born out in that actual crime reports totaled 2,466 in 2019 which represented a 12% increase over 2018. So, more crime reports with less officers on the street, reduces uncommitted patrol time for officers to be pro-active.

• We saw in increase in total arrests to 684 or a 13% increase.
• Felony arrests remained almost static at 132.
• Misdemeanor arrests rose by 20% to a total of 550.
• Out of 141 total drug arrests made (in large part to our newly formed Narcotics Task Force), 85 were felonies.
• We saw a downward trend in assaults for the 4th straight year in a row.

Chief Spinks also reported to the commission and the community on other matters that is covered in the annual report such as:

• The School Resource Officer (SRO) Program continues to be a critically important partnership with Parsons School District #503 to provide guidance and outreach to students in our community.
• We revitalized our Police Chaplains Program
• We kicked off a new Community Service Officer (CSO) Program to target animal issues and education, abandoned vehicles, parking and crime prevention.
  759 animal calls were handled with 273 animals being impounded.
• We have created over 70 podcasts for our web site from our weekly Rap Sheet Show on KLKC that is broadcast every week.
• We tested 21st Century replacement of Neighborhood Watch called NextDoor.com We will expand our advertising of this electronic neighborhood watch program this year. Currently we have nearly 300 families signed up to receive police alerts, press releases and news.
• And our police web site Parsonspd.com is in the final stages of being completely rebuilt to be much more user friendly and chalked full of useful information. That cut over to the new website is scheduled for later this Spring.
• We kicked off 'Coffee with a Cop,' a national community outreach program that brings citizens together with their police
• We kicked off 'Coffee with a Cop,' a national community outreach program that brings citizens together with their police

"I can report that your police department is an evolving agency. This year we are working on our 2nd Strategic Plan that will propel us through the Year 2025." Spinks finished

The Annual Report for the Parsons Police Department is developed by the Administrative Services Unit and is available to the public through the police departments website www.parsonspd.com.