During the 01/12/2022 Safety and Licensing Committee meeting, Appleton Police Chief Todd Thomas gave a report to the committee on Appleton’s 2021 preliminary crime and police activity numbers.
There were just the preliminary numbers taken from the Appleton Police Department’s database. He said they would not get their official FBI numbers for probably 6 more months because it takes that long for the numbers to get processed and the report to be validated. The FBI will even adjust their numbers after that.
He said that their calls for service increased. They had seen a significant drop during Covid. For the 8 years prior to Covid, they had been averaging 49,000 to 50,000 calls for service per year. The numbers in 2021 rose to nearly 55,000.
He said, “The most significant change we saw was in our mental health calls.” They saw a 72% increase in calls for service in involved a mental health situation. “That can be anything from someone in crisis, to a domestic situation with a mental health circumstance, or a child in the schools struggling.” That was a significant increase.
They were pleased that they did not see a similar increase in the number of emergency detentions—i.e. the number of people they had to hold at the hospital or place on a 72 hour hold. He said they had been working for a number of years on reducing the number of people taken into protective custody. It had been a mission of their behavioral health officer for 4 years, and the department had seen a steady increase in those numbers. That decrease was because of the good work of their behavioral health officer, their Crisis Intervention Team officers, their school resource officers, and all of their community partners. Committals had accounted for over 30% of their mental health calls a few years ago, but now accounted for only 15%. [It should be pointed out, the raw number of committals does not appear to have changed and, in fact, are higher in 2021 as compared to 2020, though not as high as in 2019. The fact that they make up a smaller percentage of overall mental health calls looks to be because overall mental health calls increased dramatically in 2021.]
He said that traffic stops and enforcement had increased dramatically in 2021. They had seen a spike in dangerous behavior as well as nuisance behavior with vehicles and motorcycles. That was not such a probable in Appleton but, rather, a nation-wide issue. Appleton’s traffic citation numbers were back over 7,000 which was one of their higher years over the past 15 years. Over the last 6 months, the police department has been planning what their approach will be in 2022, and Chief Thomas said that in the coming months the police department would be bringing some information and recommendations to the Council on how the traffic issues in the city might be addressed.
Appleton saw a slight increase in the violent crime rate which was all due to aggravated assaults. “Aggravated assaults are about over 70% of our violent crimes in the city, and over half of our aggravated assaults are domestic violence related.” They were aware of that issue, and it was one of the reasons they had created the Victim Service Officer position. That position works hand-in-hand with service providers and Harbor House.
He noted that there is a relationship between reporting and trust-building and “I think a little bit of the…uptick in the numbers is probably ’cause we have that relationship now and [the Victim Service Officer is] getting incidents reported to her after the fact that would—we had not been getting reported to us in the past.” That was one of the benefits of having that position.
He said that some surrounding communities had seen an increase in violent crime and specifically mentioned gunfire. Appleton, however, had not seen an increase at all. Appleton usually averages 5-10 gunfire crimes a year, some of which are accidental discharges, many of which involved intoxicants. Appleton did not see any increase over the past year with firearms weapons violations.
He opened things up for questions.
Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5) wondered why other communities were seeing increases in their gunfire crime but Appleton was not.
Chief Thomas thought it was due to community expectations. When gunfire crimes happen in Appleton, the police department tries to crush it. APD tries to get out and identify who is involved, conduct aggressive enforcement, and shut it down, but some other cities may not have the time or resources to get on it as quickly which can then perpetuate a cycle of retribution shootings and violence. He said Appleton was fortunate to have the resources and the mentality to put everything they have on such crimes. They also have some really good community partners that are doing a lot of good work trying to prevent crimes on the front end.
Alderperson Van Zeeland also wanted to know what Chief Thomas thought was behind the reckless driving issues.
Chief Thomas didn’t know. He said it was cyclical with street racing and cruising becoming popular for a period of time before going away. He thought some other parts of the state took a really weak approach to it which encouraged some of that behavior. He thought fixing it would take education, enforcement, and a lot of resources to make sure the message was clear.
Alderperson Alex Schultz said that there was a lot of stress and crisis in the community, so to see a reduction in the number of committals was exemplary. He thought it showed a pivot in the way APD was trying to handle non-violent or even violent situations and trying to help those persons’ needs as opposed to going down the incarceration route.
He also said that some of the traffic issues were a concern of his and he was curious how many traffic warnings were related to excessive noise. (Alderperson Schultz mentioned talking about it more after the meeting, so the Chief didn’t give any details during the meeting.)
Alderperson Schultz was pleased to see the violent crime numbers given all the additional stresses people have been under. He thought they had all expected an increase in domestic situation and aggravated assaults, so he wasn’t surprised by those.
He wanted to know if there was any report on sex trafficking. Did that fall into violent crime or was it outside the scope of this report.
Chief Thomas said that any arrest or offenses related to sex trafficking would fall under the rape category.
He said they were well aware of the stress that everyone has been under over the last couple years, stress which has impacted domestic situations and everyone’s mental health. He said APD would be coming forward with some suggestions and information regarding the two big issues they currently see—mental health and traffic.
Alderperson Michael Smith (District 10) wanted some details on the numbers in red which went into FBI statistic. Chief Thomas had mentioned that in 6 months they might be revised and he wondered how different they might be.
Chief Thomas said the 2021 numbers were tentative but the previous years were accurate FBI numbers. The 2021 numbers might go up by 1 or 2 but there’s generally not much of a change. Some crimes may get recategorized, usually in the aggravated battery category. The FBI has very strict definitions of what is an aggravated battery as compared to what some of those other charges are. Some numbers might even change a year or two after the fact if something changes with a crime that is report such as if they have an open investigation into a crime they assume is an aggravated battery but then they determine a rape was involved. That would then be reclassified as a rape instead of an aggravated assault. There would, essentially, be minor changed but nothing major.
Alderperson Schultz asked to clarify if each crime was only put into one category or if a crime spanned multiple categories such as the same crime being categorize as being both a kidnapping/abduction and also a sexual assault.
Chief Thomas confirmed that each crime was only listed one and only put into one category. In answer to a question from Alderperson Van Zeeland he explained that the FBI was trying to give some consistency to crime statistics across the nation. They were trying to make sure that the numbers were valid and so that crimes that were showing in Wisconsin as being sexual assaults or robberies also showed as sexual assaults or robberies in Louisiana instead of their being different definitions depending on the location a crime took place.
Alderperson Schultz asked if the police department had seen an uptick in unlicensed gun possession, but Chief Thomas told him they had not.
There were no further questions.
View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=913977&GUID=1259F626-E567-4C74-A49C-5B17EA498C4B
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