44 service calls


I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving weekend, now the clock will start racing towards Christmas and before you know it 2018 will be here. Our activity this past week included 44 service calls and officers had 43 traffic stops that resulted in a 64 citations being issued. The roads around town were far from empty as everyone descended on our local businesses for everything they needed for Thanksgiving and the black Friday deals.
We had four reported property crimes. Best Western Plus got hit twice, they reported the theft of 6 outdoor/pool chairs on Tuesday morning and then on Sunday morning 2 more pool chairs ended up missing. Most likely some crook needed some extra chairs for Thanksgiving and then his wife told him they were expecting more people at Christmas so he went back to pick up a couple extra. We had two vehicle burglaries on Sunday morning, one at the old Pico Store where a Bluetooth speaker was taken from an unlocked vehicle. The other occurred at H.E.B. Plus, some keys were taken from an unlocked vehicle and during the process the vehicle door was damaged. Yes, it is that time of year. Christmas decorations go up and the crooks and thieves come out to play their trade.
We only had one arrest and it was a result of a field contact, the guy had a felony warrant out of Medina Co. for a charge of injury to a child. I’m glad he got picked up and went to jail.
In my opinion we had one of the best hayrides ever, it had all the right ingredients. We had wonderful weather, great attendance and there were a lot of houses and businesses lit up all along the route. If you add in that nobody fell off and we had ample porta potties what more could you ask for? I was way off on my food donation prediction. There were cans and cans of “good stuff.” I’m talking chicken breast, ravioli, soup, etc. and not the generic stuff either. People cleaned out their pantries and gave the best. Just looking at all those cans made me hungry, a can opener was nowhere to be found. I could have easily gulped down a can of Spaghetti Os as the trailers were being filled up for second or third trip.
Just as I expected we had a little uptick in thefts during the long weekend. My advice is to stay alert and report suspicious activity. A lot of people are busy and don’t want to get involved, I get that but don’t expect a couple cops driving around to eradicate crime. We depend on our community to help us. That includes those that live here, shop here or just pass through because they got lost.
Lt. Dear and I spent a lot of last Friday on bicycle patrol. We did the usual cruising around and we set up on intersections on the IH-35 access roads looking for unrestrained drivers and especially kiddos not buckled in. I bet we watched well over 150 cars pass through and all we got was a couple unbuckled adults. All the children we saw, and there were lots of them, were properly restrained. So instead of writing tickets we mostly just stood there and waved at people. A few people rolled down their windows and told me how “cool” I looked and I just said “yeah, I know.”
The Lytle Chamber of Commerce has again launched the Blue Santa Program. This is a wonderful program that provides Christmas gifts to local children in need. You can drop off un-wrapped gifts at various locations including the police station, Lytle City Hall and Lytle State Bank. Gifts for infants to teenagers are needed, if you prefer to donate cash I’m sure the Chamber will accept that. You can call Teresa at (210) 573-2562 for more information. They will be accepting donations through December 8th. Please don’t drop off cash at the police station, I’m likely to forget where it came from and use it to buy lottery tickets.