It’s time again for our weekly update. I sure am glad I am a chief of police in a small town, if I worked some place much bigger I would need to send out daily email reports and I am not sure I could keep up. Last week we had 59 service calls which was double from the week before, officers filed 100 cases with the municipal court. Of those 100, 43 were for speeding and 21 for no insurance. Traffic is constantly increasing (at least it appears that way to me) and we receive regular complaints about speeding on both Main St. and N. Prairie St. We are responding to those complaints and increasing our enforcement in those areas.
We had a decent bit of activity this past week that included three arrests. A couple of those were pretty simple and both resulted from traffic stops. On one the suspect had a warrant out of Gregg Co. (Longview) and on the other the officer found some marijuana. The more interesting arrest occurred as a result of Ofc. Diaz and Ofc. Guzman observing a suspicious vehicle on N. Pecan St. at about 3:15 AM Friday morning. Officers conducted a field contact and could smell the odor of burnt marijuana. As they were conducting a probable cause search the driver of the vehicle fled on foot. He left his buddy behind, as well as some meth, marijuana, a loaded pump shotgun and two stocking caps with eye slots cut out (a homemade ski mask of sorts). They didn’t have any other foul weather or skiing gear so I’m not sure what they were up to, but my bet is that whatever it was it was “no good”. I always pray for the safety of our officers and I’m glad this contact didn’t result in something tragic. On the brighter side the young fellow who took off running was at least kind enough to give the officer his driver’s license before he sprinted off. So a big Lytle PD “Thank You” goes out to him for helping make our job easier.
We took several reports of property crimes that included a gas drive off from the Star Food Mart (I guess we will see more of those as gas prices rise), a water theft from a residence in Coalmine (they messed with the meter), and the big property crime of the week was the burglary of a vehicle where someone entered an unlocked delivery truck and took approx. $200 worth of tools. This was at the Express Rent to Own in the 14900 Blk. of Main St.
On Friday Capt. Reyes and I were guest speakers at the Lytle Senior Citizens Club meeting; we spoke to them about recent scams that we have encountered. We had a wonderful question and answer session but we left before they served the food because we both are trying to “cut back” on our caloric intake. On Saturday Cpl. Danny Robison represented us at Morales Feed and Supply during a customer appreciation event. He interacted with public and handed out some LPD cups, Frisbees and pens. So if somebody tells you all we do is hand out tickets, I have photos to prove otherwise.
I want to thank Lt. Matthew Dear for his hard work and dedication. We had an opportunity to apply for a grant for new report writing and records management software and he took on the project. The entire cost was covered by the grant from the state, a whopping $31,000. We will now have a high speed, modern, multipurpose awesome system (so basically our software will perform at a high level like I do). We should have it up and running in the next 30 days. Special thanks to the Mayor, City Council and Ms. Campa for making this possible.