Officers responded to or generated at total of 68 service calls for the last week of Sept. That’s 22 more than last week and double what we had two weeks ago, so we were out and about that is for sure. Good old Lt. Dear handled 31 of those service calls; he was a busy little copper. Officers conducted 36 traffic stops this past week, 21 received citations and 15 were given either verbal or written warnings. Sgt. Hanson made 22 of those stops.
Last week we had 4 property crimes reported, with one being a license plate off of a vehicle. Truth it is may have fallen off for all we know. Lt. Dear handled the following 2 theft cases. A riding lawn mower (orange Cub Cadet) was reported stolen from behind an empty residence on Wisdom Rd. With all the rain and high grass I’m sure our thief won’t have any problem finding a buyer for his stolen goods. A female with a small child attempted a theft at HEB Plus; she tried to push out a basket full of items without paying for them. When confronted she fled empty handed. Capt. Reyes responded to the HEB C-Store and took a report that a male suspect walked out with two 24 oz. cans of Budweiser, when confronted by an employee he returned the 2 cans and departed. Wouldn’t it be great if all our shoplifters were so easy to work with?
We didn’t have any arrests, AKA no trips to jail. I worked by myself on Wednesday and I really hit it hard, well not really. In a 12 hour shift I unlocked 3 cars, took a suspicious person call (I never located her) and made a narcotics seizure. The narcotics seizure was actually an incident where a HEB Plus employee found a little baggie of what appears to be meth and turned it in to me. Somewhere there is a person sitting around thinking “where did that meth go?” I’m just glad a child didn’t find it and think it was some sort of candy.
Ofc. David Lopez completed the International Police Mountain Bike Assoc. (IPMBA) 40 hour certification course last week. The instructor was a SAPD bike officer and the course was hosted by St. Mary’s University. David really went through a work out, riding all over San Antonio and hitting various trails. They were tested not only on their riding skills but their knowledge of bike maintenance. The heat wasn’t too bad, but they did some wet weather riding to make up for it.
Our application processed closed and we will now be reviewing the applicants and will begin our background investigations. I would like to say we got 40 or 50 applicants for our 3 positions but it would go against my “I shall not lie” belief. Sadly we only ended up with 4 applications, I guess I shouldn’t have used “Join Lytle PD and be like me” as a recruitment theme. The good news is we are searching for quality not quantity. I have read about and seen presentations about the recruitment problems facing law enforcement agencies both big and small, now we have dealt with it firsthand.