Mesa Police Department 2002 Annual Report
Message from Chief Dennis Donna
 We
enter 2003 after a year of transition for
our Department and our State with new
leadership and facing the realities of
hard economic times. We are now in a period of having to
work harder and more creatively within the
law, to lower the incidence of crime with
many less tax dollars, all the while
serving a growing Mesa population which
requires more services for the same amount
of funding. We must still continue to fight
burglary and auto thefts, domestic
violence, and narcotics trafficking and
use, among other behavior that threatens
the safety of our citizens.
2002
has been a year of accomplishment
including reorganization and streamlined
procedures for better use of resources and
I will cite a few:
Criminal
Investigations: During 2002,
our detectives worked nearly 13,000 cases,
including 8,287 vehicle burglaries
and 4,751 auto thefts. The Center Against
Family Violence worked 2,622 domestic
violence and 2,345 sex/abuse cases.
Communications: During
2002, 1,388,438 phone calls were handled,
resulting in the generation of 391,341
police Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
events and 64,678 fire/medical CAD events. The number of phone calls broken
down shows that 1,065,842 incoming calls
and 322,526 outgoing calls were handled! Over 250,000 of the incoming calls
were 911 calls and of those, 55% were from
cellular phones, an 8% increase in the
number of cellular 911 calls in 2002
compared to 2001.
Special Investigations: During
2002, officers recovered over $1.5 million
in drugs and property in over 500 felony
arrests. A new gang database system was
installed compatible with other state
agencies to access and share information.
During 2002, our Police Academy
became regionalized to include recruits
from other cities. Our Crime
Prevention Unit mobilized 15,000 Mesa
citizens into the Get Arizona Involved in
Neighborhoods (GAIN) event to fight crime
in our neighborhoods.
Technical Services: During 2002, our
Records
Section reduced overtime hours 50
percent and reduced its backlog from 14
days to 48 hours or less. We merged the
Crime
Lab and
Identification
into the Forensics Section and established
standards to prioritize work, turn out
results, and justify expenditures.
We are proud that Mesa's Crime Lab now
ranks #1 in Arizona with investigations
aided where DNA helped to solve the crime
or provide a link to a previously unlinked
crime.
One of our biggest
successes has been our innovative
Burglary Reduction Program. Burglary is a crime
that most affects our citizens' sense of
safety, while producing or supporting a
significant number of other crime trends
such as drugs, forgery, identity theft,
sexual assault and homicide. Through the
Burglary Reduction Program, Patrol
officers respond to the scene of each
residential burglary to contact the
victim, ensure the recovery of evidence
and interview neighbors to find potential
witnesses. Detectives host a semi-monthly
meeting to share information on current
high profile suspects and crime trends
with all areas of the department and
representatives from neighboring police
agencies. The Burglary Reduction Program
is not quite nine months old and so far 43
have been captured from the Top Ten
suspect list published at the meetings and
residential burglary rates have declined
nearly 20 percent.
I
am very honored to be
Chief
of our excellent Department and thank all
our dedicated employees who commit
themselves every day to quality law
enforcement for all of Mesa. Our employees
are our finest asset and, in conjunction
with neighborhood leaders, they can
effectively solve crime problems. This
team is necessary to keep Mesa safe.
Clic aquí si quiere leer el Mensaje del Jefe
de Policía en Español
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