Fighting crime with fewer cops

The police chief wants to make his department more proactive toward crime.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Sometime if you're curious, go to the township police station and ask to see crime reports.
If you catch them on a light day, you might get out in under 10 minutes. But be prepared to spend at least an hour sifting through those pages, especially after a weekend. Weekends are pretty busy for police here.
What will you find? Typically, there are reports of domestic arguments, some violent, some not. There are usually auto thefts among the reports, and plenty of drug offenses. A lot of the crimes are misdemeanors. A garage is broken into. A car's paint job is scratched. A window is broken.
Thanks to gas prices that continue to climb, there are always reports of people driving off from pumps without paying.
Those are the crimes that normally don't get write-ups in the newspaper.
Which ones do?
In April so far, a man was assaulted in the parking lot of a store after a road-rage episode. A store clerk got shoved to the floor so a robber could grab cash from her register.
In March, an armed robber stole jewelry from a woman as she was entering her apartment. A man woke up to find a burglar in his house raiding his refrigerator. A woman reported being sexually assaulted in a closet at a township nightspot. A man in a bar was hit in the face by someone wielding a pool cue.
Assaults, robberies
In February, more serious crimes included an assault on a teenager in a gas station parking lot by five other males. He was taken to a hospital. Two women were bound and gagged during a robbery at an apartment complex office in broad daylight.
In January, three men were attacked by three others in a road-rage episode. The driver's window was punched out by one of the attackers, who had a knife. And two purse-snatchings injured two women -- one who was knocked down outside a McDonald's in broad daylight and one who was dragged across a gas station parking lot, also in midafternoon.
Those are the nightmare scenarios. The road-rager gone ballistic. The armed robber lurking in the parking lot. The sexual predator in the nightclub.
Austintown has enough crime to keep its 37-man police force hopping, and it's showing no signs of abating.
Year-end police department reports show that from 2004 to 2005, arrests increased 15 percent.
In a breakout category of major felonies, felonious assaults more than doubled, from 14 in 2004 to 29 in 2005. However, there were no homicides in either year. There was one rape in 2004, and none in 2005. Robberies increased from seven to 10 last year, and burglaries decreased from 165 to 156.
Austintown Police Chief Robert Gavalier, who took over the department in December, recently examined the data in the year-end reports. Troubled by the jump in felonious assaults, he reviewed those cases to see whether he could answer why the number increased so much.
Surprisingly, he said, many of the cases stemmed from domestic arguments. Out of 16 domestic cases, 11 of those were couples running into each other's cars. But, he said, because of the potential for injuries, the cases were classified that way. Felonious assaults involve a weapon.
Gavalier said another case classified as felonious assault would have been charged by a court as aggravated menacing, because someone pulled a gun but did not fire it. He said one case involved a mentally unstable person with a machete rushing at him and another officer. One case was a road-rage episode in which a driver tried to get another driver to wreck. Five cases were assaults during fights at bars, where pool cues or beer bottles were used as weapons.
Security cameras help
As for the overall 15 percent rise in arrests, Gavalier said, he believes fuel drive-offs are partly responsible. People caught on security cameras are easier to find and arrest. He also said the county jail lets some prisoners go because of budget and staffing problems.
"They can only hold so many with the staffing down there," he said. "That contributes, if people know they can do something and get right back out."
Gavalier has said his department is facing its own budget problems. With a 37-person force, including himself and six detectives, the department is down six officers, he said.
The department recently got new computers for the police station with help from a $15,000 donation. But police cars with high mileage need to be replaced, he has said.
He compared Austintown with Boardman. The townships are similar in size and population, but Boardman, with twice Austintown's budget, has 63 officers. He also compared the township with Massillon, Ohio, because of size similarities. Their police department has 47 officers and considers itself down 10, he said.
"When we had 43 officers, we could be proactive," Gavalier said. "Now we are reactive."
Alternatives
Still, there are ways to combat crime with the manpower the department has, he said. A problem-oriented-policing unit, down to one officer from three, is working on drugs, he said.
He also said that problems in certain areas or establishments warrant extra patrols, and one or two detectives can be assigned to solve a rash of similar cases.
Gavalier said the lack of shootings in the township, despite its closeness to Youngstown, might be because of strict traffic law enforcement and a smaller area to cover.
"Our officers have more of a presence in a smaller area," he said. He said gang members come into the township, but they leave again. Youngstown lacks an aggressive traffic unit, he said, because "they don't have the time."
He said an aggressive traffic unit uncovers more than just traffic violations. Often, a stop for a cracked windshield or broken taillight will yield a drug user or someone with a weapon.
Gavalier said he wants his department to be more proactive with the people it has.
Township trustees are considering asking voters to pass a police levy in November.
"The public feels taxed out," he said. "But we have no other way to get money but to ask for a levy."