Crime is falling in Santa Monica on pace with efforts to curb the spread of the coronavirus but local police officers remain on patrol throughout the city.
Calls for service into the Santa Monica Police Department have dropped by about 30% over the course of this month and the number of people arrested has dropped to a single arrest per day in the past two days.
SMPD received an average of 336 calls for service per day between Mar. 1 and Mar. 18 in 2019 and only 281 over the same period this year, with a noticeable decline in call volume corresponding with the city declaring a local emergency.
From Mar. 1 to Mar. 12 of this year, SMPD received an average of 301 calls per day. Since the emergency declaration on Mar. 13, the average call volume has fallen to 224 per day.
In the days leading up to the emergency declaration, the city averaged eight arrests per day. That number has fallen to four since Mar. 13. Only one person was arrested on Mar. 17 and a single individual was arrested on Mar. 18.
SMPD Lt. Joseph Cortez said the department has opened its operations center to act as an information hub during the coronavirus pandemic and that officers are being deployed to increase foot patrols around businesses and schools. He said officers are making contacts with people experiencing homelessness from a safe distance to check if they are displaying symptoms of coronavirus.
“Other than that, we are operating as normally as we can,” he said. “We have had a reduction in calls for service and that’s most likely due to a reduction in the number of people in our community."
He said officers are heeding the advice of the DMV to give leeway in ticketing vehicles with expired registration and officers have relaxed enforcement on some parking restrictions, but he said the department and its individual officers remain committed to protecting community members and their property.
"We want to ensure that the public knows we are out here, ready and waiting for anything they need and we’re ready to protect their property and their lives," he said.
Calls into the Santa Monica Fire Department are essentially unchanged, averaging 40 calls per day in the first 12 days of this month and 38 calls per day since the emergency order. Calls for an ambulance accounted for 74% of all SMFD calls between Mar. 1 and Mar. 12. Those calls were about 76% of total since Mar. 13.
editor@smdp.com
