Richland Police Hopes to Build Off New Crime Numbers

Richland Police are encouraged by the latest report that shows crime numbers are down significantly in many areas including violent and property crime offenses.

The numbers reflect police responses over a six-month time frame compared to numbers recorded from January 2022 to June of 2022.

"Those are great numbers and we wanted to share it with the community as a win for all of us. Those numbers are huge, and we just wanted to make note of that because a lot of times when you read news headlines, and even our Facebook posts, it looks like things have gone a little crazy." Police Commander Damon Jansen said.

Commander Jansen says he doesn't have an explanation as to why forced sexual offenses dropped 70%, but he believes many factors contribute to the reason why auto theft offenses decreased by half.

"Some of them are from our officers that are working hard and focusing our efforts in the right areas. Some of them are from our partnerships with our neighboring agencies where we work together on certain crime sprees," Commander Jansen added. "We've got to include legislation reforms over the past year, partnerships and hard work with our prosecutor's office."

Commander Jansen also pays tribute to the volunteers and citizens who keep a close eye on and report nefarious activities in their neighborhoods.

"We have had great success with people calling in about crimes where we're able to find the offender that's done it and we couldn't have done it without the citizens calling in and helping us out."

For a complete list of the crime report for the first six months of the year, check out the breakdown in this article.