CSU) JACKSONVILLE, N.C. – Last year, the Jacksonville Police Department handled 32,000 911 calls. That number was significantly greater five years ago, at about 35,000. The figures are encouraging, but police believe they still have a long way to go.
Michael Yaniero, the Chief of Police of Jacksonville, was interviewed by 9OYS. Despite a decline in 911 calls and overall crime in the region, he claims that violent crime has increased.
“We look at aggravated assaults, robberies, and besides, we’ve seen a spike in those sorts of crimes since the epidemic, and that’s nothing that other towns haven’t experienced as well,” Yaniero said.
The rise in violent crime isn’t the only thing they’ve seen as a result of the epidemic. Yaniero said, “We’ve observed more mental health crises, more crisis intervention.” There has also been an increase in automobile accidents.
“Because of the Marine Corps installation, we have around 100,000 people moving in and out of the city.” And so, when there’s so much traffic flowing across the city, people have to be patient, particularly during rush hour,” Yaniero said.
Despite this, 911 calls are still down from prior years. Things alter a little when you consider the amount of individuals that contact the 10-digit emergency hotline.
“What we’ve noticed in the past year or so after conducting some study is that more than half of our service calls, emergency calls included, come in on a 10-digit line,” Yaniero said.
Over 100,000 calls were received on one 10-digit line last year. The CEO is concerned about the figure.
“We recognise that we need to do a better job of alerting the public about the importance of dialling 911. There might be a variety of causes for this. “People assume this isn’t a true emergency; I can simply phone the cops,” Yaniero said. “We should urge our citizens to call 911 instead of the 10-digit number if they need a police officer in an emergency.”
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