Bend PD report drop in bike thefts, false alarms in 2016

They may not be the high-profile crimes that grab headlines, but the Bend Police Department has reported progress in two areas over the past year: bike thefts and false alarms.

“During 2016, we facilitated two programs in an effort to increase livability and continue to make our staff more available for community interactions,” Lt. Clint Burleigh said in Friday’s report.

“The Bend Police Department understands that bicycles are very important part of commuting in our community,” he wrote. “There are a tremendous (number) of bicycles owned in Bend and Deschutes County. We also recognized bicycles were being stolen at an alarming rate.

“During the spring and summer of 2016 we started a proactive program designed at reducing bicycle theft in Bend. What we found from our end of the year data was our bicycle theft numbers decreased by more than 50 percent from 2015 and are at a seven-year low. This is the first year reported thefts of bicycles were less than 200 in seven years.”

Meanwhile, Burleigh said, “As we reviewed our calls from previous years, we found we were responding to a very high number of false alarms.

“As we stated earlier this year, we started enforcing the city ordinance regarding false alarms. An alarm owner is warned after the first false alarm, fined $250 for the second false alarm and fined $500 for false alarms after that within a calendar year.

“With the implementation of this process, we saw a 12.1 percent decrease in false alarm calls,” Burleigh wrote. “This again frees up Bend Police officers and allows them to spend more time having positive interactions with our community and provide proactive crime prevention.

“Both of these programs have allowed us to emphasize tremendous teamwork with our community,” the lieutenant said. “If we did not have the support from our Bend community members, the success would not have been as great. “

In one other statistic, with details broken down in a graph, Burleigh said Bend Police responded to 87,213 calls for service in 2016.