Lexington, SC (Paul Kirby) – The Town of Lexington’s Police Department released their 2019 Annual Report recently, and that report suggests that the department is in great hands under the leadership of Chief Terrance Green. Green and his staff of 62 sworn officers and three civilians have adopted policies over the past years that are causing a reduction in most crime and requests for service statistics even though the town has been growing at an explosive rate.
Records indicate the town had 1 murder in 2019, an increase over the 0 experienced in 2018. However, murder has never been a frequent occurrence in Lexington and the high over the last 5 years has been 2 which occurred in 2016. Other more serious crimes like aggravated rape saw a marked decrease of 62.5% over the previous year. The 5 year high for that was also in 2016 when 9 were reported.
Crimes against people and their property also decreased across the board with some significant drops being seen. These are crimes like assault, robbery, burglary, car theft, and larcenies. The one exception this was assaults which reflected no change from the previous year. Again, the highest number of assaults were recorded in 2016 at 412. Since then, that figure has hovered around 396 per year. It should be especially heartening to see burglaries were down almost 45% last year with a drop from the 58 that were reported in 2018. The 32 crimes of this nature that were reported last year was a 5-year low.
Even though many complain about traffic and collisions in the Town of Lexington, the number of crashes decreased in 2019. Those dropped by 73 from the previous year’s collisions count. This figure coincides with an increase of over 17% of traffic stops as the department’s Traffic Division was strengthened. This would seem to indicate as officers strictly apply laws meant to make the operation of vehicles safe, collisions will continue to remain unchanged or decrease.
Even as traffic affected officers as well as citizens, response times did not increase in 2019. From the time a 911 call for service was received until the first officer arrived on the scene, that overall response time averaged about 10 minutes. From the time an officer received a call from Lexington County’s Communication Center, until the first officer arrived on scene, that figure hovered within seconds of the 7-minute mark year after year. This would seem to indicate that from the time a caller reached a 911 operator until the request to respond is processed and passed to an officer, this procedure takes almost 4 minutes. The one exception being in 2015. That year, the average time for officers to respond after being dispatched was 6 ½ minutes. This indicates that even though traffic has increased obstacles that could hinder responding officers, they are still quickly arriving on scene after their service is requested.
In the area of investigations, Lexington Police Department detectives also have a lot to be proud of. Of all cases that were forwarded to them for further investigate in 2019, 43% either ended in an arrest or with warrants issued. Investigators determined that 7% of their cases were unfounded and others were closed administratively. The number of cases that were closed with an arrest or warrants in 2018 was just 23%, showing that investigators are now identifying and either arresting or issuing warrants for suspects 20% more often.
Chief Green and the men and women of the Lexington Police Department have worked in many ways to improve their services to the public each year. Through community events, crime prevention efforts, increased patrols, and aggressive traffic laws enforcement, it seems as if their hard work and dedication to the citizens, businesses, and visitors of the Town of Lexington is certainly paying off.
To read the entire 2019 Lexington Police Department’s Annual report, follow this link to download it.
