Mount Pleasant police department has most calls despite jurisdiction size

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Editor’s note: Every Friday, CM Life will publish an in-depth piece, examining different issues.

Area police agencies received more than 46,000 emergency calls requesting services in 2009.

Just shy one call of reaching 17,100 was the Mount Pleasant Police Department, which has a smaller area of jurisdiction than both the Isabella County Sheriff’s Department and Michigan State Police Mount Pleasant Post.

Jeff Browne, public information officer for the MPPD, said their  jurisdiction lies within the city limits and they handle most cases involving the collegiate population. The amount of calls they receive rise and fall based on where students live.

“We had a lot of the young men and young women moved out to the new apartments, so we saw a dip then,“ Browne said. “But for whatever reason, the numbers seem to be coming back.”

The sheriff’s department and state police combined for approximately 17,408 calls in 2009. Emergency calls for the two branches are routed through Central Dispatch and are assigned to the closest car, not a specific department. Separate numbers for the two branches were unavailable.

As of Tuesday, the sheriff’s department and state police combined for about 13,100 calls so far this year and, as of last week, city police received more than 13,000.

Those numbers show a projected increase in response calls for city enforcement and both the county and state police. Neither Browne or Sheriff Leo Mioduszewski could definitively pinpoint any reason the numbers varied.

Central Michigan University Police received approximately 12,000 calls during 2009. Police Chief Bill Yeagley said trying to average out the data and make predictions may not be accurate, as trends change on a day-to-day basis.

“To say we get ‘x’ amount of calls a day is a bit inaccurate,” Yeagley said. “A Tuesday night and a Saturday night aren’t the same thing.”

Balancing jurisdiction

Mioduszewski said his department sees a lot of calls from Union Township, which is a more populous township in the county because of student-inhabited apartment complexes like Lexington Ridge and Deerfield Village.

“There’s also a lot of college-related incidents we deal with in Union Township,” Mioduszewski said

The county sheriff’s department and state police both have the authority to patrol any part of Isabella County, including Mount Pleasant, though these agencies do focus heavily on the county’s 16 townships.

Mioduszewski said his patrol officers will make stops in Mount Pleasant if the case arises, but do not make it a priority.

CMU Police answered a comparable number of response calls to other departments despite having the smallest jurisdiction.

“The difference I see is we provide a lot of services other departments don’t provide,” Yeagley said about the resources offered to CMU students.

The department offers many campus-specific services, he said, like escorting money from sporting events. He also said they are required to do a number of property checks per year.

Investigations

Out of the 17,099 calls the MPPD received last year, 3,587 led to investigations.

Browne said many calls such as noise disturbances and angry customers at bars are dealt with, but don’t necessarily require an investigation.

“When you see the investigation, it’s something we’ve written a report on,” Browne said. “Every party we go to, we don’t write a report on. We also do funeral escorts. We don’t write a report on it, but we do them.”

The MPPD filed the most investigations for obstructing justice, general non-criminal assistance and liquor violations in 2009.