Portland Police Logs Show How Busy Officers Are in Just One Week
I feel like many people aren't aware of just how many police calls happen in a week's time in their hometown. Granted, some are busier than others, but I think a lot of people would be surprised at how many incidents police officers respond to in just one week.
All police departments in Maine and around the country for that matter, keep logs of every single call that they respond to. Those logs are in smaller towns have been published in the newspapers for years. But it's 2022 and people look for information and news online these days.
The Portland Police Department has started to publish summaries of these logs on their Facebook page, and it's a real eye opener to what's going on in Maine's largest city on a weekly basis.
The latest report was published on June 21 and covered the week from May 27 to June 3. Here's the list of what they responded to and a look at some of the calls that are most frequent.
- 13 assaults
- 20 behavioral health calls
- 6 domestic violence assaults
- 11 overdoses
- 11 hit-and-run crashes
- 32 crashes causing property damage
- 8 crashes causing injuries
- 3 reports of shots heard
- 9 OUIs
- 10 weapons violations
It's kind of sad to think that all this happened in one week in Portland. Especially sad is the number of assaults, overdoses and OUIs that were reported. A couple of details stand out:
- May 29, Officers responded to a domestic situation on Falmouth Street in which a suspect became uncooperative with officers, threatened to kick them and wrapped his legs around officers before he was arrested.
- May 31, During an OUI arrest, the suspect fought with officers and was additionally charged with refusal to submit.
These are just two incidents that show just what our law enforcement officers have to deal with as part of their job on a daily basis. Thank you to all the officers in all the departments across the state of doing what they do to keep us all safe.