Newtown Township Police 2019 Year-end Report: How Does 2019 Compare to 2018?

Newtown Township Police Chief John Hearn presented the Calls Report for December, 2019, at the January 8, 2020, Board of Supervisors meeting. The following is a summary. Note: Not all calls are listed. See the full (redacted) report embedded at the end of this post or download the PDF version here.

In December, the Newtown Police Department responded to 1,398 total calls, 237 (17%) of which were in Wrightstown Township (Newtown Police provides services to both Newtown and Wrightstown Townships).

The year-end report also compares the 2019 totals to the 2018 totals so we can see some trends. For example, there were 19,760 total calls in 2019 vs. 17,228 in 2018 - an increase of 13%. See below for more details on which types of calls were up and which were down in 2019 compared to 2018.

Selected Newtown Township Police Calls for Service. The yellow and green highlighted rows indicate significant increases or decreases, respectively, in calls in 2019 vs. 2018.

Traffic Citations Way Down

The Newtown Police Department issued a total of 63 traffic citations in Newtown Township in December 2019. Only 6 (10%) of these were for speeding, 4 of which were on Durham Road. It seems that the focus in December was on "Failure to Stop at Red Signal" violations. In December, 24 citations were issue for this violation, of which 17 (70%) were on Newtown Bypass. It is not known if running red lights was a factor in two recent crashes in January 2020 on the Bypass, one of which resulted in a death (read "Man Killed In Newtown Township Crash on the Bypass").

Traffic citations issued by the Newtown Police Department for the period
January through December, 2019. Although there were relatively few speeding violations issued in December 2019, the total number for 2019 (1,977) was 57% higher than for 2018 (1,256).

Some More Trends

A few trends from 2018 to 2019 were noted in the table above such as a 40% increase in domestic dispute related calls, a 58% increase in terrorist threat calls, and most disturbingly, a 41% increase in "Missing Adult/Juvenile" calls.

In December, there were 4 ChildLine referrals. These are 911 calls related to child abuse. ChildLine is part of a mandated statewide child protective services program designed to accept child abuse referrals and general child well-being concerns, and transmit the information quickly to the appropriate investigating agency. ChildLine is responsible for receiving verbal and electronic referrals 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The toll-free hotline, 1-800-932-0313, is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to receive reports of suspected child abuse.

Looking at the redacted December 2019 Report below, note that "Violence/Assaults" are up 34% in 2019 compared to 2018 (51 vs. 38) and Narcotics and Alcohol related calls decreased significantly.

Full (redacted) December 2019 Police Report

Posted on 11 Jan 2020, 01:40 - Category: Crime