During a Jan. 6 City Council meeting, officials from the Bellaire police and fire departments said they have seen an increase in the number of calls for service in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025—which covers Oct. 1 to Dec. 31—than in previous years.

By the numbers

Fire Chief Deacon Tittel said the fire department has gotten nearly 600 calls for services in just the first quarter of FY 2025 alone, a 33% increase from quarter one of FY 2022, which saw 419 calls.
"We are staying busy," Tittel said. "As you can see within four years, our call line continues to increase. It's not slowing down anytime. Wish I could find a solution to that, but people will keep continuing and our medics continue to do the job that they need to do."

Tittel said the reason the fire department is seeing the increase in calls could be due to numerous factors, such as an aging population, and commercial businesses and doctor offices near the area.

"I wish we could truly pinpoint it down, but it's spread out on different factors," Tittel said. "Between the doctor offices, Methodist, UT Health and all the different ones that are coming in, we do have an increase of calls to those facilities. It is spread out between that and the residents as well. We're not going to say they're the main factor for it, because I think it's very beneficial having them in the city, especially for residents not having to go downtown."


Police Chief Onesimo Lopez said the police department has seen 10,582 calls for service in the first quarter of FY 2025, a 43% increase from the first quarter of FY 2022, which saw 7,391 calls.
Lopez said calls for service for the police department could mean calls to address issues such as shoplifting, barking dogs and general traffic complaints.

"We're encouraging people to call whenever they need us, that's why we're here," Lopez said. "People have heard that and they're calling."

What else?

Lopez said they have also seen an increase in traffic stops with cleared citations—meaning the traffic stop concluded with a warning, citation or arrest. The first quarter of FY 2025 saw 581 traffic stops with cleared citations, compared to first quarter of FY 2022 with 290.


Lopez also said the police department is still working on hiring new police officers.

"It's just an industry-wide slowdown in overall hiring for police officers," Lopez said. "It's a tough job. It's a noble profession, and we're just trying to find the right people to serve the citizens of Bellaire. It just takes time."