Shenandoah focuses police enforcement efforts on city limits

Increasing cases

During a March 3 Shenandoah City Council meeting, Dunlap presented a comparison of the police reports from his department in 2016-18 and 2019-21, which yielded totals of 13,517 and 15,644 reports, respectively.

“I told [the department] what areas I wanted to focus on, which were hotels. ... We have a lot of prostitution and burglaries around hotels ... and being more proactive,” Dunlap said. “We needed more traffic contacts because the more contacts they make the probability is higher that they are going to make contact with criminal activity.”

Dunlap said a crime category more common in areas such as hotels is sexual assault. From 2016-18, the SPD made 13 sexual assault arrests. During 2019-21, there were 23 arrests, a 77% increase from the previous period.

Another increase from the department’s efforts is in traffic citations, which saw a 26% increase between the two time periods with 8,917 in 2016-18 and 11,218 in 2019-21.

Dunlap noted the money from citation fines does not go to the city of Shenandoah because all citations are written out of Montgomery County Precinct 3.

Future needs

During the March 3 meeting, Dunlap addressed future needs for the department, which includes requesting two patrol officers, one detective, one administrative sergeant and an officer for a K-9 unit between fiscal years 2022-23 and 2024-25.

As of March 23, Dunlap said the department was one officer short of being fully staffed at 26 officers.

Dunlap said the average cost for a new officer position, including equipment, salary, training and benefits, is around $120,000. In the adopted fiscal year 2021-22 budget, the police department was budgeted around $3.5 million, a third of the city’s total budget.According to the 2020 American Community Survey five-year estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, Shenandoah has a population of 3,499, meaning there is one officer for about every 135 people.

“I know if you look at the size of the city and the population, it appears like we have a lot of police officers,” Dunlap said. “But if you look at the congestion and daily population, that is significantly higher.”

Dunlap said the daily population passing through Shenandoah ranges from 35,000-40,000.

“If you look at a 5-square-mile area, we have three major hospitals, a college, two high schools, several elementary schools and two major shopping malls,” Dunlap said. “That ... creates a lot of opportunities for criminal behavior.”

Dunlap said the need for officers will increase as the population in the region increases.“We want that reputation out there ... that if you are in Shenandoah, the odds of getting caught are significantly higher,” Dunlap said.