Message from the Chief

It is with gratitude that I present the 2020 Flagstaff Police Department Annual Report. This past year has been a challenging one for most of us, including the Flagstaff Police Department. We saw many changes at the police department, some related to the global pandemic and others related to seeing several retirements of our leadership team.

I am proud that our personnel worked through COVID pandemic and continue to do so asessential personnel. Because of the pandemic new dispatch protocols were put in place to gather additional information so first responders could don appropriate personal protective equipment when responding to calls. The Department was able to write and secure a couple grants in the amount of $65,000 and $21,000 to assist with the purchase of equipment to keep our personnel safe. We had to limit in-house volunteer work, citizen ride-alongs, and many face to face community policing events as well to protect the community and our personnel. Despite being limited due to the pandemic, our Community Volunteer program was responsible for donating 736 hours which included assistance in the armory, the Better Bucks program, the Citizen’s Academy and other programs.

In 2020, our personnel worked several first amendment assemblies and protests. Thankfully they resulted in little violence and property damage. Members of the Department were able to take part in 393 community support meetings, an increase of 13.3% from 2019. Community Relations and other staff completed 1,518 public speaking presentations, as well as media releases which included radio and television interviews. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, virtual tours and presentations were provided to the community during Red Ribbon Week and other popular community events.

We still conducted two Citizen’s Police Academies with social distancing and mask requirements. Classes met weekly on Wednesday nights/ and several Saturdays. We advertised and promoted several traffic initiatives including pedestrian safety awareness, and child safety seat enforcement. This was undertaken after an educational component in collaboration with the Coconino County Safe Kids organization. Crime prevention information was provided at two drug drop and shred a thons. The Northern Arizona Law Enforcement Toy Drive delivered toys to hundreds of children throughout Northern Arizona, to include the Navajo Nation. This was possible due to the $11,000 in donations our community gave towards the toy drive. Officers continued to work with Nancy Lieberman Charities to host community youth programming at the Dream Court, located at the Boys and Girls Club in Flagstaff. Our inaugural youth basketball clinic was held and attended by 20 youth participants, with a local travel basketball coach leading the clinic. High school students participated in a two-day law enforcement career day hosted by the department, in conjunction with the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office.

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Our training section was responsible for providing and documenting 16,958 hours of training, which translates to approximately 150 hours of training per certified officer. (This includes recruit academy training as well as advanced officer training and field training).

Officers continued to attend various block watch meetings mostly virtual throughout the community and participated in dozens of Boards and Commissions to support our many partners.

Our Department maintained a strong social media presence throughout the year, updating our Facebook page and website often with helpful information for the public, and perhaps most importantly, continued our use of the Flagstaff PD Transparency.com website to post police reports, policies and body camera video immediately following critical incidents in our community.

The Flagstaff Police Department works closely with all law enforcement agencies in the region. There is no finer example of this collaboration than the Northern Arizona Street Crimes Task Force. This is a multi- agency, street crimes and narcotics task force that has been in existence for over thirty years. The Flagstaff Police Department supports this initiative by providing office space, and employing an administrative assistant, unit Sergeant, two officers/agents and a Lieutenant who oversees the operation. Over the course of the year several thousands of dollars- worth of illegal drugs were removed from our community.

To best allocate our limited resources, the Flagstaff Police Department employs the CompStat program. This program entails an in-depth study of crime trends every month, with a supervisory meeting monthly to discuss crime and hot spots in the community. Goals for numbers of arrests are replaced with crime reduction goals and operations and projects are formulated using data that reflects where crime is occurring, who is committing it and the root problem of the criminal activity. These tactics resulted in the Department achieving many of its goals in reducing criminal activity in 2020.

The community benefitted from reductions in aggravated assaults, burglaries, larceny theft, shoplifting and collisions last year. Property crime fell 18% in Flagstaff in 2020, with a 15% reduction in crime overall. We also conferred 10 Lifesaving awards (a historical first), on officers who provided emergency medical care to those suffering from life ending conditions.

The Department is monitoring a couple of concerning trends. The community experienced an increase in sexual assaults in 2020 (12 more cases representing a 34% increase). Some of these cases were late reported (the incident happened in previous years), but it is a trend we are monitoring carefully, and will continue to work with our partners (NAU, Northern Arizona Care and Services after Assault-NACASA, Victim Witness and others) as we enter 2021. We also monitored an increase in reported domestic violence cases throughout 2020. The year ended with a 5.7% increase in domestic violence incidents. With the influx of student housing in Flagstaff, it is important to note that per statute, the domestic violence classification is placed on all incidents involving roommates living under the same roof. We will once again work closely with our partners to continue to monitor and address this trend.

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We were successful in reforming a few of our policies to better align with community expectations. We were able to put a dozen officers through an advanced crisis intervention training to give them more tools to help on calls with those suffering from mental illness. We partnered with the Crisis Response Network and Terros Mobile Response so they could respond to non-emergent mental health calls when available in lieu of Police Officers.

In closing, 2020 was a challenging year for the Flagstaff Police Department in terms of hiring and retaining qualified personnel. In 2020, we conducted 61 background investigations and hired 11 officers and eight (8) dispatchers. We conducted 60 background investigations on prospective applicants.

I am very proud of the hard work and dedication of the men and women of the Flagstaff Police Department. With the achievements made in 2020 and the anticipation of even more progress in 2021, we look forward to the future secure in the knowledge the City we serve is supportive of our efforts to keep Flagstaff safe, and will continue to partner with us in keeping it that way.

Dan Musselman

Chief, Flagstaff Police Department

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ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW

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