Message from the Chief

It is with gratitude that I present the 2021 Flagstaff Police Department Annual Report. This past year started with several challenges but ended with a sense of optimism.

We saw many changes at the police department, some related to the global pandemic and others related to staffing challenges and seeing several retirements of team members.

I am proud that our personnel worked through COVID pandemic. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, a few of our programs needed to be scaled back. We were able to hold two sessions of our Citizens Police Academy and an internal strategic planning retreat.

The Department was able to write and secure a few grants in the amount of $152,345.00 to assist with the purchase of equipment to keep our personnel work more efficiently, effectively, and safely. We had to limit in-house volunteer work, citizen ride-a-longs, and many face-to-face community policing events to protect the community and our personnel. Despite being limited due to the pandemic, our Community Volunteer program was still responsible for donating 1,427 hours which included assistance in the armory, the Better Bucks program, the Citizen’s Academy, and other programs.

In 2021, our personnel 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. Members of the Department were able to take part in 734 community support meetings, an increase of 86% from 2020. Community Relations and other staff completed 880 public speaking presentations, as well as media releases which included radio and television interviews. Crime prevention information was provided at National Night Out, two drug drop and shred-a-thons.

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 Chief

Message from 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. The Northern Arizona Law Enforcement Toy Drive delivered toys to hundreds of children throughout Northern Arizona, to include the Navajo Nation. In December, the Police Department hosted a holiday celebration” Hot Cocoa with a Cop”, resulting in donations of clothing, toys, food and good cheer for our community.

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Our training section was responsible for providing and documenting 19,974 hours of training, which translates to approximately 168 hours of training per certified officer. (This includes recruit academy training as well as advanced officer training and field training).

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 as well as the effects of the pandemic resulted in the Department achieving many of its goals in reducing criminal activity in 2021.

The community benefitted from reductions in homicides, sex offenses, aggravated assaults, burglaries, larceny theft, and shoplifting last year. This resulted in a 24% reduction in violent crime and a 17% reduction in property crime in Flagstaff in 2021. This contributed to 23% fewer arrests, and a 20% reduction of in-custody bookings (843 fewer individuals) this past year.

The Department is monitoring a couple of concerning trends. The community experienced an increase in injury, non-injury, and fatal collisions in 2021. Our community experienced eight (8) fatal collisions in 2021, which is up from the three we had in 2020. These numbers represent real people, and we would be remiss if we did not recognize that each of these victims leaves behind grieving family and friends. In the coming year we will look to increasing our staffing on our traffic unit. Through education and traffic enforcement we hope to move these trends in a more positive direction and support our mission of protecting and preserving life.

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. We also assisted in the research, data collection and presentations to support an alternate response mobile unit. We look forward to the launch of the CARE unit in 2022. This unit staffed by a behavioral health specialist and Fire Department Emergency Medical Technician will respond to class that do not necessarily have a law enforcement nexus.

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2021 was a challenging year for the Flagstaff Police Department in terms of hiring and retaining qualified personnel. We saw 25 Officers leave our agency in 2021. Eleven (11) officers went to other agencies, four (4) decided to leave police work, six (6) were terminated or left in lieu of termination, and four (4) retired. The high cost of living and housing continues to be a challenge for us. In 2021, we conducted 71 background investigations and hired 18 officers. Thankfully five of the officers we hired this past year were already certified, which allowed us to expedite their field training. Staffing our Communications Center has also been a challenge. We hired 15 new Emergency Communications Specialists but saw 19 folks depart during the year. In 2021, we benefited from the implementation of a new pay plan, which has been funded for the next five years. This will greatly assist in retaining our valuable employees.

In closing, 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 2021 and the anticipation of even more progress in 2022. We look forward to a 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 to keep it that way.

Dan Musselman

Chief, Flagstaff Police Department

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ORGANIZATIONAL OVERVIEW

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