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Police report: Part 1 crimes down, no racial‑profiling complaints reported in 2024
Summary
Mount Pleasant Police presented the department’s 2024 racial‑profiling report and annual statistics, reporting an 18% reduction in Part 1 crimes, no racial‑profiling complaints, and details on traffic stops, searches and uses of force.
Chief Mark Nighauf of the Mount Pleasant Police Department presented the department’s 2024 racial‑profiling report and the agency’s annual report to city council, reporting declines in several serious crime categories and no public complaints alleging racial profiling for traffic stops in 2024.
“In 02/2024, Mount Pleasant Police Officers conducted 8,688 traffic stops,” Chief Mark Nighauf told the council, and he said that represented a 6.6% increase over 2023. He said the department issued written warnings in roughly two‑thirds of stops, issued citations in about 30% and made arrests in about 3.6% of traffic stops. Searches occurred in about 9.3% of traffic stops, the chief said; the majority of those were based on probable cause.
On profiling, Nighauf said the department’s reporting shows that the driver’s race or ethnicity was not known prior to the stop in nearly 94% of cases and that the agency received no complaints of racial profiling for traffic stops in 2024.
On crime trends, the department reported an 18% overall reduction in Part 1 crimes for the year. Chief Nighauf highlighted a 37% drop in assaults and a 31% drop in burglaries; motor vehicle theft rose 67%, from 21 to 35 incidents, which the chief attributed in part to an auto‑theft ring investigators worked with other agencies to dismantle. He praised the CID detectives and said multi‑agency work recovered additional vehicles in the region.
The department reported 106 DWI arrests in 2024, about 1,655 arrests in 2022 (reported for historical context) and seizures of 45 illegally possessed firearms during the year. On use of force, the chief said officers used force in 70 incidents and that the total number of discrete force applications was 92 (some incidents involved more than one type of force). He summarized: “when you take the totality of all those citizen contacts that our officers made over the year here in Mount Pleasant, we used force about point 3% of the time, which is less than 1% of the time.”
Council members thanked the department for the presentation and commended officers’ work; several council members asked follow‑up questions about casework, the department’s victims coordinator and the regional auto theft investigation.
The racial‑profiling report and annual report were reviewed; no formal council vote was required for the presentations.
