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Middletown police report February drop in calls and crimes; new records system cited
Summary
Police staff told the Middletown Police Commission that February calls for service and several crime categories declined compared with January, and members cautioned that a countywide records-management migration on Feb. 10 likely affected the figures and officer productivity.
Middletown Police Commission members heard that the department handled 1,907 calls for service in February — a 16% drop from January’s 2,271 calls — and that several crime and enforcement categories declined in the same month while the department migrated to a new countywide records management system.
The statistics were presented by a police department staff member who cautioned that February’s data “may not be a % accurate, because February 10 we merged our records management system,” and said some figures could be adjusted as the department reconciles records from the old and the new systems.
The department reported 24 Part 1 crimes in February (7 violent and 17 property offenses), down from 28 the prior month; 88 Part 2 crimes, down from 126; 110 arrests, down from 167; and 62 traffic summonses, compared with 181 in January. The department recorded 582 parking tickets in February, up from 456 the previous month, a 28% increase. Use-of-force incidents logged for February numbered five, a figure the presenter described as “just over… about 4.5%.”
The staff member said the declines in recorded activity were partly seasonal — noting cold weather can reduce some calls — but emphasized a larger factor was the migration to the new records management system, which went live for the department on Feb. 10 and requires staff to learn different workflows. “It was taking 15, 20, 25 minutes longer than what it used to take, just navigating through it,” the staff member said, describing a learning curve that initially slowed officers’ reporting and field productivity.
The department said the system is countywide and shared by other agencies; at the time of the presentation, Middletown was one of three departments already live. The presenter traced the change to a longer-term replacement effort, noting the prior vendor’s product was acquired and support ended, and that the county will centrally fund the new system supplied by a firm the speaker identified as Niche.
Commissioners did not undertake any vote tied specifically to the February statistics and the database migration, but the presentation framed the data as provisional pending reconciliation of records across the old and new systems.
The department said staff are continuing to troubleshoot the vendor’s software, expect incremental weekly improvements and anticipate that, once all county agencies are live, the shared database will improve investigative information-sharing.
The commission accepted the February meeting minutes earlier in the session. No formal vote to adopt or amend the February statistics was recorded.
