Chief Douglas Stephens: Thanks everyone for joining us here today, City Manager Relph and Division Chief Smith and Enley. Really appreciate the opportunity to talk with the community here in Littleton and provide a little bit more transparency to what we have going on. This is a great opportunity for me and for us as members of law enforcement to provide an accurate and true unfiltered assessments of where we’re at with law enforcement and what we’re doing as a profession and specifically here in Littleton.
A brief overview of Littleton Police Department. Littleton, obviously for folks who don’t know, is about 14 square miles. About 45,000 residents live in Littleton. Littleton Police Department is comprised of 108 professional men and women, 79 of which are sworn, which means their traditional law enforcement officers can make arrests or service detectives, and we have a number of different support personnel that do everything from dispatch to crime scene techs to administrative assistance, and we’re a full service police department.
We handle approximately 75,000, 80,000 incoming 911 calls or nonemergency calls per year. Our officers respond on approximately 56,000 to 57,000 calls, where we actually go out and have contact with the public every single year. So we’re very busy. As the mayor said, though, we are very fortunate. We live in a wonderful community. As all Littleton community residents know, we enjoy a very low crime rate, very safe and cohesive community.