Beginning Sunday the Cincinnati Police Department will be changing how it responds to some calls for service in the city.
Interim Police Chief Paul Humphries said the decision comes after analyzing the department's response history.
“What takes up our time and what is the best use of our resources,” Humphries said. “It’s a fact of life that we have less officers today than we have in the past few years, so what is the best way to serve the community by doing that. So we have to make the best use of our time.”
Humphries said it will allow officers to focus more time on activities such as: impacting violent crime, youth intervention efforts, long-term problem solving projects, traffic safety and neighborhood quality of life issues.
The biggest change could be how the department will be handling minor traffic accidents. Humphries said officers will still be responding, but may not do an accident report.
“We’re going to make sure that there is no impairment issue, we’re going to make sure that the people have drivers’ licenses, and we’re going to check for the other information that’s there,” Humphries said. “We’ll give people the forms they need, they’re going to get the BMV 3303 and an exchange of information form and then the people can take care of that. The officer should be there just a few minutes.”
The department will now require security companies to try two different phone numbers before calling police about burglar, holdup or panic alarms. Humphries said 70 percent of them are false alarms.
Officers also will now be able to close offense reports when there's no viable crime scene, evidence or witnesses.
