Lakeville Citizens Help Report Suspicious Activity

Lakeville covers a very large geographic area, which can make it challenging for our officers to catch a suspect who is in the course of committing a crime. Many times when our officers are able to be successful in catching a suspect in the act of committing a crime, a resident or citizen has called in to report suspicious activity in their neighborhood.

An example of this happened late one night recently when a resident called the Dakota Communications Center on a suspicious activity report of a male suspect appearing to be going through parked cars and stealing items. The caller provided a good description of the suspect, which was relayed to the responding officers. Once the responding officers arrived in the residential area, they immediately began canvassing the neighborhood for the suspicious person.

One of the responding officers, Officer Shawn Fitzhenry, parked his squad car and went out on foot in the area. Within a few minutes, Officer Fitzhenry had located the suspect jumping over backyard fences, running from the other squad cars in the area. The subject was looking back at the squad cars on the roadway and ran right into Officer Fitzhenry. Officer Fitzhenry took the startled subject into custody without incident and recovered the stolen property. The juvenile subject subsequently admitted to the officers to stealing the items from cars in the area.

The quick apprehension and successful conclusion of this case by the patrol officers responding to the call was facilitated by the resident who took the time to call in and report the suspicious activity. Studies have shown that one of the primary factors in whether a crime will be solved or not often depends on whether there is a witness.

While we encourage everyone to report suspicious activity when they see it, many times people will see suspicious activity and will be reluctant to call, or wait until the next day to report it. We know in law enforcement that a central factor that contributes to the safety of any neighborhood is when neighbors watch out for each other and call the police when they see suspicious activity.

This is one of the key factors that have contributed to making Lakeville such a safe community over the years. People actually do call the police when they see suspicious activity in their neighborhood. In 2010 alone, our Police Department responded to over 2,100 calls of suspicious activity and, as in this case, sometimes that resulted in assisting our officers in solving a crime as it was happening.

Weekly LPD Snapshot

Sampling of activity for the week of March 1 to March 8, 2012

Traffic crashes 24, Alarms 15, Animal Calls 33, Medical Emergency Calls 39, Thefts 11, Traffic Stops 315

Off Road Vehicle Crash Injures Driver

Officer Shawn McMahon and Sgt. Jason Polinski responded to a report of a one vehicle crash on Highway 50 near the intersection of 185th Street this past week. When the officers arrived on the scene of the crash, they found that the vehicle had gone off the roadway and struck a tree on the roadside. The driver sustained injuries in the crash and Lakeville  irefighters were called to the scene to extricate the driver from the vehicle, which had sustained significant damage. The driver was transported to the hospital and the vehicle was towed from the scene. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Dumb Criminal of the Week

Officer Tom Stewart was on patrol checking out the Antlers Park parking lot one evening recently when he observed two pickup trucks in the lot doing 360 circles on the pavement. The trucks were spinning their rear tires to spin their vehicles around. As Officer Stewart entered the parking lot, the drivers of the trucks apparently saw the marked police unit and turned off their headlights, in an attempt to avoid detection, and tried to leave the parking lot. Unfortunately for the two drivers, the parking lot is completely lit and Officer Stewart had no difficulty seeing the two vehicles and stopping them. The drivers were cited and released.