Officers Doing More Than Catching Criminals, They’re Getting the Word Out

Being an effective police officer has historically always required that an individual have excellent verbal communication skills to be able to talk with any member of society, often under extremely difficult situations.

Due to the growth of many law enforcement agencies becoming more involved in mass media communications through cable and the internet over the past 30 years, some officers have also developed a new set of communication skills to impart information to the communities that they serve. These shows have the ability to reach out to far more people now with the availability of the internet than we would have ever imagined.

Officer Rick Bussler has hosted the nationally recognized ’s LPD Journal monthly show for many years. As a former television news reporter, Bussler came to police work equipped with a skill set for production and presentation of information on television. Most officers had to learn “on the job” how to communicate in that media format the important messages to the public on how to improve their personal safety.

The LPD show has had several hosts over the years including former LPD Chief Steve Strachan, Sergeant Jim Puncochar, retired Sergeant Dave Delmonico, and myself.

In the past year, Bussler has been sharing the hosting duties of the LPD show on alternate months with Officer Kevin O’Neill. O’Neill has also been asked to do some traffic safety, public safety announcements (PSA) and last week was at the KSTP-TV studio filming one such traffic safety PSA for AAA.

By the numbers:

Activity for the week of Feb. 3 through Feb. 10:

Lakeville Police responded to 14 traffic crashes, 24 alarms, 18 animal calls, 28 medical emergencies, 8 thefts, and 151 traffic stops.

Ice Fishing:

Officer Shawn Fitzhenry received information from an off-duty officer that an adult male subject, who was known to have an active arrest warrant from Scott County, was driving on the ice on Lake Marion in a white Ford.

Fitzhenry responded to the area and located the subject driving the vehicle on Kenrick Avenue. Fitzhenry stopped the vehicle, identified the driver, and subsequently arrested him for the outstanding Scott County warrant. After Fitzhenry stopped the vehicle, he also found that the driver had no valid driver’s license. Fitzhenry detected a strong odor of marijuana when the driver opened the door of his car and when asked about it, the driver admitted he had been smoking marijuana at a fish house out on the lake. The driver was cited for multiple violations and was sent to the Scott County Jail on the arrest warrant.

Strange but true:

According to Sergeant Jim Puncochar, while working a dayshift a few weeks ago Officer Nic Stevens responded to an unusual call involving a report of 911 hang up calls. The Dakota Dispatch Center had reported receiving more than 40 calls from the same cellular phone and dispatched Stevens to investigate.

The Dispatch Center was able to narrow down the area to a residence using the GPS coordinates. Stevens made contact at a residence and learned that the calls were coming from that location. The woman who Stevens contacted at the residence stated that her daughter was playing with the phone. The daughter was 18 months old and was playing with an old cell phone that made emergency calls only.

Dumb criminal of the week:

During this time of the year, due to the icy and snow covered roadways, it is not as frequent for officers to observe vehicles speeding as it is during the warmer months of the year. However, there are exceptions to that general rule as a recent traffic stop by Officer Greg Jensen illustrates.

Jensen was on patrol one night when he heard two vehicles accelerating and then saw them pass through an intersection at a very high rate of speed. Jensen was able to stop one of the vehicles and the driver admitted that he was speeding and driving in excess of the posted 50 MPH speed limit.

When Jensen asked the driver how fast he thought he was driving, the driver initially said, “90 MPH,” but then later admitted that he may have been going over 100 MPH. Jensen issued the driver a citation.