Traffic Safety a Concern for Police, Lakeville's Chief Says

Lakeville has hundreds of miles of streets, roadways, and highways that thousands of vehicles travel on every day and night of the year. Traffic safety is an important public safety concern for the officers of our department in serving in a community that is as geographically large as . To help make our roadways safer, all our officers patrol our high volume roadways frequently providing both high visibility to help prevent crashes and traffic enforcement when traffic violations do occur.

If you look below at the weekly LPD summary of activity, you will see that our officers responded to 17 traffic crashes in the past seven days. In 2010, our officers responded to almost 600 traffic crashes. Most of those crashes involved only property damage to vehicles, but others resulted in injuries to the drivers and passengers of the vehicles.

Over the past 30 years, significant engineering improvements in our roadways and improvements in the safety devices in all of our vehicles, including the introduction of active vehicle safety devices such as airbags and ABS braking systems, have contributed to reducing the number of injuries in traffic crashes.

Ultimately, traffic safety is the personal responsibility of every driver on the road. By making good choices not to drink and drive, not to be distracted while you drive, to make everyone in your vehicle wear their seatbelt and to follow traffic rules of the road, we each can contribute to making our roadways safer for everyone.

Weekly LPD Snapshot

Sampling of LPD activity for the week of March 14 to March 21, 2012
Traffic Crashes 17, Alarms 30, Animal Calls 51, Medical Emergency Calls 23, Thefts 15, Traffic Stops 309

Shoplifting Call Leads to Multiple Arrests

Most times, when an officer responds to a shoplifting call, the person will be identified and issued a citation and released. But other times it is not that simple, as in this shoplifting call that Officer Jessica Swaner and Officer Jim Dronen responded to at a large retail store this week. The officers arrived at the location and were advised by the store Loss Prevention staff that the shoplifting suspects were out in the parking lot. The officers located and arrested the suspects. One suspect was found to have a felony arrest warrant for burglary and another was found in possession of narcotics. The suspects were subsequently placed in Dakota County Jail pending formal charges.

Sad Passing

This past Thursday, a steady stream of officers and detectives stopped by the wake at St. John’s Church for , who had passed away on March 18 in his home in Lakeville. Eddie was a well-known and well-liked individual in Lakeville, often seen riding around town on his three-wheel bicycle. Many officers and staff frequently had their days brightened by Eddie’s familiar friendly greeting and he will be missed. On behalf of the men and women of the Lakeville Police Department, we extend our condolences to Eddie’s family and friends at his passing.

Dumb Criminal of the Week

Officer Jai Hanson responded to a large retail store on an “in progress” theft call from the store’s security of a female subject who had switched tags on merchandise and defrauded the store of over $270. When Officer Hanson and other officers arrived, they located the suspect attempting to leave the parking lot of the store and took her into custody. Officer Hanson identified the suspect and in his investigation found that the subject had committed multiple crimes of theft when she came into the store.

The suspect not only attempted to steal merchandise from the store by switching price tags; but prior to that she also used a driver’s license stolen in Eden Prairie to return merchandise at the service counter, merchandise that had actually been stolen from another store in Blaine. The property was returned to the store and the suspect was placed in Dakota County Jail in Hastings pending multiple charges of theft and fraud.