Chief Cecilia Ashe reported that crime rates are lower than 2023
During her monthly police report to council, Milford Police Chief Cecilia Ashe provided details on a recent federal audit. The audit reviewed the Comprehensive Opioid Stimulant and Substance Use Program (COSUP) that allowed the police department to expand their behavioral health unit.
“So, we sat through that audit last week, we were able to bring on our final clinician, our fourth clinician. So, as I’ve indicated in prior meetings, we now have seven day coverage, and the goal is really to try to get us to 24 hour of coverage, as we try to combat the behavioral health issues with mental crisis, as well as with the opioid crisis,” Chief Ashe said. “This grant specifically focuses on opioid addictions and overdoses, and how do we comprehensively reduce those if you look in your packet, you’re going to start to see that we’re making significant progress.”
Chief Ashe continued, stating that the battle had not been won, but progress was evident.
“I think this is very cyclical, and we’re going to have ebbs and flows as we deal with the addiction and the open air drug market of fentanyl and heroin. But in this report, you’ll see that we look at our overall calls for service for overdose. We do a comparison from the year prior. In 2023 we had 38 complaints for overdose. This year, we’ve had 15 year to date,” Chief Ashe said. “So this is showing a 60% almost 61% decrease in overall overdose calls for service. With that, we go to the next one, and that will show the number of drug complaints that we received. And these are also based on calls for service. In 2023 we had over 204 complaints for drug activity or some type of drug call in 2024 thus far, year to date, we have 125 so we’re seeing a 38% decrease, and as 39% decrease in drug complaints.”
Next, Chief Ashe provided statistics on impacts in arrests made and there was an overall 12 percent decrease. She stated that these were positive numbers because it indicates a reduction in calls for service.
“We’re making an impact on overlaying multiple strategies of not just deploying our behavioral health unit, but working in concert with the state to get Narcan out into the field to reduce the fatality rate, but we’re also reducing the arrests, which means we’re not just arresting people to arrest them, because we know in this environment, like with all crimes, we’re not going to arrest our way out of it. We need people to get help and really start to change their lives,” Chief Ashe said. “This does not mean, by any stretch of the means, that we are not enforcing laws. We are still going after those that are dealing drugs. To me, this indicates that we’re being very targeted and specific to those that are inflicting this harm on to our communities, or those that are not heeding the warning of getting the help and the things that they need to combat their drug addiction.”
One of the issues facing the department was a lack of historical data as the crime analyst was just recently hired. She also stated there are many components that need to be “drilled down on” in order to get a holistic picture of crime statistics. One area where they lacked data was in ambulance or fire calls. Recently, the department added OD Mapping which allows law enforcement, hospitals, fire companies, ambulance crews and paramedics to enter information so statistics can be pulled.
“One of the things that we learned in this audit as well is a way for us to report information better that you’ll start to see in the future, months to come, is a system called REDCap. This will now give our clinicians the ability to enter in information electronically into REDCap, which then saves the paper trail. It saves useless Excel, well, not useless, but repetitive Excel sheets that you guys will see in your monthly reports,” Chief Ashe said. “This gives us now the ability with REDCap, those clinicians to be entering that information in real time, and it then gives us, as an administrative staff and an executive staff, the ability to drill down and pull reports in real time, waiting till the end of the month to get those reports. So, we continue to work through this. We’re through our second quarter and were evaluated. The Feds were very happy with the progress and the fact that we’ve been able to bring on two additional clinicians in the amount of time, as well as a crime analyst that is able to produce this information rapidly so that we can appropriately direct our resources.”
Councilwoman Nirmala Samaroo asked the chief to provide information on the new safety team structure at Milford School District.
“So, we started Officer Golding towards the end of the school year, just because one of our officers had left. So, we continue to work month to month with the school district on various things that we can address. One of the things that the superintendent and I met about last week was in reference to alert systems, similar to what you saw in Georgia with that tragic incident there, but we continue to work with them,” Chief Ashe said. “Over the summer, we worked with them and had our team go in and do an evaluation of the schools and their emergency response plan. Again, these things are not perfect. All we can do is plan, prepare for the worst and hope for the best. But with that, we continue to make suggestions to them on improvements.”
Another safety feature Chief Ashe would like to see added is the ability for police officers to gain access to school buildings when doors are traditionally locked for safety.
“All of our officers carry scan cards. It’s a similar system to what the school system has, and we’re currently working with them to convert our scan cards over into their system so that they can be read at a school building so we’re not running into the episode of where we’re trying to find keys,” Chief Ashe said. “This would be something where the officers could receive and get immediate access into the building, and the same is true for here or for any of the other city buildings. We’re historically always restricted from going in there.”
Councilman Jason James asked about social media posts that show high crime statistics in Milford.
“Do you anticipate seeing improved numbers now that a crime analyst is on board because he hasn’t been on board long enough to affect the previous year. So, tell me what your expectations are, because we’ve been talking about the negative numbers that have been out there in the social media world, the internet world, about Milford’s crime rate, which some of us believe wasn’t even related to Milford,” Councilman James said. “If they have 19963 zip code or close to it, they say it’s Milford, but where? Where? How is this information available to the public? How can it become available? Because these are really, really good numbers, really good news. And I like for good news to be told to those so people can hear it.”
Chief Ashe stated that this was something that would be discussed at the next Public Safety Meeting.
“With the leadership of Councilwoman Wilson at our next Public Safety meeting, we’ll be highlighting some of the strategies that I talked about when I first came through the door, as well as our one year goals to look at the ComStat methodology,” Chief Ashe said. “What are we seeing with the numbers that we’ve put together thus far from the crime analyst, and what does that look like? Our goal with those numbers, once we present that to the Public Safety Committee, so that everyone has an understanding of what the numbers mean, how do we translate these numbers?”
Chief Ashe continued.
“The goal is for us to be putting this out publicly on our website, and we’re hoping for an anticipated start of hopefully somewhere in January of 2025 we’ll be able to start. But we want to make sure that council and the citizens understand. What are the numbers? How do the numbers drive what are some of the challenges that we’ve had to face internally to how reporting is done, which in some cases, could be incorrect or miscategorized,” Chief Ashe said. “So, it is something that when you build these systems, it you really have to have a strong foundation. You have to look in house to correct some of the errors that I see as an administrator, with my experience of building these and other jurisdictions and then actually being able to as close to accurate report those numbers so that we can see the successes. I’m not going to put out the numbers prior to that meeting so that way we capture people to actually log into that meeting as well, but we’re seeing significant drops in crime.”
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