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In This Issue...
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911
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What Is Happening In My Neighborhood?
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What Is Happening In My Neighborhood?
By Capitola Police Chief Mike Card
Capitola police ramp up for the summer season almost immediately after the busy Christmas shopping season. Like many destination locations, one busy season leads into another.
From the public safety aspect most of the local police officers and deputies can't seem to get much of a slow-down from season to season. Sirens sounding, red lights flashing, and the police cars going to emergency calls often generate calls to your local police department.
Why were the police cars running down the street? Why were they parked so long at a certain location? Why did the officers have their guns out?
Visitors and potential business or residents are often interested in the calls for service and general crime information for the communities along the coast. They want to know what's happening in coastal communities like ours. We are now providing that information in a manner that is accessible to our residents and interested parties.
Calls for Service
Local agencies are by in large, dispatched through the Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 center, otherwise known as Netcom. Activities involving local public safety are generally recorded in some manner by Netcom.
If a local officer is sent to a location because of a 9-1-1 call, it is considered a dispatch-initiated call for service. If the police officer acts on an observation it is considered an officer-initiated call for service. In a significant number of these calls for service the officer will create documentation for local use. We call the documents reports. This documentation is all digital these days. This means that we can place that information on the Internet for the public to see in one manner or another.
Our reports whether dispatch initiated or officer initiated are summarized each weekday on the local police department Internet web site at www.ci.capitola.ca.us/capcity.nsf/PolIntro.html.
Each report is listed with date, time, location, summary, and nature of the charges, if any.
What about the calls for service where there is no report taken because there is no need for further action?
We are having a report written that will list that information on a daily separate document which we will put up on our web site. Many active recreation destinations like ours find, as we do, that most of the activities that our police and community service officers respond to do not result in documentation, but still bring questions from our residents. Sometimes these activities are decidedly more interesting than the routine shoplifting report, and give a certain flavor to every community.
What Police Activities Are Occurring Around Me?
Perhaps you would like to have a bird's eye view of where the police activity is taking place.
We have that too, in a mapping format. We are subscribing to www.CrimeReports.com and our information is updated each morning on that web site. We have installed a widget to click on at our City web site at www.ci.capitola.ca.us It will take you directly to the map of this community where you can see a pin map representation of the activities you are interested in or that you specify and the date range for the activities.
Let us know what you think about the site. Although we like it, the subscription does impact our budget in tight financial times.
How Do I Hear About an Emergency When I Am on Cellular?
The professionals at Netcom have created a way for you to get notification of emergencies when you are out and about on cellular or using your cellular as your primary phone.
Netcom has a program that can call cellular phones that are registered with the center. Online registration is at www.sccecc.org. The program is part of the Emergency Notification System used by Santa Cruz Regional 9-1-1 to notify residents and businesses of emergencies in this county.
Contact Us
We hope to hear from you, particularly about the crime mapping site.
Call my office at 475-4242 or email the staff at policechief@ci.capitola.ca.us. If you would like for us to retain the program, call or email us.
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