Acting Chief of Police Christopher Dowell discussed policing in Cottonwood at a Cottonwood Community Awareness Group on Wednesday, May 8.
Dowell has been the acting chief of police for 11 months. Prior to working at the Cottonwood Police Department, he spent 20 years at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Dowell said that he has often heard Cottonwood referred to as a violent and dangerous town due to misleading statistics, which he explained result from the way the crime is classified by Federal Bureau of Investigation standards, with many nonviolent crimes being logged as violent crimes.
CPD currently uses the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting rules, but is in the process of transitioning to the National IncidentBased Reporting System for their statistical reporting. Dowell said that NIBRS offers a more modern approach in comparison to UCR. The transition is a result of a directive from the federal government, and Dowell noted that some agencies are currently using the old system while others use the new system, causing apparent discrepancies among areas. He also argued that CPD has a proactive approach to crime by filing charges and making arrests.
For example, FBI statistics appear to show that Cottonwood experiences frequent domestic violence, but Dowell pointed out that domestic violence is now an umbrella term that also covers a number of nonviolent offenses. Similarly, burglaries are counted as a violent crime, although a burglary could just as well be nonviolent, like someone opening another person’s unlocked car to grab a wallet.
Dowell encouraged residents to review the FBI’s criteria for its statistics to be better informed on how crimes are classified and showed them how to access the crime statistics map available through the police department’s website. Using the map, Dowell demonstrated that there have been only 12 burglaries in Cottonwood since January. He also emphasized that theft in Cottonwood is scattered and not localized in any particular area of the city. As for accidents, Dowell said the city averages about 500 per year and that injury accidents have gone down, which he attributed to increased traffic, theorizing that reduced speeds due to traffic congestion result in vehicle accidents being less dangerous. He added that roundabouts are safer than street light-controlled intersections, as traffic accidents occurring in roundabouts are more likely to be glancing blows between two cars.
CPD does a variety of community outreach programs throughout the year, such as the Trunk or Treat event in October.
The department has installed 10 license plate readers around the city, and Dowell told attendees that these don’t capture drivers’ faces, only the license plates or backs of vehicles, and that the data is deleted after 30 days. He said this was useful for catching suspects, mentioning an instance of a robbery when department staff were able to look at the license plate reader, filtering the results by the time of the call, and found the vehicle that matched the call time and description of the vehicle involved, enabling them to locate the suspects.
Dowell discussed his creation of the police aide program which aims to grow CPD’s own officers and the outreach services officer position, which is intended to reduce the homeless population by getting them IDs, jobs and mental health assistance.
“We can’t be one-dimensional,” Dowell said. “These things allow us to be multidimensional.”
