Madison is a relatively safe town, having a crime rate that is 44% lower than the average for the entire United States. You hardly ever hear about any murders or truly heinous crimes going on, and most people don’t even think about that kind of thing on a regular basis. You might be surprised by the amount of calls for service that the police get every day, ranging from very minor to quite serious. 

Between 2018 and 2019, the crime in Madison had a bit of an upward tick in homicide, aggravated assault, theft (including identity), and arson. Other crimes like rape, robbery, different types of burglary, and simple assault decreased in frequency. If you were to add up the total number of crimes during 2019, the number is 1,433.  

From January 17-24 of this year alone, how many calls would you think the police get? Going off of the total number of crimes in 2019, fifty? Maybe a hundred? The number is actually 1,314, which does not include any arrests, citations, warnings, or reports filed. It’s a bit hard to imagine what all of these calls could possibly be about, with the number of crimes that are committed in an entire year being just over that number. To clear up any questions or confusion, Officer Ralph Dawe, one of our SROs at Bob Jones, had some insight as to what exactly goes on in our town.

He explained that “…those are just crime statistics that are considered to be more severe and it does not include all the ‘calls for service.’ Our calls for service include everything, every single call we receive, create, and respond to.” The numbers still seem awfully high, but he went on to state that “some examples would be traffic stops, see subjects (citizen requests to speak to an officer), check suspicious subjects/vehicles, assist citizens, assist stranded motorists, traffic accidents, neighborhood checks, medical calls, suicides, altered mental status calls, unattended deaths, stray animal calls, loud music calls, neighbor disputes… and I could go on further.”

Even crimes in or concerns with the school are incorporated into the long list of ‘calls for service.’ Officer Dawe elaborated that “there’s a ton of things happening in Madison City on a regular basis. Even every report SROs receive here at Bob Jones is considered a call for service. For instance, a student being in possession of a JUUL, a student fight, thefts occurring at school, burglaries to the school, and reports of child abuse.” It is a bit surprising that even things that are school-specific are put into the same category as service calls. 

All in all, officers really have a lot to respond to, including things that you might not have ever thought about. They do help to bring aid to some truly heinous situations, but they also have to attend to the calls that never even amount to anything. This just goes to show that any call has importance to Madison police, regardless of the level of severity.