By Chris Basinger, Staff Reporter
TRUSSVILLE–The Trussville Police Department released its annual report for 2023, giving insight into the department’s operations over the last year.
The report, compiled by TPD Chief Eric Rush, includes data on calls for service, crime, vehicle incidents, and arrests as well as a preview of the new cameras that will be installed in patrol cars this year.
In 2023, the department had a total of 24,602 calls for service, an increase of 10.62% from the 22,240 calls in 2022.
Generally, the numbers of crimes in each category in the report were consistent with previous years, but there were some categories that saw significant decreases as noted by Rush.
“This year there were a lot of the crimes that were way down,” Rush said.
“Our call volume was up 10% and so we had a decrease in crime but with an increase in calls, so anytime that happens that’s a good thing because typically an increase in calls would mean crime’s going up but that wasn’t the case last year.”
Shoplifting had a steep drop from 411 cases in 2022 to 299 cases last year.
Vehicle theft also saw a decrease from 59 to 38 in 2023.
DUIs have also seen a steady decline in recent years.
There were 89 DUIs in 2021, 72 in 2022, and 65 in 2023.
Trussville also saw zero homicides last year according to the report.
At the same time, there were some calls that saw an increase in 2023 such as narcotics complaints, which jumped from 61 in 2022 to 84 last year.
Trussville also saw a rise in traffic accidents.
There were 1,300 traffic accidents without injury in 2023, an increase from 1,216 in 2022, and 138 traffic accidents with injury, up from 122 in 2022.
The numbers of citations and warnings issued also saw significant increases.
There were 4,878 citations issued in 2023, up 11.83% from the previous year, and 3,753 warnings in 2023, up by over 1,200 from the previous year.
According to the report, the Trussville City Jail processed 1,730 people in 2023.
In total, 2,679 people were processed through the jail including arrests by other agencies.
The report also teased a new piece of technology the department will be implementing to help prevent and solve crimes.
Later this year, TPD will be installing Axon in-car cameras with automated license plate readers in every patrol car.
The cameras will be able to automatically take a picture of every license plate they view and run the plates against a criminal database.
“We’re mainly looking for stolen vehicles, stolen tags, and wanted persons,” Rush said.
According to the report, one patrol car managed to read 6,654 tags in just one week during a test of the camera.
Rush later added, “We’re not watching law-abiding citizens. We don’t care what you do as long as you’re not breaking the law. If you’re breaking the law, we’re going to be looking for you, so we use that technology to track criminals, we don’t use it to track law-abiding citizens.”