Overall crime is down in Wellington, with retail theft and vandalism decreasing the most, Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Jay Hart told the Wellington Village Council last week.
On Tuesday, Jan. 28, Hart gave his annual report, which showed that increased enforcement has also led to a decline in traffic accidents, while property crime as a whole continued to drop.
“Property crime has declined for the fourth consecutive year,” Hart said. “Our goal was to reduce it to fewer than 1,000 cases, and this year we reduced it to 713 cases.”
Compared with the 745 cases in fiscal year 2012, property crime declined 4 percent. “The numbers are going in the right direction,” he said. “I’d like to see that decrease even more next year.”
Retail theft declined most drastically, with a 19 percent drop, while residential burglaries also fell from 275 cases last year to 232 cases this year.
Hart said that although residential burglaries are tough to solve, many homeowners are taking measures to help police identify criminals.
“So many factors go into solving a case, and if someone comes into your home with gloves on and never pawns an item, it’s very difficult,” he said. “But more families are installing cameras, which helps.”
This leads to pictures and car descriptions. “As more people continue to put them up, it will make things easier for us,” Hart said.
Vandalism also fell in Wellington by 11 percent. Hart attributed this to increased deputy presence.
But the village did see an increase in robberies over the past year, with three more cases than in fiscal year 2012. Although Wellington is still below average in terms of robberies, Hart said he wants to see them eliminated.
“One robbery is too many,” he said. “Twenty-four robberies occurred in Wellington this year, which is still 20 percent below average.”
Of the robberies, Hart said about 54 percent of them had been solved, with several being fabrications.
“Some of them did not occur,” he said. “What happens is someone spends their money on drugs and then has to make up an excuse to where the money went. We know the indicators and are able to figure that out fairly quickly.”
Hart said Wellington saw some bank robberies this year, but arrests had been made in each case. “We had no robberies that were identified as gang robberies,” he said. “That is a very good thing.”
PBSO deputies continued to keep the crash rate low this year — fewer than 2.2 crashes per 100 residents — but Hart said texting and driving continues to be an issue. “We averaged 107 crashes per month; that’s about three or four a day,” he said. “But over the Christmas holiday, we had 36 accidents in two days. The majority of that is people not paying attention. They’re texting. A lot of the cases are rear-enders from people just not paying attention.”
To help, PBSO deputies stepped up enforcement last year and made 9,948 traffic stops, a 21 percent increase, Hart said. “We issued more than 7,500 citations,” he said. “But we are writing three to four warnings for every two to three citations.”
There was a 16 percent increase in citations. “We wanted the traffic rate to go down,” he said. “We felt the only way to do that was to stop more cars and write more tickets, and it worked.”
Overall, PBSO deputies made 1,162 arrests last year, far below the average of 1,520 arrests per year.
“We feel the village is getting safer,” Hart said. “As a result, we have made fewer arrests. We feel we are doing our job suppressing crime, and that gives our deputies more time to investigate calls and make arrests.”
But there is still work to be done, Hart said. He said next year his goal is to see fewer than 700 residential burglaries, down about 300 cases from the goal in the past.
“We’ve come in under 1,000 residential burglaries for the past three years in a row,” he said. “We hit that benchmark, and now we want to surpass it by aiming for fewer than 700.”
He also hopes to clear 10 percent of those burglaries, something Hart said should be easier thanks to increases in staff. “We now have a detective sergeant and three staffed detectives,” he said.
Deputies will continue to enforce traffic laws, hoping to keep the crash rate low. Hart said his department will also step up enforcement of commercial vehicles.
“We have a vehicle that comes out once a month for eight hours and does nothing but commercial enforcement,” he said. “You have a lot of building going on in the south area. Any time there’s a big project, more than 200 trucks a day will be in that area. We want to make sure they are being safe and in compliance with the law.”
Finally, Hart said deputies will continue to focus on preserving public spaces. Hart said this is achieved by having a PBSO presence in parks and other public areas.
“You have some of the most beautiful parks in the county, and you’ve put a lot of money into those parks,” he said. “We’re going to continue to go into the parks and be a presence. We tell our deputies to go sit there while doing paperwork so they can observe what is going on and so their presence can be seen to dissuade any trouble.”
ABOVE: PBSO Capt. Jay Hart
