By GIB SNYDER
OBSERVER City Editor
It was a busy year in 2011 for the Dunkirk Police Department.
Dunkirk Police Chief David Ortolano recently released the department's annual activity report for 2011. It shows an increase over 2010's numbers.
There were a total of 1,188 arrests of adults made last year, including 829 males and 359 females. In all, the adults were charged with a total of 2,038 felonies, misdemeanors, violations and infractions.
Of those arrests, 89 were for felonies that included 154 felony charges. Misdemeanors accounted for 386 arrests and 578 misdemeanor charges. Arrests for violations totaled 322 people with 517 charges. In addition, 391 people were arrested on a total of 789 infractions.
There were 172 juveniles arrested, including 108 males and 64 females. Juvenile arrests included 17 for felonies, 32 on misdemeanors and 123 arrests for violations.
The police ended 2011 with 39,903 calls for assistance and arrests, filing 36,363 incident reports in the process.
Officers attended to 201 traffic accidents, with 162 involving just property damage and the other 39 involving a personal injury.
There were 993 moving violations, 3,540 parking violations and 131 failure to pay parking issues.
The department responded to 3,255 calls on the 911 line and 559 calls for domestic violence.
In addition, 789 people spent some time in the city lockup.
The numbers are up from 2010 figures, including a 23 percent increase in arrest charges; 20 percent in domestic dispute cases; 15 percent in total incidents; 33 percent in parking tickets and a 26 percent increase in failure to pay parking tickets.
The only decrease was in traffic accidents, which dropped 15 percent from 2010 levels.
Ortolano was asked about the increases, including the rise in arrests and domestic dispute cases.
"Arrest charges a lot of times come out of domestic dispute cases. Domestics are something that we are increasingly aware of. They also pose officer safety risks, too," he explained. "Those are calls that no matter what is going on in the situation, an officer goes in the middle of it - he's always the bad guy."
He was asked if those increases were tied to the economic conditions.
"Probably yes, you could say it's tied to the economy. When times are tough, people tend to have issues and when you have issues you tend to fight with the person that's sitting next to you," he replied. "If you have kids that are growing up and money's tight and times are tough, I guess you get on each other's nerves and things start to bother you more than normal. If you can't afford to do the things you did before, or have financial issues or any other issues like that, it does tend to. The economy affects everybody and it does tend to affect domestic issues."
As for the increase in burglaries, he said it was more than just the economy.
"House and garage entries, house entries and car entries, a lot of that though is tied to narcotics issues also," he said. "If they're looking to take something to a pawn shop - break into a car, break into a garage, grab something and resell it. That could be also a narcotics issue also, because they use it to turn around and buy the pills or drugs or whatever they're using."
The biggest percentage increase was in the number of parking tickets issued.
"That's a combination of what the Animal Control/Parking Enforcement Officer does and what our officers write on a daily basis," the chief said. "That's a phenomenon, I don't know, that could go up or down every year. With the light winter we're down a little bit, but we had a really heavy winter last year, so that could account for an increase in parking, or more people are just out and about and not moving their cars.
"Plus, the guys are out there writing more tickets. We're out there on a regular basis writing more tickets."
Ortolano had the usual advice he, and law enforcement everywhere, gives.
"If anybody sees anything or hears anything out of the ordinary, please, please call us. I'd much rather send a car to check it," he stated. "We had an issue here a month or so ago with a burglary where someone called right away and we solved it very quickly.
"Scams, if people come to the door, if someone's knocking on your door or hanging around, or if something just doesn't look right, give us a call, that's what we're here for. We'd much rather check it out than find out later it was something that you should have called us about.
"We're doing more. We're out there everyday. We are patrolling the streets, we're watching, we're doing more every single day so that contributes more to the numbers."
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