Crime drops 20% during pandemic
One upside to the COVID-19 pandemic and limited social activities made its way into Royal Oak’s annual crime statistics.
Total crimes dropped 20 percent.
The police department’s annual report shows that serious crimes in 2020 dropped 16.4 percent compared to the year before, while less violent crime dropped over 25 percent.
Serious, or Part A, crimes include offenses such as murder, robbery, felony assaults, burglary, auto thefts and forgery.
Those serious crimes dropped from a total of 1,438 in 2019 to 1,201 last year.
“The pandemic was really the driving force for the decline,” said Royal Oak Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue. “During a good portion of the year with restaurants and bars closed, and people at home, we didn’t have the (criminal) activity we would normally have.”
Less violent Part B crimes last year were down 25.3 percent to a total of 769. Those crimes range from drunken driving, disorderly conduct and some fraud offenses to violent family incidents and non-forcible sex offenses.
“This is the one bright spot in what has been a challenging year for so many people in so many ways,” O’Donohue said of the crime decline.
Royal Oak police have typically done a number of community engagement activities,
including such things as dropping by houses with fire department employees to wish senior citizens or children a happy birthday, or celebrate a significant event in their lives.
Since the pandemic began, however, public safety officials have taken part in drive-by parades for birthday celebrations
or other events and drop off gift bags.
“We did a lot more of that during the pandemic,” O’Donohue said. “Sometimes people get isolated at home. Parents would want to do something special for a child’s birthday or something and there was not much they could do.”
The pandemic, however, curtailed police in one of their other community programs.
Five years ago police
started a Citizens Police Academy.
The seven-week course began in 2016 and accepted 25 residents at a time to teach them the different facets of police work in Royal Oak.
The program is popular and police have to turn away more people than they can accept.
Unfortunately, police had to suspend the Citizens Academy after the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year.
“We’re working hard on getting that rolling again when we can,” O’Donohue said. “We have a much better facility to host it now.”
Police earlier this year moved into their new station on 11 Mile Road near the Royal Oak 44th District courthouse.
Even if social distancing is in effect in the coming months, O’Donohue said he believes the new station probably has enough space to accommodate the academy.
“It’s a beautiful building and we’re really happy with it,” he said.