Sheriff`s Corner

Hi and welcome to this week's Sheriff's Corner. This week's Corner will talk about false alarms or false reporting of crimes. This area of crime reporting and investigation is seldom talked about but is one of the largest areas of waste and loss of funds in law enforcement. We at the Levy County Sheriff's Office are looking into this trend to see exactly the size of the problem here. We know that we don't receive as many false alarms as some jurisdictions do.

One Sheriff's Office reported responding to more than 35,000 alarm calls. More than 99 percent of those calls were false alarms that required no law enforcement action. The people of that county were looking at $ 1.5 million annually due to this problem. Obviously, we haven't experienced anything like those statistics but I fear our loss could be proportional. So, we'll be, as I said, taking a better look at their problem in the very near future. We will also be looking at the malfunction aspect as well as the environmental or atmospherical influences that can cause a false alarm.

The other half of this situation centers around people who purposely call in the wrong or false information about crimes. Some people allege crimes that they know didn't happen. Some call in false thefts, burglaries, arsons and child abuse. It takes a detailed investigation to disprove or unfound a false report. There in lies the expense. Not to mention the times that innocent people are accused of serious crimes. We work very hard at this aspect of law enforcement. We don't want to charge an innocent person. We also want to take the appropriate action when we prove a case.

We charge false reporters criminally when it is called for.

Please have a great week. Take care.

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