For the 10 months of 2009, the Delta County Sheriff’s Department has responded to 373 calls for service in “the Orchard City area,” made 24 arrests in connection with those calls, and handled an additional 49 traffic offences.

Delta County Sheriff Fred McKee attended the Orchard City trustee meeting on Nov. 4 and gave the annual report on his department’s law enforcement activities in the town for the year.

McKee’s report included other crime statistics that town residents interested in happenings around the neighborhood will find interesting. Those statistics included the following ones:

• Civil complaints and animal control complaints topped the town’s call-in list with 26 calls and 25 calls respectively.

• There have been 19 reports each of theft and disturbance, and the sheriff received 14 calls for domestic violence.

• There were ten cases of criminal mischief; eight restraining order complaints; six assaults; four traffic accidents; three each unattended death and DUI; and, there has been one burglary and one sexual assault.

McKee’s report offered basic population-to-officer ratio data that indicates the relative response loads of agencies in Delta County. For example, the unincorporated county area, with Orchard City and Crawford added in, has a population of 17,187. Patrolled by the sheriff’s 14 uniformed deputies, that is a person-to-officer ratio of 1227-to-one.

Ratios for the other local law enforcement jurisdictions in the county work out as follows:

• Hotchkiss, 341-to-one;

• Paonia, 409-to-one;

• Cedaredge, 440-to-one;

• And Delta, 673-to-one.

McKee explained that his department divides the unincorporated county into five districts and tabulates the response calls for each of the districts.

District #1 surrounds the City of Delta and has generated 742 calls for sheriff service in the last ten months of 2009.

The other county districts are District #2 (Surface Creek) with 442 calls; District #3 (North Fork) with 738 calls; and, Orchard City with 373 and Crawford’s 73 calls bringing the total DCSO calls for January through October this year to 2,368.

Under a contract agreement with the sheriff’s office, the town pays $50,000 per year to fund an additional uniformed sheriff’s deputy. One of his department’s 14 deputies is paid for by Orchard City. Before the agreement went into effect in 2008, his department had 13 uniformed patrol deputies, McKee said.

Under the agreement with the sheriff, the town also pays for a new sheriff’s patrol vehicle every three years.

The deputy that Orchard City pays for is not specifically assigned to Orchard City detail. But, by having that extra officer on the roster, it is reasoned, the sheriff is better able to respond in the town where the number of calls for sheriff assistance have been growing rapidly for several years.

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