Falmouth Police Chief Seeks More Officers

CCB MEDIA PHOTO
Falmouth Police Chief Edward Dunne.

FALMOUTH – The Falmouth police chief hopes to add more officers to the department.

Edward Dunne gave the board of selectmen a quarterly report last month and wants to increase the number of officer positions from 58 to 66.

From November of last year through March of 2016 the department responded to more than 9,547 total calls, which was up from about 8,300 the previous year.

“Call volume was up 14.21 percent from last year,” Dunne said. “We have been very, very busy.”

The number of dispatch calls were about the same with 4,998 from November of 2015 to March of this year compared to 5,056 during the same time period the year before.

The increase in call load has come from self-initiated calls by officers who have been more proactive over the last year with more motor vehicle stops and investigating other suspicious activities. Those calls increased from 3,303 to 4,549.

Dunne believes that increase is from the department hiring 11 more officers last year.

“It could be that we have new officers that are eager to learn and are just out and about doing their job,” Dunne said.

Dunne said when the department was down 14 officers their self-initiated call volume were down because they were more of a reactive department.

“We didn’t expect our guys out trying to look for things because they were just going from call to call to call,” he said.

By BRIAN MERCHANT, CapeCod.com NewsCenter