North Iowa Reporter

The Clear Lake City Council recently heard from the chief of police regarding the department's statistics and staffing changes.

During its March 6 meeting, the city council welcomed Chief of Police Pete Roth to discuss the department’s annual report and upcoming staffing changes to better address community needs. Roth began by sharing that calls to the department for service greatly decreased from 2021 to 2022, which could likely be attributed to two main reasons. The first was a general decrease in calls from citizens. The second was a decrease in the number of officers on staff, which translates to less traffic stops and events that lead to more calls for service.

Although the number of criminal charges and traffic stops were down for the last year, the amount of arrests and traffic citations have generally remained consistent. Parking citations have remained fairly steady, and golf cart and UTV permits continue to rise each year as they increase in popularity for personal and business use.

Roth also discussed some staffing changes over the last year, including the retirement of a long-serving officer, the hiring a longtime dispatcher as an officer and recruiting several new candidates.

"If you look at our new hires, we had some good dispatchers and officers hired in 2022, and we just couldn't be more happier with what we have working with right now," Roth said in the meeting. "Over at the P.D., three of these officers were already certified and they were on their own. ... We've had nothing but just positive remarks from the public that the officers deal with and from the employees themselves, that they're just happy to be here. Again, we're very excited that we're looking forward to a nice summer with a good staff this year."

Roth went on to describe the position of community service officer that has been proposed as an addition to the force. The position would be for a non-sworn officer who would work part-time for the department to take on noncriminal complaints including parking, nuisance, event setup, animal control and similar calls. The community service officer would work between 20-30 hours each week to remain within guidelines for some federal funding and would also help out on evenings and weekends in the summer with events and heavier traffic.

The council was pleased to hear about the proposed position. The City will advertise and interview for the new position once a budget has been approved.