Campton Hills residents keeping police busy, chief says

Requests for police service have more than doubled in Campton Hills since the village created its own department a year ago this month.

Police Chief Greg Anderson on Friday attributed the 205 percent increase to the public becoming generally more aware of the department's existence and the services it offers. He also noted that the village police force has grown from a few officers to a dozen since it formed last October.

"Generally, the more police officers that any police department has working the streets, the more calls for service you're going to get," Anderson said. "I actually see it (police calls) continuing to go up."

This week, Campton Hills released its first annual statistics since the village incorporated and took over police service previously provided by the Kane County Sheriff's Department.

The statistics show there were 3,750 calls for service between Oct. 31, 2007, and Friday. That's up from roughly 1,800 calls the sheriff's office received for the area in a typical year before incorporation.

Calls for service range from reporting serious crime to requesting increased neighborhood patrols when residents are out of town. The latter appears to be a popular service, with 450 requests in the last year.

As for actual crime, village police reported 38 assaults, 30 burglaries and 91 thefts. Anderson said the most common offense in the village is garage and vehicle break-ins.

There was one sexual assault, one vehicle theft and one robbery. Officers handled 86 vandalism reports, 16 drug cases, 16 DUIs and 17 reports of fraud, according to the statistics. Officers wrote 1,738 citations.

The department also reported 233 vehicle accidents and 109 arrests, though Anderson said the arrests figure does not include cases where suspects were released on bond without being booked into the county jail.

Over the next year, Anderson plans to re-evaluate staffing levels and consider the possibility of moving the police department out of village hall, if space becomes an issue. The department operates on a budget of about $879,000, he said.

The number of officers "depends on the demand of the residents ... how much they need us, how much they're going to call us," he said.

As for the police station itself, "Obviously we're going to have to break off from village hall at some point in the future," he said.