St. Charles police get high marks in community survey

Respondents to a St. Charles community survey on the performance of the police department came back with high marks for those who serve and protect. But a major flaw in the survey, perhaps skewing the results, involves a complete lack of participation from the residents most likely to have involvement with the police.

Not a single resident of the city who lives in an apartment responded to the survey. The results showed every single person responding to the survey rated the police department either "excellent" or "good" overall. That's a notable improvement over responses in 2007 that saw about 94 percent of respondents judging the police department "excellent" or "good." In fact, every category, from the appearance of officers to their cultural sensitivity while on the job improved over the 2007 survey results.

However, in 2007, nearly 12 percent of the respondents lived in an apartment. And only about 13 percent of the respondents were business owners or managers. This year, nearly 60 percent of the responses came from residents of single-family homes. Another 35 percent of responses came from businesses.

Second Ward Alderman Betsy Penny noted the total lack of responses from apartment dwellers as an important omission.

"I don't know what the explanation for that would be," Penny said. "We certainly have plenty of people who live in apartments. I would guess you have quite a few calls there."

Police Chief Jim Lamkin theorized that apartment dwellers may not place much importance on returning the voluntary surveys.

"I don't know that we could really give you an explanation about why we're not getting responses," Lamkin said. "It's not for a lack of trying."

Lamkin said the department randomly selects people to send surveys to from a pool of addresses officers responded to each month. Lamkin said the value of customer feedback through surveys may also explain the high return rate from businesses, since many businesses employ similar customer feedback surveys. In addition to the lack of responses from apartment dwellers, overall responses to the survey numbered about 60 fewer than for the same survey last year.