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By James W. Robinson

Staff Writer

According to a report delivered to the Suffolk City Council on Oct. 16, overall crime in Suffolk decreased, while fire and rescue incidents increased. The report, which covered the period from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024, included updates from the Suffolk Police Department (SPD), Suffolk Fire & Rescue (SFR) and the Department of Finance.

SPD Chief of Police James “Danny” Buie, SFR Chief Michael J. Barakey and Director of Finance Charles Meek each provided reports from each of their departments. In his Crime Statistics and Community Outreach report, Buie detailed that calls for service from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 decreased from 71,380 to 69,930, which together totaled 141,310. Self-initiated calls for service totaled at 70,644. Part I Crimes saw an overall decrease from 1613 in 2023 to 1472 in 2024 with arson being the only crime category increase (increasing from 3 to 6) in 2024.

“…Part I Crimes are down 9 percent,” Buie said. “It’s projected that with the current trend at the end of the year that our crime will be down 5 to 9 percent for the year.”

On community outreach events, Buie detailed that since the rehire of Community Outreach Coordinator Joan Turner into SPD on Aug. 7, the department has attended 23 community events, including YMCA Alzheimer’s Walk, Suffolk Public Schools – Back to School Welcome, Civic League Meetings and National Night Out. Accomplishments included three job fairs with 110 applicants and 11 lateral hires, an increase in recruitment and retention, a decrease in vacancies and 16 new recruits currently within the Police Academy. Likewise, Marcus Alert implementation, Photo Enforcement cameras, police trikke bikes and the addition of new K9 bomb dog Crash were included. 

In his report, Barakey provided incident data for Fiscal Year 2023-2024. Total Fire and Rescue responses increased from 44,766 to 47,541. Total calls for service (incidents) increased from 19,071 to 19,479 and Alarms, Hazards, Investigations increased from 4,863 to 5,393. Emergency Medical Incidents decreased from 14,208 to 14,086. Barakey also detailed that property loss and content loss increased from $3,341,456.00 and $863,045.00 to $3,588,143.00 and $1,531,540.00. Total loss increased from $4,204,501.00 to $5,119,683.00.

“I am not going to say that’s a celebration. We don’t want to have property loss or content loss, whether it’s a business, a structure, a vehicle, whatever. But when you look at, and I didn’t put it on here, our property saved, when we respond to a structure that’s on fire or a vehicle that’s on fire, then in our fire reporting we’re required to say the estimated dollar loss of the structure of the vehicle and then we have to put the value of that – the value of the home,” Barakey said. “Many times we use our open data with the assessors or open data with Kelly Blue Book to see what the value of that vehicle or that structure was, and then the difference of that would be what we call property saved.”

Barakey says their current property saved for large businesses alone is close to $100 million. He also detailed the department’s busiest station, medic, engine and ladder. Fire Station 1, Medic 1 and Engine 3 remained the busiest at 4,404, 4,022 and 2,558 calls for service respectively. Ladder 11, however, overtook Ladder 3 as the busiest ladder with a 2024 total of 1,649 calls for service. Likewise, data from the Fire Marshal’s Bureau saw investigations/fire responses follow ups increased from 298 to 343. Arsons, threat to bomb/burn explosives, and hazmat environment also increased from 5, 81 and 47 to 9, 88 and 54 respectively. Inspections permit site-visits did see an decrease from 612 to 603.

In his Community Safety Project report, Meek detailed that completed programs include school flasher upgrades, police trikkes, Sheriff Department bulletproof vests, Kings Fork High School and Middle School crosswalk and Mill Street guardrail improvements, which all total at $322,739. Currently, in progress funded programs and projects include Portsmouth Blvd/Suburban Dr. pedestrian signal and crosswalk for $500,000, Downtown Streetlight upgrades and additions for $400,000, a train information program for $250,000. School sidewalk additions for Nansemond River High, John Yates Middle, Booker T. Washington Elementary and Hillpoint Elementary Schools at $125,000 and much more. Projects in progress are currently totaled at $5,092,200.

“So a lot of good things going on that citizens will see here in the near future,” Meek ended.