In presenting his report to the Town Council on law enforcement activity in Fountain Hills for 2020, Maricopa County Sheriff’s Capt. Larry Kratzer said there was some increased activity that the Sheriff’s Office believes it attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past year.

Kratzer specifically cited increases in identity theft (54 percent), disorderly conduct (56 percent) and domestic violence fights (43 percent) as the type of incidents possibly impacted by the stress and confinement of the pandemic. He also said there was an increase in suicide attempts, although that showed a greater increase between 2018 and 2019 (eight incidents) than 2019 to 2020 (six incidents).

Complaints about loud neighbors, possibly a result of more people being home, also jumped from 116 in 2019 to 154 in 2020.

After getting the bad news out of the way, Kratzer went on to say that Fountain Hills remains a “very safe” community. He said that although there is no FBI ranking to rate the quality of a community, Fountain Hills is considered one of the safest in the state of Arizona.

New policies initiated by the council through the Traffic and Pedestrian Safety Committee are also showing positive results, according to Kratzer.

Stops for traffic violations increased by 205 percent in 2020 over 2019. As a possible result of that, non-injury traffic collisions fell by 26 percent and collisions resulting in injury were down by 17 percent. Also, traffic stops for speeding fell dramatically from 156 to 38 between 2019 and 2020. That is even more impactful when considering there were 691 speeding stops in 2018.

Hit and run incidents with no injures also dropped by more than 50 percent.

Incidents that also showed a reduction in 2020 include theft, burglary from a vehicle and burglary.

Kratzer’s report outlined the top 20 calls for service, 3446 in 2020 (3830 in 2019), top 20 on view (deputy stops) 6,289 in 2020 (6,424 in 2019) and top 20 calls with incident reports 1,016 in 2020 (955 in 2019).

Vice Mayor David Spelich thanked Kratzer for his report and the good work of his department.

“These year-end numbers would be one month in Chicago,” Spelich said. “This is really helpful; people need to know how safe the town is.”

Mayor Ginny Dickey said Kratzer’s presentation was helpful in interpreting the numbers in the report.

There is an increase in traffic stops, Dickey noted. But there are related decreases in other areas such as collisions.

“Traffic stops can be good even with an increase,” Dickey said.