Hiawassee Police Department: 2019 Year-in-Review

HIAWASSEE, Ga. – Hiawassee Police Department released its 2019 statistics this week, including a breakdown of the incidents and arrests made in the city limits last year.

Click to read Hiawassee Police Department: 2018 Year-in-Review

“Three hundred sixty-four reports were filed. That’s almost one a day. Two hundred eighteen of those were incident reports. Those were reports where a crime has occurred,”  Hiawassee Police Chief Paul Smith began. Smith said that 47 miscellaneous reports were filed in 2019, explaining that the reports consisted of information passed onto law enforcement that did not necessarily constitute a crime. Ninety-four of the 364 reports involved accidents, two were domestic violence-related, and three juvenile subjects were included in the data.

“The rest of the time we spent patrolling and stopping cars. We stopped  1,061 cars last year. From those, we wrote 681 tickets. These are tickets where they actually needed to either pay a fine or appear in court, and then 426 written warnings,” Smith said. “The 681 (tickets), we actually wrote the exact same number the year prior too.”

Hiawassee Police Department’s arrests decreased by double in contrast to 2017 data. In 2019, a total of 113 suspects were taken into custody.

“Just to compare that to the previous two years, the (overall) arrests have gone down, and that’s a great thing. It’s not from us getting lazy and not doing our job,” Smith explained. “It’s from a lack of offenders to arrest.”

A total of 48 drug arrests were conducted last year, a slight increase from 2018.

Hiawassee Police Department is comprised of five law enforcement officers, including Chief Smith. Buddy, a K9 trained in drug detection, assists Hiawassee Police Sergeant Tracy James on road patrol.

Click for Hiawassee Police Department archives

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