Andrew Overheul

Review of Decatur Police Department

**I believe that all police officers have a very h...

**I believe that all police officers have a very hard and dangerous job and this review is not about the officers them selves it is about how the Decatur Police department operates and the service the department as a whole operates.** The department needs to get better at serving the public. Last night I had a neighbor playing music so loud in their home that it was impossible to even watch tv in our own home. We had put our kids down for bed and they couldn't go to sleep or it would wake them back up every time the group hanging out on their porch would get rowdy and start yelling over their own music. This isn't the first time several homes in the area have done this over the last two years. The department failed to respond after 3 hours of this. I had to run an errand and as I drove just a few blocks from our house found two officers parked in a parking lot talking to each other. As I came back from my errand 30 minutes later those officers were still parked door to door chatting away. This was nearly 4 hours after this was reported. The problem eventually ended and officers had still not shown up. I checked the dpdconnect website to see if there had even been a report made of the call and nothing. In fact there were only 3 incidents reported on there. I know that site doesn't cover all of what the officers do all day like traffic but it does document calls to places that don't cover traffic short of accidents and traffic related arrests. It appears that as a department we are more concerned with traffic stops and writing tickets that keeping the peace in our communities. Not the first time we have experienced issues like this with the department. I don't think the department is doing a horrible job but I do believe we can do better and be more timely about all calls. This community has many different types of people living in it. Some that are more respectful of others and some that are not. I'm not sure if the department thinks it's annoying or silly that someone would call for such a thing but we as citizens are told not to handle issues like this our selves but to contact the department to handle it. If that is the case maybe they should send people out in a timely manor to take care of it not 3 to 7 hours after the call is made. Understandable that they may take some time if something is going on like an emergency but like I said it appeared that there were officers available if they are sitting in their cruisers just chatting so it eludes me as to why there isn't a timely response. If the department does better in the future I will amend my review.