The Wallis Police Department (WPD) recently released its 2021 annual report with findings that highlighted the community’s continued fraud concern but significant-ly decreased assault investigations.

WPD Chief of Police David Moseley shared the report with the Wallis City Council during their first regular meeting of 2022, Jan. 19. Moseley discussed the report and other crime data in a Feb. 1 interview.

When asked for factors that may have contributed to a 51% decrease in overall investigations and a 96% decrease in assault-related investigations, Moseley explained he felt the increase in 2020 could be partially attributed to the pandemic.

“In 2020, I attributed a lot (of crime) to COVID; people were locked down, unable to go places,” said Moseley. “We had a lot of disturbances, at least we did here. It was difficult for people to get along, so to speak. We’d have family violence calls – that sort of thing – normally you wouldn’t have that kind of tension or calls in the City of Wallis.”

Although the report in January tallied fewer investigations than 2020, felony arrests jumped over 76% to a total of 46 by the end of 2021. Moseley said this increase was due in part to growth in the region and an accompanying rise in traffic.

“I just don’t want (residents) to get it confused with, ‘Oh, we had all these felony arrests and they were citizens.’ Because that will not be accurate,” Moseley said. “A lot of that is on traffic stops where these people come back with felony warrants, or warrants (or) reckless driver calls that end up being arrested (if) they have drugs in the vehicle, weapons, you name it.”

Fraud was amongst the crimes that Moseley’s report found most prevalent in Wallis last year, which was consistent with previous years.

“I think our biggest fight currently is the fraud aspect,” Moseley said. “I have so many people that come in here and these fraudsters are so professional and so convincing that they get these citizens to do something they normally wouldn’t do, whether it be giving their social security number out, their driver’s license number out, their date of birth, or something like that.”

Budget Update

When asked how the PD was impacted by the $75,124.10 decrease in total expenses allotted for the department from the 2019-2020 FY budget to the 2020-2021 FY City of Wallis budget, Moseley explained that the shrinking budget allowance limited some expenditures.

“It hurts us as a police department, no doubt. We use that money for technology – whatever it might be – it could be as simple as a radar or to get another piece of equipment that would help investigations,” Moseley said.