Welcome to 2019! To start off the year, I thought I would review some statistics from 2018 in regard to some of the more prevalent calls we receive here at the Kewaunee County Sheriff’s Department Communications Center.

As I was retrieving the various number—s, I was struck by how consistent our county is from year to year in some areas, but in others how we have experienced both increases as well as decreases in the number of incidents.

I think this is valuable information as we can then use this data to determine if we as a department — and more importantly, as a community — have issues we need to address.

Let’s start with car-deer accidents, as this has been an issue people ask about frequently.

For 2018, we had 454 reported, which is down from 477 in 2017. Great job, everyone, on staying alert and avoiding these types of accidents.

In regard to property damage accidents, we had 221 in 2018. This again is down from 2017, when we had 258 property damage accidents.

For personal injury accidents, we ended 2018 where we ended 2017, which was with 51.

The great news for 2018 vehicle crashes is that we did not have any resulting in death. That is in comparison to three fatal crashes in 2017. Let’s hope 2019 is just as safe.

We again saw an increase in the number of rescue calls in 2018 with 1,165, up from 1,081 calls for service in 2017. We owe a great deal of thanks to those personnel who respond to medical calls for service, as these calls are not only frequent but also demanding in the time each call takes to respond, transport from and complete from the medical facility.

In comparison, fire calls decreased to 70 in 2018, from 89 calls for service in 2017. This is no doubt due to the great fire safety messages that our local fire departments provide throughout the year as well as improved building code adherence.

We continue to live in a safe community where thefts were down from 147 in 2017 to 111 in 2018.

Unfortunately, we continue to struggle in the awareness of the dangers of impaired driving, with 63 arrests in 2018 compared to 57 in 2017.

The same can be said for our need for increased awareness of domestic violence. We experienced neither an increase nor a decrease, with both 2017 and 2018 resulting in 74 incidents. This definitely is an area where continued education will assist us as a community in not just reducing these numbers but hopefully someday eliminating these sad statistics altogether.

The final category of incidents which draws a significant amount of resources from both law enforcement and human services is mental health crisis calls.

Although our numbers are consistent, with 27 incidents in 2017 as well as 2018, there are a great number which are prevented due to the diligent work that both agencies do in supporting those in a mental health crisis before it results in an actual call for a detention.

As I stated in the beginning of this article, we don’t have large swings in our call volumes, but what we do see are incidents and crimes that are predictable — which also means they are preventable. Let’s all work together in 2019 to make differences where we can in keeping ourselves safe as well as those around us.

Matt Joski is Kewaunee County Sheriff.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Kewaunee County deer accidents down, but DUIs up, domestic violence calls stay same