FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. (WXYZ) — Crime is up and at the same time, police departments are having a hard time hiring officers.
However, Farmington Hills has largely been spared from these countrywide trends, Police Chief Jeff King told 7 Action News Friday during Check-in with the Chief.
One of the biggest issues he’s seeing in the community involves mental health.
“I would say coming out of the pandemic, it’s the mental health situation that our community is suffering from — be it individuals at a young age or an older age,” King said. “One thing that’s very unique to our community is the level of response and training and our overall program for support for mental health in our community.”
He told us Farmington Hills exceeds the standards set by the international chiefs of police.
“Every single officer and every single dispatcher in our building has received both first-aid mental health and crisis intervention training to give them the best possible set of resources and skills to respond to the community that needs help.”
Unlike many police departments throughout the country, Farmington Hills is fully staffed.
He said compensation and the culture at the police department is what attracts officers.
“Well initially, we have an exceptional compensation package involving pay, benefits and pension, and that’s really key to our profession. We are a 25-year profession, if not 30 years. That gets people in the door. But what really keeps them, not only morale high but them interested and retains them over that 25-, 30-year career is our culture, our culture of care for our employees, our teamwork, leadership and our focus on,” King said.
Like most places across the country, crime has gone up.
“We had a slight tick up in our crime last year — I believe it was 6%. But the vast majority of that 6% increase in crime overall was due to larceny from autos and automobile thefts. Those are the two crimes we see the highest spikes in,” King said.
However, there were no homicides. And as for other violent crimes, King said those are low.
“Our burglaries are surprisingly low, our armed robberies were the lowest in city history, our unarmed robberies were the lowest in city history,” King said.
Moving forward, King hopes young people will see law enforcement as a viable and honorable career.
“What we’re doing is always developing that next generation of leaders, officers, dispatchers, communication managers, records personnel. We do that all across everything in our agency. That’s what we’re really focused on,” King said. “My job is to prepare this city not only for today but to move forward in the coming years.”
