Last year, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office received over 20,000 calls. We broke down the dispatch data to see what issues people were calling about.
Explore the spreadsheet of data and how we grouped things together.
When Jamison Wiggins started as the Grand County Sheriff in January, one of his main goals was to be more transparent with the community. Each month, the sheriff’s office has posted call stats on its Facebook page, summarizing the number of calls it received through dispatch, emergency 911 calls, traffic stops, arrests, and papers served.
In 2022, dispatch received 20,012 calls; from January 1 to August 31 this year, dispatch received 19,552 calls. The majority of those—8,287—came through during the spring tourist season in April and May.
We wanted to know: What are people calling dispatch about? To answer that question, we looked at the total number of CAD (computer-aided dispatch) calls organized by “nature of call” in 2022, plus the data the sheriff’s office posted to Facebook in 2023.
To be clear, the Grand County Sheriff’s Office divisions include criminal/civil processing, investigations, patrol (such as animal control and airport security), corrections, emergency management services, search and rescue, and 911 dispatch. The sheriff has county-wide jurisdiction, but according to its website, it “mostly concentrates activities outside city limits where municipal officers cannot operate.” In March, Wiggins told the Moab Sun News he had a good working relationship with the Moab Police Department, as the department and the sheriff’s office use the same computer system.
Dispatch tracks when people call and what they call about: calls are organized into over 200 categories of incidents. Incidents range from life-threatening—in 2022, dispatch received 11 calls about cardiac arrest—to accidental—nearly 800 calls that year were classified as “911 abandoned” or “accidental.” Sheriff deputies don’t respond to every call: many are re-routed to offices like the Bureau of Land Management or the National Park Service.
For example, in 2023, of the total 19,552 calls, 6,267 were responded to by sheriff deputies; 7,039 were emergency 911 calls; and 2,840 were traffic stops. That leaves an extra 3,406 calls that may have been accidental or were routed to another agency.
Sheriff Wiggins said in June that the sheriff’s office was fully staffed for the first time in over twenty years. The staff includes 31 sworn deputies (including himself), nine dispatchers, and six civilian staff.
“Being short-handed wouldn’t allow us as a department to be proactive as we went call to call,” he said. “Being fully staffed now allows for calls to be covered and gives us the ability to focus on other issues, such as speeding in Spanish Valley or focusing on Internet crimes against children.”
The issues in 2022
We grouped together many categories, looking at medical issues (emergency and non-emergency, like chest pain, allergies, and convulsions); traffic issues (including accidents, stops, and road damage; not including VIN inspections); natural disasters (fires, floods, and smoke sightings); abuse (non-animal abuse, including rape and sex offense); disturbances (including suspicious persons and noise complaints); minor crimes (including burglary, trespassing, and illegal burning); and harassments (including assault, fights, and intoxicated persons).
29% of calls related to traffic issues. 10% concerned medical issues. 9% were 911 accidental. 8% of calls related to various patrols: bike patrol, BLM patrol, school patrol (or the school resource officer). Disturbances accounted for 4% of calls; minor crimes and harassment for around 3% each. The sheriff’s department also conducts VIN inspections for anyone registering a new car (1,188, 6% of calls), and responds to building and fire alarms (289 calls, 1.5% of total).
Non-animal abuse, including calls about child, elder, and domestic abuse, accounted for less than 1% of calls (156 total). However, that number may be misleading: people in abusive situations are more likely to call violence-specific resources such as the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Justice estimated that under half of all violent victimizations were reported to police.
The dispatch data has a few repeats and missing areas: in 2022, calls for “Impaired persons” is listed twice, once under “impaired/intoxicated persons” (48 calls), and once for “intoxicated persons” (74). There are also undefined categories, like “DAMAGE TO JAIL” (2), and “Informational CAD 2 CAD” (2). “Shooting” and “gunshot sounds heard” are in the same category (17); that’s also a separate category from “person with a gun” (4). “Prowler” (4), “suspicious person” (446), and “threatening” (70) are also separated.
There were also calls relating to issues we didn’t know the sheriff’s department covered: 35 calls for vacation house checks; 17 for funeral escorts; 30 for scams.
This is part of an ongoing series looking into public safety issues. If you have questions about this data, or requests for what you want us to look into, email alison@moabsunnews.com.
