No Increase to Crime Enforcement in Budget

Lakewood Police Department continues to try to reduce crime through methods other than increased law enforcement. Crime reduction is not mentioned as an expectation or result-benefit to any department goal in the 2025 Budget Book. For example, to meet the goal of “preserving a safe and peaceful community“, the police department will “encourage residents to use alternative reporting options for non-emergency incidents“. This will allow police to respond to emergencies faster, but does not increase response time to all calls or increase number of calls responded to overall. Average response time and number of calls were not given. Lakewood Police have been critiqued for not responding to calls in Lakewood news. Presumably crime reduction will follow some of these initiatives.

Other goals include “enhancing the public’s perception of safety“. For this goal, the police department will work with Human Resources to make sure police employees meet diversity standards, and ensure prompt completion of internal affairs cases. This assumes the public is aware of the results of internal affairs cases.

To “provide the highest possible level of customer service to the citizens of Lakewood” the police will disperse grant funds in low- and moderate-income areas for code enforcement.

There is no mention of enforcement targets, statistics, or crime enforcement priorities. For example, will drug use continue to be de-prioritized? Recently enacted new speed limits and traffic cameras are not mentioned.

Lakewood Police are not asking for additional staff in 2025. Instead, they will take advantage of Artificial Intelligence to streamline police report writing by using new software from Axon called Draft One. Some initial reviews of the software are very positive while others call out controversial points.

“One of the most pressing concerns is the well-documented propensity of AI models, particularly those based on large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4, to “hallucinate” facts and perpetuate biases present in their training data. In the context of police reports, which carry significant weight in the criminal justice system, even minor inaccuracies or biases could have devastating consequences for individuals’ lives and liberties.” –Felipe Chavarro, Tech Ethicist