Lyon County Sheriff’s Message of the Week: September 6th, 2024

School is back in session, and I want to take the time to recognize a community member who is doing her very best to keep our children safe. She goes by Joy, and she is the crossing guard in the school zone on Hardie Lane. Joy is always happy, and operates with a large smile on her face! Joy loves her coffee, and making sure our children are safe in the school zones. Joy is raising funds to add safety signals and signage to Hardie Lane in an attempt to make it safer. The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office has a golf tournament fundraiser tomorrow in Dayton, and some of the proceeds will be given to Joy to help her cause. Thank you, Joy, for your dedication and hard work!

The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office’s response times remained low, consistent throughout the summer. After sharing the response times, I have had several questions on what constitutes a priority one, two, and three calls. Since we will continue to share these numbers, I want to inform the community what these types of calls are. (Disclosure: the priority can be manually changed depending on the crime type and in-progress nature of the call for service.)

Emergency medical call, Suicidal subject, active violent crimes where a person’s life is in imminent danger, and Fire.

911 call, Injury accident, ADW, Air Incident, Bomb threat, Burglary in progress, Escaped inmate, Fight, Fire alarm, Hold up alarm, Home invasion, Kidnap, Missing Juvenile, Riots, Robbery, Sexual Assault, Shots, Traffic Stop and Train incident.

Accident without injury, Alarm, Assault, Attempt to locate, Battery, Assist other agency, Burglary, Child related crime, Counterfeit, Custody Dispute, Death Investigation, Domestic violence, Elder abuse, Embezzlement, Flood, Fraud, Harassment, Jail incident, Juvenile runaway, Mental health transport, Missing person, Narcotics, Neighbor Dispute, Open door, Prowler, Pursuit, Possible DUI, Search and Rescue, Stalking, Shop lifting, Suicide third party, TPO Violation, Unwanted person, Warrant service, and Welfare check.

The priorities and call natures are listed for dispatching purposes and do not reflect the criminal response priorities, crime reduction priorities, and proactive goals of the Lyon County Sheriff’s Office. Once the type of call is determined, a Lyon County Sheriff’s Office Dispatcher will enter notes into the call for a Deputy to see, giving more information related to the call. The priority of the call can be changed by a Patrol Supervisor or by the Dispatcher who took the call for service. For example, a “Fight” is a priority 2 call for service; if the victim calls to report the crime, and it occurred several days earlier, and there is no active threat to the victim’s life, it may be reduced to a priority 3 or sometimes priority 4, depending on the other calls for service at the time. (We have had several fights reported days after the event.)

In the past, the priorities of calls were not to be changed and were set in stone. We have given the Dispatchers and the Supervisors the ability to make real-time decisions based on priorities of protecting life. This thought process took some getting used to, and there are still a few logistical matters to figure out, but overall our Team has handled this responsibility extremely well!

Next week, we will post our response times, and I hope this guide helps clarify our response times and how our responses are generated. Response times are fluid in nature, and our deputies and dispatchers work extremely hard to provide fast and professional responses.

Respectfully,

Sheriff Brad Pope