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In comparison, there were a total of 111 major crimes reported, including 69 cases of larceny, 13 narcotics-related offenses and 12 instances of forgery, fraud and counterfeiting, Hill said. Of the 111 overall reports made, law enforcement cleared 99 of those cases.
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Hill explained that when looking at the numbers for a community that is densely populated — 2.2 square miles with about 3,800 individual residential units, 9,000 people — the city is safe, particularly given the low number of larceny reports in 2018 and the decline in 2019. He hopes the trend will continue.
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“I would put these crime statistics up against any community, not only in the county or state, but across the country,” Hill told council, adding that there were no burglaries reported in 2019. “I don’t know if that will ever happen again, but we will celebrate this number this year.”
The zero burglaries report pales in comparison to 2011, Hill said, when convicted serial burglar Sean D. Upchurch terrorized Oakwood and several other communities in the area.
Upchurch was convicted and was sentenced to 11 years in prison for committing a series of burglaries and other crimes in Oakwood, Kettering, Centerville, Miamisburg, Miami Twp., Clayton, Butler Twp. and Dayton.
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“I believe he was convicted of 54 burglaries and Oakwood was his targeted community,” Hill said. “One thing that we have seen, even last year with our theft offenses, if we get one or two individuals that come into our community and commit a large number of offenses in a short period of time, they can dramatically change our crime statistics.”
He added that Oakwood, since 2017, has recorded on three reported residential burglaries in that time period.
In 2019, Oakwood experienced an 8% increase in traffic accidents from last year, and a 33% decrease in accidents that resulted in injury. In 2019, there was one fatal traffic accident.
There were 535 medic runs last year, compared to 420 in 2018, and 103 fire runs in 2019, but there was a zero dollar loss for all of those runs.
Over the past five years, the safety department has logged 3,397 hours of in-service training covering a range of topics annually according to Hill.
Oakwood’s public safety department officers are cross-trained and state-certified in law enforcement, fire fighting and emergency medical services, Hill said.
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