The Michigan City Police Department is announcing a new policy change to take affect on Friday, May 3rd, 2013.
Due to an over abundance of emergency and non-emergency calls that have tripled over the last three years, we began looking at our response times along with officer availability during peak patrol operations.
We found that an overwhelming amount of time was being used by patrol officers to perform “courtesy lockouts” for the general public. We discovered that the manpower being utilized for this effort needs to be reallocated towards other safety concerns within our community.
We have recognized the impact of liability issues where police officers may damage a vehicle accidently in an attempt to open a locked vehicle even though they had the best intentions.
A meeting was conducted with the local towing agencies and locksmiths who all perform this service at a reasonable rate and will continue to assist us in conducting “free lockouts” for deemed emergencies such as health issues, children locked in cars etc. All of these agencies are fully insured for any damage that may arise during their services.
Chief Mark Swistek and staff hope that the citizen’s of Michigan City understand our stance on this policy and support our decision in increasing patrol operations for the health and safety of our community.