Taylorville Police see drops in most severe crimes

TAYLORVILLE, Ill. (WAND) — Between 2023 and 2024, The Taylorville Police Department saw a significant decrease in most of their major crimes. These include:

Sexual Assault by 48.8%
Battery by 42.9%
Break-ins (vehicles) 40%
Burglary by 71.4%

Chief Dwayne Wheeler said he credits these improvements to building trust with the community, and ensuring all officers and leaders are on the same page.

"Being transparent with everyone has made our jobs easier, and by doing that, we've noticed that people call in and give us complaints," said Chief Wheeler. "We do get a lot of complaints, and that's why we follow up on them and if they are credible. We go after the problem and then all of a sudden you see our numbers dropping. "

Chief Wheeler also said the Safe Passage program at the department has a direct link to decreases in burglary and break-ins. The program helps people in active drug recovery battle addiction, and Wheeler said they were seeing many participants steal things to fund drug habits.

But, it's not all success. The department has also seen a 12% increase in juvenile crimes, 26.7% increase in stolen vehicles, and 75.8% increase in mental health calls.

Wheeler said most instances of stolen vehicles are from people leaving their vehicles on, and unattended in colder months. Usually they are stolen, driven a few miles, then abandoned.

But the mental health calls are where his main concern lies. Chief Wheeler said they've trained officers on how to handle these calls, but they don't have many resources they can refer people too.

"Our mental health system is broken, there's no question," said Wheeler. "It's really hard when you have to take them to the hospital, have them checked out, and then they leave and where's the resources?"

Often, officers just receive call after call for the same person, but can't offer long-term solutions. Chief Wheeler hopes more resources become available in the next year, to help cut down on these mental health calls.