BUTTE — In 2023, Butte-Silver Bow Law Enforcement is dealing with fewer officers but much more work. They’ve responded to significantly more calls in the last year and made more arrests.
“I am a little surprised that the call volume is up 2,000 calls; you know, that’s a pretty good jump to our call volume, so it shows that we’re not only responding to more calls, we’re also making more arrests,” said Butte Sheriff Ed Lester.
In 2022, Butte police responded to about 29,000 calls for service. This past year, police estimate they had about 31,000 calls for service. In 2022, police made 1,772 arrests and this year is expected to end with about 2,000 arrests.
The sheriff believes many of these arrests involve people who were wanted on warrants for failing to show up for court appearances. During the years of the pandemic, police issued many citations to people instead of taking them to jail to avoid overcrowding.
“We’re coming back and picking those up now, so folks that let those warrants lapse and didn’t take care of them when they should have are now ending up in jail,” according to Sheriff Lester.
Butte police had been about six officers short of a full staff during the past year to deal with the increased calls, which is a challenge in police work.
“There’s offices that can kind of close and readjust their hours and do things to make up for staffing shortages, but we can’t. We’re a 24/7 operation,” said Lester.
Uptown businesses like the Miner’s Hotel on Park Street say they have not seen a drop in the quality of police response despite the challenges.
“They do a pretty good job in this area of patrolling and they’re super quick responses whenever we do need them. The parking garage a year ago was kind of an issue. I haven’t seen any issues over there just because of the increase, you know, of police supervision of it,” said Chuckie Richards of the Miner's Hotel.
Lester said the department has new recruits that are almost done with training and should be ready to join the department by this summer.
