Dec. 10—Guillermo Pena has filed five online police reports since moving to St. Joseph but hasn't heard back about any of them. And he isn't alone.

Pena, an apartment complex business manager, watches over two blocks of houses and 65 apartment units. The police reports he filed were about damage to those properties.

"It has been helpful," Pena said about the online reporting. "It cuts time back. I don't have to call a 911 operator. I don't have to call a police officer to take this report. It might be something silly, so, yes, I understand why the service is there, which is an amazing service."

The St. Joseph Police Department implemented the remote reporting process in the 1990s. Back then it was called Teleserve — a way to file a police report over the phone rather than waiting for a police officer to show up in person. Teleserve still is available to residents, but as the internet evolved, the department added an online version.

With staffing declines in 2020 and the spread of COVID-19, police pushed citizens to file more reports online rather than in person. Police calls are prioritized by urgency. Officers respond to life-threatening or active crime situations over property damage calls, so online police reports free up officers to handle more dire situations.

"It alleviated some of our call load, having to respond to something that may be eight hours old and is just a paper report that needs follow-up down the road," said Capt. Jeff Wilson with the St. Joseph Police Department.

When a citizen makes a report over the phone or online, it's sent to a detective or the traffic division depending on if it's an accident or crime being reported. The reports then are then assigned to personnel within the divisions to investigate the crime and follow up with the citizen.

But like Pena, other residents have filed reports and never heard back.

"They can say put it in, but we don't know if it's actually being reviewed," Pena said. "Has it been ignored? Has it been processed yet?"

Similar to how police calls are prioritized, so are online reports. Wilson said it's difficult to sort through them but they all get looked at. However, not all of the reports constitute an investigation.

"I understand this frustration sometimes and I apologize for that," Wilson said. "We get frustrated when there's cases that there's just nothing more that we can do. It's not us not having the want-to, it's just that the elements aren't there in that particular case."

Since 2019, the number of police reports filed has declined from 17,368 a year to 13,983 in 2021, despite the accessibility of online reports. Pena believes the lack of follow-up from the police department discourages people from filing reports. Another explanation is with the decline in officers, there are fewer people taking reports.

"I know they're overwhelmed and understaffed and not paid well," Pena said. "And the 911 operators, we don't have enough of those. So it makes me frustrated. It makes them frustrated."

The detective division, which is understaffed, mostly handles the online reports. But the police department can't promote people from the patrol division because that department also is stretched thin. The department has a total of 22 vacancies.

"If we're able to get more officers in the department, get those vacancies in the detective bureau filled, get those vacancies in the traffic unit filled, that's more eyes looking at these reports," Wilson said.

Since the police personnel received a pay increase in October, Wilson said there has been an improvement in recruitment with more people applying for jobs. As more officers join the department, citizens will see a trickle-down effect.

But for now, Pena said a service created to be a solution has become a problem.

Quinn Ritzdorf can be reached at quinn.ritzdorf@newspressnow.com