Lucas Robertson
lrober22@uwyo.edu
Both Laramie Police Department and Laramie Sheriff’s Office reported a low crime rate this Halloween weekend.
LPD Media Office credits University of Wyoming President’s Office for setting a fun, yet calm, tone for all to conduct themselves by.
“I want you to know that your safety is very important to me and the entire UW community,” UW President Richard McGinity said in a release. “With Halloween approaching, please think carefully about your plans.”
There were myriad festivities around the community over the weekend, including Union events, street dances hosted by local bars, children’s events and the ‘Funkaween’ event at the Train Depot.
“We really had a calmer weekend than what I’ve seen for quite sometime,” Lieutenant Gwen Smith of Laramie Police Department said. “I think that part of that was helped along by the university – the president sent a letter to everyone.”
Local law enforcement was happy to report there were no major accidents, and no one ended up hurt during the traditionally spooky holiday. Both the Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office, who have a combined call center, filed 68 reports and responded to 40 calls that did not require a report. These occurred between Friday at 8 a.m. and Sunday at midnight.
“So it was a little bit higher than normal call loads,” Lieutenant Smith said. “Sometimes people have questions more than they want to report anything, so all together we had 108 calls over those couple of days.”
While there were a high amount of calls to law enforcement, this Halloween was far calmer than last year’s Halloween, Smith said.
“Last year’s Halloween weekend was very, very busy, and we had some very bad calls, homicide and a young man who was injured pretty severely,” he said. “This year we had one big party call, there was some citations issued, the neighbors just called and said ‘hey could you come over?’”
This year included multiple automobile hit and runs and four different reports of narcotics, Smith said.
With the exception of an inebriated man walking into a strangers home to go to sleep, believing it to be a friends, Laramie Police Department was very grateful that there were no major safety concerns and people were able to go out, have a good time and make it home safely, Smith said.
“The only thing I heard of was there were some very creative costumes downtown, that’s all they (officers on patrol) said was people were very creative with their costumes this year,” Smith said.
