Excerpt from RCTimes.com website addressing area police departments "success" rates on a ranking by TBI..

Coopertown Police Chief, Jesse Burchwell describes their success rate with two words, “Traffic Enforcement.”
“Of our 30 arrests for last month, with 49 charges. – some were felonies – they all came from traffic, every last one of them.
“(There was) a DUI, possession of drug paraphernalia, outstanding warrant, reckless endangerment, evading arrest, assault, possession for resale. Every last one of these was from a traffic stop.”

One guess is that these traffic stops occurred while police were involved in the "ticket blitz" and drawing $25+/hr compensation. More likely is that these traffic stops occurred on I-24 while the other 60+ miles of our city roads were left unprotected.

Good post emtivkwilson, I also read that article after returning from vacation on Saturday and was intending to make a comment myself, but I needed to research the actual numbers the article was referring to.

In the article, it was stated: "Ridgetop recorded a 100 percent clearance rate for drug related offenses this past year".

Then Chief Burchwell, being the good trouper he is and knowing which side his bread is buttered on, replied in response to Coopertown's success rate on drug related crimes: “Traffic Enforcement” although their percent cleared is only 81%. Not quite as good as Ridgetop and not as good as Pleasant View's cleared rate, by comparison, which is 100% for drug related crimes.

Another interesting category in the Tennessee Crime report is the amount of DUI arrest made by COOPERTOWN police. For all of 2007, 72 DUI arrest were made for a population of 3,287. This tells the casual observer there are alot of people driving around drunk in Coopertown and by comparison, Pleasant View with a population of 3,701, only had 11 DUI arrest.

To be fair to Coopertown, their overall cleared rate is 48.99% and by comparison, Pleasant View's overall cleared rate is only 43.55%.

Chief Burchwell basically said, if you are not in a car and you are not speeding, you can get away with anything in Coopertown.

Here is the article, this link will become dead over time :

Area police make top grades in TBI reports

Here is Tennessee Crime Report web site:

Tennessee Crime Reports

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The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum. Adlai E. Stevenson American Lawyer, Politician.