Above: A look at what the police and fire departments have been up to for the past few months. (photos from Facebook)
It’s 3½ months since my last big roundups* of news out of the Southborough Police & Fire Departments.
Here are highlights from the department’s quarterly reports and highlights from Facebook of incidents and employee recognitions that I haven’t yet shared.
Emergency Responses
The SFD (and sometimes SPD) responded to the following emergencies:
- February 24th — mutual aid at 2 alarm house fire in Westborough
- March 7 — car fire on the Mass Pike
- March 23 — the State Police Bomb Squad’s disposal of small, gas cylinders (behind the DPW)
- April 3rd — mutual aid at 2 alarm house fire in Westborough
- April 9th — mutual aid at 2 alarm house fire in Hopkinton
- April 14th — mutual aid at Woods fire near the Mass Pike in Westborough
- April 26th — Truck fire on Oak Hill Road
- May 5th — Chimney fire on Cordaville Road
- May 9th — Changing the tire of an elderly resident in need. (Maybe this doesn’t quite qualify as an emergency, but it likely felt like one to the driver.)
Quarterly Reports
The Quarterly Report issued for the SPD covering January through March showed there were over 10 arrests made and another 52 criminal applications. Officers handled over 5 harassment complaints or restraining orders, more than 20 assault and domestics/disturbances, and 20 cases of larceny/forgery/fraud.
The report also shows over 90 vehicle accidents and 892 non-criminal citations issued. There were also 120 responses to alarms and around 150 “911 hang-up/open lines”.
The SFD’s Report for the same time period shows their crews responded to 356 emergencies (up 5% from last year). 13% of incidents occurred at the same time.
Most of the calls were for EMS (over 210). The report also notes that the department provided mutual aid 25 times and only received it 4 times.
For more details, see the graphic reports (and closeups of the embedded graphs) below:
Training
As usual, members of the SFD have been participating in special trainings to learn or reinforce emergency response skills:
- Forcible Entry training to gain access to locked/blocked buildings
- Training on treating and transporting injured Police K9/dept-owned dogs
Community Service
Police helped out at the following non-emergencies:
- Presenting to attendees at the Senior Center about the latest scams targeting seniors and grandparents.
- Speaking at the Library about how to prevent being a victim of fraud.
- Crowd control/road safety support at the NECC 5K, Neary “Walk to School Day”, and Boston Marathon.
- Sporting green ribbon pins around town to promote Mental Health Awareness Month.
- Reading at Finn School’s Social Emotional Learning Day
Personnel Comings/Goings and Appreciation
Both departments shared congratulations, recognitions, and sorrow:
- Congratulating Mark Silverstein, a Call Firefighter since 2014, who retired at the end of March.
- Promotion of Brittaney Doane to SFD Lieutenant (later recognized at a recent Woo Sox game)
Recognition of the Town’s first shift with three female full-time firefighters and a female full-time police officer on duty.- Welcoming full-time dispatcher Christina Stapleton as a Call EMT.
- Welcoming full-time Probationary Firefighter / EMT Megean Mulcahy
- Recognition of dispatchers during National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week.
- Swearing in of new member of the SPD, Probationary Officer Owen O’Brien following his graduation from the academy.
- Appointment of Officers Tyler Lu and Riley Brown as Business Liaison Officers.
- Honoring the memory of late, retired Officer Charlie Keller.
- Remembering the anniversaries of the untimely deaths of late firefighters Ken Strong and Lisa Thompson.
- Appointment of new School Resource Officer, Officer Jeff Norton.
- The promotion ceremony for Lt. Sean McCarthy
*Since my late January updates, I have covered plenty of other public safety news (which I didn’t duplicate above.) You can find those stories, here.
