Pueblo Police re-prioritizing burglary and robbery calls amidst higher call volumes, staffing issues

PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) - The Pueblo Police Department (PPD) is taking a new approach to how officers will respond to certain emergency calls.

The PPD said in a statement Monday that due to call volume and current staffing, certain calls will be prioritized over calls like burglaries and robberies if an imminent or active threat is not present.

The department says that the community should know if you're in danger during an active robbery or burglary, they're going to work hard just as normal to get an officer out to you.

However for other matters, with less of a threat, such as "cold calls" where the robbery or burglary has already happened, or court-ordered inter-personal disputes between individuals, dispatchers will need to prioritize and send a Community Service Officer (CSO) out to those calls instead of a uniformed police officer.

"With the call volume that we have  and the amount of manpower that we have, we have to prioritize what we're responding to." explains Frank Ortega, a Sergeant with the Department.

PPD says that following an initial 9-1-1 call, if officers are busy on other higher priority calls, the dispatch will do a follow-up call with the victim and ask to confirm whether of not the same circumstances that they initially called for are the same, or if they've changed.

Ortega explains that if the caller says there is no suspect anymore, or the threat level has gone down, they will send a Community Service Officer instead, to take down information for the department.

"If we don't get there right away, there's times where it's no longer a higher priority, and it's still a serious crime, we still want to get there, [and] do the report. But there's no suspect to handcuff, to arrest." said Ortega, on how the department is trying to use their staff effectively.

Some Pueblo residents say that the news isn't exactly encouraging.

"Where I live, we've already had a few people homes broken into. So that makes it really scary." explained Diana Casaus, who has lived in the city for 18 years and has many members of her family living nearby as well. "What happens if we are home and someone breaks in and we're faced with an intruder face to face."

Other residents like Sam Messenger, grew up in Pueblo and lived in the city for many years, but now lives within Pueblo County, and cites the rise in crime as one of the main motives as to why she moved out. For that reason, however, she says she understands the difficult job police have, and know that the city has its fair share of dangerous crime to take care of.

"It does make sense to me, like the level of prioritizing [calls], so yeah, I like that." said Messenger.

Pueblo Police say they still have specifics for that plan to figure out, such as certain thresholds for dispatch times, and how long they'll wait until sending a CSO out to the scene instead, however they wanted to give the public a heads up with the Facebook post they published on Monday.

PPD didn't give an exact time frame to KRDO13 during an interview of when they'll begin those changes, instead they deferred to their Facebook post, which said they'd be doing so, 'In the coming weeks'.

You can read that Facebook post here.