Citrus Heights PD won’t be posting police logs anymore. Here’s why.

Sentinel staff report–
Community members seeking daily police activity summaries in Citrus Heights will no longer be able to find them online, after the police department made a recent decision to discontinue publishing the daily logs.

Police Communications Supervisor Chela Cottrell confirmed the decision in a reply to an inquiry from The Sentinel on Wednesday.

“The department determined that the reports have become too cumbersome and time consuming for staff to continue to produce,” she said in an email. “In an effort to streamline to process, call information is available on our website and can be found by navigating to the crime map located under the crime prevention tab on the homepage.”

The Community Crime Map linked on the police department’s website is updated daily, but includes a much more limited scope of police activity.

For Nov. 12, the last date police published incident log summaries, a total of 75 incidents are listed in the daily incident bulletin, ranging from suspicious activity to homeless-related calls, petty theft and a trio of hit-and-run collisions. The same date on the crime map only shows a total of four incidents — two for vandalism, one motor vehicle theft and one report of fraud.

Citrus Heights Police Logs: ‘parrot guy,’ homeless, grand theft

Descriptions for each incident are also more limited, although the map includes the hundred block for incidents while the daily bulletins only listed the street name without an address.

Up until Nov. 12, daily incident bulletins were posted to the department’s website for community members to access. The Sentinel compiled select bulletins into a more readable format each week, with police codes and other jargon interpreted for readers.

To view the Community Crime Map online, click here.

Want to share your thoughts on the decision for police to discontinue daily log summaries? Click here to submit a letter to the editor.