SW Tactical, CID report 2017 successes to city

Kylan Klauzer, CID detective, explained the Dickinson Police Department support division consists of four full-time detectives plus Klauzer serving as supervisory detective.

"Those four, on any given day, are running between 20 to 30 active cases," he said. "Myself, I try to carry five to 10."

In 2017, CID handled 693 cases, up from 524 in 2016.

"A majority of those are felonious," Klauzer said. "Your sexual assaults, physical assaults, shootings, things like that we have."

They were called out 55 times in 2017, roughly once per week.

"That's going to be those situations at two, three, four in the morning that those officers have that's going to entail a lot of extra attention or detail," Klauzer said. "On average, each investigator is called out about 10 to 15 times per year, and that's the highest callout number we've ever had."

Among its duties, CID ran compliance checks on 65 sex offenders in 2017.

"That fluctuates on any given day," Klauzer said. "We've been up near 80 at times and back down to low 60s. Those are going to be high-risk, medium-risk and low-risk sex offenders here in the city of Dickinson."

Still increasing are incidences of property crimes.

"These are crimes of opportunity often," Klauzer said. "It's very much about trying to get our community educated, with using the appropriate locks, dead-bolting doors, taking valuables out of the back of their pickup, things like that."

There were 92 agency assists in 2017, the majority with Stark County Social Services, which, Klauzer said, is seeing a "huge increase" in child and sexual abuse cases.

Among its major cases, one child pornography investigation, Klauzer said, resulted in children being saved in another state.

"Information that was found in a property in Dickinson by a resident that had child pornography on it, our guy was able to take that information, get through it all, identify the child that was on that piece of information, work the case, find that child who had since moved out of state, find the appropriate agency... and it led to a successful investigation," he said. "The perpetrator in that case eventually committed suicide."

The children were successfully removed from the house, Klauzer said.

The 22-member SW Tactical Team was established in 2013, Mike Hanel, tactical commander, said, and in 2010 became one of currently seven regional teams.

"Our mission is to provide a well-equipped, highly trained and skilled tactical team as a resource for agencies to successfully resolve critical incidents," he said.

At Dakota Access Pipeline, SW Tactical helped provide crowd control. The team is also tasked with high-risk arrest warrants, hostage rescue and dignitary protection.

"We're very judicious as far as when we decide to respond to a call that requires SWAT," Hanel said. "We do a risk assessment to determine if the call we're going to is reasonable and necessary for a SWAT deployment, and we take into account a suspect's criminal history, their propensity for violence."

Callouts are down from "the peak of the boom," with six calls total in 2017, down from 11 calls in 2013 through 2015. A similar downturn might have been seen in 2016, Hanel said.

"Five of those were all DAPL related," he said. "If the pipeline protests had not occurred we probably wouldn't have had five deployments out there."

Of the six calls, half were in Dickinson and the other half were agency assists, Hanel said.

The most challenging came in the fall, a call from Carter County Sheriff's Office in Montana to assist on apprehending a murder suspect.

"He had murdered a family member and then barricaded himself in a farmstead just outside of Ekalaka," he said. "We also learned we are actually the closest SWAT agency on the eastern Montana side."

The number of officers per call decreased to 9.3 in 2017 from 10.1 in 2016. Hanel expects this trend to continue.

"The days of us just kicking in the front door and running in to resolve situations are limited," he said. "With the tactics we utilize now, we're able to successfully do missions with limited numbers."

Going into 2018, SW Tactical hopes to establish a Crisis Intervention Team for mental health crisis calls, establish Tactical EMS and implement a new physical fitness battery.