Rhamy, Jennings reflect on 2024 with the ROPD

The Red Oak Police Department had a busy 2024.
Red Oak Police Chief Justin Rhamy said the highest number of service calls received by the department was for domestic situations, an uptick from those calls last year.
“I would say domestics were a good majority of the calls. There were 205 domestic calls this year, and that was up from 104 last year, so we almost doubled. Why they went up this year, I couldn’t tell you. In the years previous, we kind of went off of the COVID-19 situation, and everybody being cooped up at home, not being able to get out and about, but that’s not the case with this year,” advised Rhamy. “In correlation, our mental health calls have also been on the rise, and some of those could be contributing to one another. Our mental health calls have gone up as well for 2024. Dispatch actually screened 153 calls, and we covered 64 of them.”
Rhamy said the department also handed a number of welfare checks, and those calls also increased from 2023.
“There’s a lot of variables from year to year on our calls. We’ve doubled in domestic calls. We’ve gone up slightly in mental health calls, and mental health is still probably one of the top priority calls that we have to deal with on a pretty regular basis, without very many resources in our area. Depending on the call and what it entails, they can become very lengthy, whether we do telehealth or telepsych, to whether we have to transport them to our local emergency room for evaluation, to then potentially have to transport them on to another facility for further examination. The calls and response can last anywhere from within an hour to up to six hours. It just all depends on what the call entails and what we’re responding to,” Rhamy commented.
On the flip side, ROPD community liaison Amber Jennings said after an increase to 911 in 2023, hang ups have reduced by about half.
“I would assume people are starting to kind of figure out if you hit the button one too many times, it’s going to call 911. Also, we’ve strived to get the word out and educate the public on what will happen if they misdial 911. Even if they do hang up, once it dials 911, it comes in, and I think in many cases, they go into a panic. But as we’ve said, if you’ve dialed, press send, even if you hang up immediately, it’s too late, and you will be getting a call back, so it’s easier to just remain on the line, and explain it was an accidental call,” explained Jennings.
While that can be attributed to some of the calls, sometimes a misdial can occur from mishandling a cell phone. Rhamy believes the cell phone companies have now realized that that was a problem.
“There’s a feature in your phone settings you can go in and toggle off now, so if you drop your phone, it doesn’t call 911. They call it an impact setting. We had a 911 call from someone that dropped their phone. In fact, it fell off the dash of their car as they were driving down the road and the phone called 911 on its own and said there was a crash at the driver’s location. That new phone feature will hopefully fix those types of issues,” said Rhamy.
The Red Oak Police Department also had to work around two major snow events, which made travel in town, and for mutual aid calls, a bit tricky, and Rhamy said they had to be extra prepared.
“There’s a lot of thought process that goes into it. The technology of all-wheel drive vehicles has drastically helped us. When I first started in law enforcement, we had rear-wheel drive cars only. Now we’ve advanced to all our cars being all-wheel drive or having four-wheel drive capabilities,” stated Rhamy. “There’s also correspondence with the other responding agencies or departments to figure out what resources we need, whether we need to get a snow plow. That’s where the great working relationships come in handy that we have with everybody. If we have to go out and respond to a call in Stanton, normally the state highways are pretty good, but not necessarily all the time. If for some reason they’re not in great shape, we can call the Iowa Department of Transportation and hopefully they’ve got a truck that’s readily available that’s in that area that can plow her out, if not, then we can call Montgomery County Secondary Roads. They’re always more than willing to come out and help if we’re going into a rural setting. If a situation arose here in the city and we needed to get out of town, we have the capabilities. We’ll take a city truck or something and we’ll get things cleared. We adapt and overcome.”
Rhamy also spoke about the other major weather event in Red Oak, the May tornados. Rhamy said things were a bit chaotic.
“We were very fortunate. Looking at the path, I think it would have come right through the center of downtown. It was most certainly on track to come right through our law enforcement center to the courthouse, in a northeasterly direction. For whatever reason, we have a lot to be thankful for that it lifted back up off the ground and didn’t go any farther than it did,” commented Rhamy. “There was some damage on the southwesterly corner of town, but thankfully, no one got seriously injured out of the deal. But for the first 20 or 30 minutes after, it was difficult as we were trying to touch base with all the residents in the southwest corner of town to make sure that, although there was damage, that nobody was hurt.”
Despite the situation, Rhamy said everybody knew their role, and knew exactly what to do and where to go.
“In a tornado situation, our priority is to do our best to keep the citizens of Red Oak safe. We also join in with the fire department to do storm spotting. The officers find the higher elevations within town, and they’ll sit and spot, looking for any signs or indications of tornadic activity. They may go on the west side of town out by the airport and sit, or sometimes go up on the hill out there by Evergreen Cemetery,” said Rhamy. “When it comes to public safety in general, camaraderie is a huge deal. Whether it be weather, a major incident, whatever the case may be. We also have resources such as the peer support team that we have developed around here for the fire department, sheriff’s office, and police. If there’s a critical incident within those agencies, we have people that can respond and deal accordingly with the stresses that those individuals that have been affected by it have to deal with.”
Staffing wise, Rhamy said the police department is looking very good as it moves into 2025, but there’s still some room for improvement.
“We are at full capacity. We just had our newest officer complete the academy on Dec. 13, so we are at full capacity as far as the full-time officers go. However, we only have a couple reserve officers. Normally we have anywhere from six to 10 reserve officers. There may be a few reasons for that. Right now, law enforcement, although it was a lucrative profession to get into, it’s not so lucrative anymore. We’re looked upon in a completely different eye than what it ever was before. And, well, we better not go there, because we’ve got to keep it politically correct. It’s not as bad here in the Midwest, but when you get into other areas of the United States. Thankfully, we have a strong team of full-time officers that truly want to work here,” Rhamy advised.
As for the department’s fleet, Rhamy said they’re operating at a great capacity, although a couple of vehicles need some attention.
“We’ve got a couple cars that need to go in for repair from a pursuit that come through town. One vehicle was struck during the pursuit, and then the other vehicle was damaged after, in the course of a pit maneuver, the suspect’s vehicle was disabled,” stated Rhamy.
According to Rhamy, the department is going to continue making the necessary adjustments it needs in technology as we move through 2025.
“Technology evolves and changes daily. It evolves daily. It does bring challenges that we have to deal with on a daily basis. But, thankfully, we’ve got Beau Boeye, who, in a drop of a hat, will be over to help us cure our problems as far as getting us on the straight and narrow, being able to walk us through, or talk us through whatever he needs to, whether it be over the phone or however. Beau is great about keeping us up and operational,” explained Rhamy.
As technology continues to evolve, Rhamy urged area residents to be safe and avoid evolving scams, as they can be difficult to resolve.
“Larger agencies that have the capability of investigating those a little more or have the resources to investigate those a little more in depth, but still they’re hard to investigate. Anything online is hard to investigate. You’ve got to have an IT person solely trained on that to thoroughly conduct an investigation, and then we’ve got to rely heavily on the web platform to cooperate with us without having to have warrants and subpoenas. If somebody’s been scammed and they’ve had money stolen, you’ve got to get into the banking world and the bank has also got to be cooperative. Although we’ve got great local banks, the ones outside the region that we don’t work with on a regular basis are not friendly to work with,” Rhamy said.
As it does every year, the ROPD hosted National Night Out. Jennings said the event was just as big as in years past.
“We added a couple new businesses and organizations this year. I would say we probably had around 2,500 to 2,800 people attend, though as always, it’s a challenge to gauge the number accurately. We also had really nice weather. Some years, it’s been very hot, and this past year things were a bit cooler and more comfortable,” Jennings commented. “This year, the Cedar Ridge Aviation Helicopter flew down for people to see. I think a lot of the community liked seeing it up close. Helicopters are always intriguing. The last few years we had the air evac rescue helicopter fly in.”
Sadly, the air evac service was discontinued for the area. While not having a major impact on the police department, Rhamy said the loss has been felt by other agencies.
“It does drastically affect fire and EMS’s capabilities. Historically, we were probably waiting anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes for a helicopter, if an individual needed it, to now waiting probably 30 to 40 minutes for a helicopter. Sometimes they from Omaha, Neb. or they come all the way from St. Joseph, Mo., or Fremont, Neb., it’s all over the place. It’s problematic, but we’re making do. We’ve got great fire and EMS, and we’ve got great paramedics and EMTs. When a call comes in, whether it be trauma related or whether it be cardiac related, everybody locally is well-educated and trained and they know when it’s time to go. If they have to hit the road and go in a squad, then they’re going to go in a squad. We’re pretty fortunate to have the crew that we have in our area,” explained Rhamy.
Rhamy said he and the ROPD have a few goals in mind to achieve throughout the year of 2025.
“We’re restarting a program with the Red Oak Community School District. We’re going to reestablish the DARE program within the city of Red Oak and the Red Oak Community School District. So that’s a huge thing to get accomplished. One of our officers is undergoing training to lead the program. We’re also trying to do continuous updates, whether it be equipment-wise, whether it be computers to desks. We’ve got some different things going on that way. We’re trying to just stay with the times and keep things up to date and looking good. But other than that, I don’t know if there’s anything else necessarily right on the radar. The officers continue to train on a regular basis, whether they’re training with mental health situations or crisis negotiators. We’ve had two that have gone to crisis negotiation training, and that can cover a multitude of different things within that,” stated Rhamy.
Jennings added the ROPD will also host a child safety seat check program sometime in the summer of this year.
“Last year I went and got certified for child safety seat inspections, so if anybody has questions or want to see if it’s installed right, they can attend that program. We always try to do various different things to keep the community engaged or keep us engaged with the community, be it that program, or handing out pencils on the first day of school, or coffee with a cop and firefighters. We also do Breakfast with the Easter Bunny, and that has been very popular as well. We try and make sure it’s not solely the Red Oak Police Department. We try to incorporate the fire department, sheriff’s deputies and EMS services from within. We want to make sure that although a good majority of the events probably transpire in Red Oak, we try to most certainly open them up to every agency around to participate in,” Jennings commented.
Jennings added Toys for Tots, which is hosted by the ROPD, had another really good year. The program served 182 kids from 62 families, which was up from 130 in 2023.
Rhamy added if anyone is interested in becoming a reserve officer, they’d welcome the opportunity to add some new members.
“You fill out an application, and go through the same process a full-time guy would be as far as an application. We take reserve applications year-round. They’ll go through the same testing phase that full-time officers would go through, and then essentially a background investigation as well as an interview with the department heads. If they were accepted to participate in the program and hired, they would have to go through 250 hours of training over the course of 18 months. It’s an online program through the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy,” commented Rhamy. “You can come to the police department, you can log on, you do  Zoom classes, and online courses for their curriculum at the state level that we are subject to as well, just at a reduced number of hours. And then you do a lot of hands-on training for firearms and tasers, again at the local level. Once you’re a certified reserve officer in the state, you come in and work, whether it be special events that we have or as a fill in for when full-time guys want to take days off. They would be a second officer on that shift with another full-time officer. It is a paid position once they get done with the training.
Rhamy said the ROPD has also shifted to using Carfax when it comes to handling accident reports.
“If any individual is in an accident, when the report is taken, they will get a business-looking card that will have the incident report and their name on it. That’s how they will be able to access their accident report within five to seven business days through that website instead of coming down to the law enforcement center to get it. It’ll be a little bit more accessible for the insurance companies as well, instead of going through all the hoops of phone calls to try to figure it out,” Rhamy stated.
Lastly, Rhamy said the department is joining Lexipol, which provides the most current and up-to-date state legislation to allow the department to keep policies and procedures up-to-date, as well as provide training to officers.

The Red Oak Express

2012 Commerce Drive
P.O. Box 377
Red Oak, IA 51566
Phone: 712-623-2566 Fax: 712-623-2568

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