The numbers suggest that crime rates are steady in Leelanau County, according to an annual report published by the county sheriff’s office last month.
The total number of index crimes in the county went down last year compared to 2022, from 174 to 147. Index crimes are considered by the FBI to be the most serious kind of incidents, and include murder, criminal sexual conduct, robbery, assault, breaking and entering, larceny, unlawfully driving away in an automobile, and arson.
But 2022 also saw the most index crimes in the county since 2013, and last year’s total index crimes are equal to the mean for the last 10 years rounded to the nearest whole number, showing that it was a thoroughly average year in terms of crime. According to the 2023 annual report, the lowest number of index crimes in one year in the county in the last 10 years was 115 in 2019.
Overall, the most common of these eight index crimes was assault, which represented 72 of the year’s 147 total cases. The second most common was larceny at 57 cases. Of the 11 townships in the county, the most index crimes were reported near the sheriff’s office at Suttons Bay at 39.
The FBI does not count human traffi cking and drug crimes among their index crimes, and these reports are the source of the incident statistics in the sheriff’s office annual report. Nonetheless, County Sheriff Mike Borkovich has often cited drugs like fentanyl and crystal methamphetamine “coming over the border” and human traffic by Mexican drug cartels as a “big concern” to him.
The number of calls to the sheriff’s office continued their downward trend from 14,197 calls in 2017 to just 7,601 in 2023. The tickets and paper services issued in 2023 were the second lowest in the last 10 years in 2023 at 575 tickets and 67 paper services. The number of other reports filed in their in-house system/records were at their highest since 2016, however, at 1,695.
As for accident statistics, the 2023 annual report shows 838 accidents, including car crashes, injuries, and more. These include 91 accidents in Bingham, 45 in Centerville, 32 in Cleveland, 139 in Elmwood, 56 in Empire, 35 in Glen Arbor, 98 in Kasson, 84 in Leelanau Township, 82 in Leland, 91 in Solon, 85 in Suttons Bay.
There was just one fatal crash all year in the county, on Bugai Road in Elmwood, in September. A 46-year-old woman from Jenison, Michigan, was killed in this incident, which involved a head-on collision of two vehicles in a passing attempt and resulted in criminal charges.
The sheriff’s office made a big acquisition this past year in the form of a new, 31-foot-long patrol boat to replace a less capable one used by their marine patrol for many years. This item had been on the department’s wish list for nearly 10 years and cost $500,000.
According to the county budget, the costs of the sheriff’s office have been creeping upwards. The 2021 audited budget for the county sheriff was $2,216,864, followed by a 2022 audited budget of just over $2.4 million. The sheriff’s office annual report shows an amended budget of $2,649,043 for 2023, with a year-to-date actual budget of $2,545,822.38 for 2023. The county’s 2024 adopted budget lists $2,696,807 for the sheriff’s office.
The county’s jail housed a total of 9,445 inmates in 2023, with a daily average of 26 inmates. Over half of these inmates were boarded from Grand Traverse and Kalkaska counties and the Grand Traverse Band. Boarding inmates from the neighboring Michigan counties brought in $91,930 in revenues to the county, which went a long way towards the jail coming in $88,195 under budget for the year.
