It was a busy, busy holiday weekend to kick-off the start of Summer 2010, wasn't it?Despite this folks had fun!
Holiday weekend sees increase in crime, emergencies over 2009
By Bryan Shettig The Herald-Zeitung
Law enforcement officers saw an increase in crime over the Memorial Day weekend compared to the same time in 2009.
New Braunfels Police made 32 arrests between Saturday and Monday and issued 338 citations, said Lt. John Wells, a NBPD spokesman.
Those numbers constitute a 20 percent increase over arrests and citations from this past year’s Memorial Day weekend, he said.
“That was probably influenced a bit because the Guadalupe River had more people on it this year,” Wells said.
Despite the increase in activity, police did not increase staffing more than usual for a holiday weekend, he said.
Many of the arrests and citations involved alcohol and intoxicated residents, he said, including fights and verbal disputes as well as people getting out of the river onto private property, a class C misdemeanor.
Among the reported assaults during the weekend were a double stabbing at the Comal River tube chute as well as a three-on-one brawl at Hinman Island Park that led to four San Antonio men arrested, all between the ages of 18 and 21.
According to arrest records provided by the Comal County Sheriff’s Office, sheriff’s deputies, police officers and Department of Public Safety troopers arrested 195 people and booked into the Comal County jail between Friday and Tuesday.
The emergency room at Christus Santa Rosa – New Braunfels saw a 20 to 25 percent increase in patients on Saturday and Sunday compared to those days on other weekends over the past three months, said Melissa Krause, a spokesperson for the hospital. That means about 120 to 130 more people in the emergency room on those days.
Friday’s volume of patients was average compared to recent months, but Monday still had an increase of about 15 percent more patients than Mondays over the past few months, she said.
Most of those new patients were visitors and tourists, she said.
“That could have produced a slowdown in patients’ time,” Krause said, but noted the “team of dedicated nurses and physicians” meant ER patients did not get bogged down with serious wait times.
Fire officials also said that work was handled in a timely manner over the weekend, despite the rush of calls for service. Firefighters and emergency service workers responded to 115 calls, most of them for EMS workers, said Assistant New Braunfels Fire Chief Berek Wrenn.
Those numbers are “about the same” as Memorial Day weekend in 2009, he said.
“It was a busy weekend for us,” Wrenn said. Medical workers responded to accidents in the river, including a near drowning, as well as fights and injuries incurred from visitors and residents bumping themselves on rocks and logs.
“At no time did we deplete our manpower or equipment,” Wrenn said.
By the numbers:
A look at some weekend police arrests and citations:
• 26 citations for minors in possession of alcohol
• 8 citations for minors consuming alcohol
• 49 citations for open alcoholic containers in a city park
• 19 citations for foam containers on the rivers
• 8 citations for glass containers on the rivers
• 11 arrests for public intoxication
• 5 arrests for failure to identify
• 1 arrest for criminal trespassing
• 7 tickets for littering
• 1 arrest for littering
• 125 tickets for parking violations
• 4 citations for disorderly conduct
