(Okoboji)– The Okoboji City Council Tuesday evening approved the hiring of an additional officer that will be shared with the Arnolds Park Police Department. Okoboji Police Chief Jason Petersen told the council that officer’s sole duty will be to serve as an investigator…
“Again it would be homicides, robberies, sex assaults. Thankfully we don’t have a lot of those, but there are a lot of other crimes that the investigator could look into.”
He says those would include unintended deaths, burglaries, scams and assaults. Petersen says an investigator would also fill another important role given the amount of visitors…
“Many times victims of crimes, perpetrators of crimes or the witnesses to crimes, are these transient people that are here for a weekend or the week and we don’t always get them at the scene and get them interviewed and the investigator could talk to them during the day. If they happen to leave, the investigator would have the freedom to go to wherever they live or wherever they came from.”
Petersen says departments in the past could rely on the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation to assist in big cases, but he says that isn’t necessarily the case any more…
“They don’t have the personnel to help us out. They’re working other cases and they can’t, they’re not able to help us. It’s not that they’re not interested in the case, it’s they’re not able to help.”
Councilman Jim Delperdang expressed some reservation over Arnolds Park and Okoboji hiring an investigator who could also benefit other communities…
“I mean we’re providing an officer that actually is a benefit to the whole area. I mean a criminal doesn’t stop at the city limits. I mean this guy might steal a car from Arnolds Park and he might live in Terril. I mean you’re going to do Terril a big favor by getting rid of this guy at the city’s expense of paying all his salary, so I’m just going back to the fairness issue. We’re funding an officer that benefits the entire area but coming out of the budget of Okoboji.”
In the end, the council voted 5-0 to approve the position. Petersen says they hope to have an investigator hired by this coming July 1st.
