Last week the Waterloo Police Department answered almost 1,100 calls. That's crazy to think there were that many calls to the WPD.

While running down several 'Facebook Rabbit Holes' I stumbled onto this post that made stop.

Myke Goings is a freelance writer/reporter, and he compiled that list of burglaries and thefts. He's been a very reliable source in the Cedar Valley for years, so I don't doubt the numbers, but wow.

Over a nine-week period, the Waterloo Police Department fielded 189 calls, which as Goings pointed out is an average 21 per week.

That floored me, so I decided to see what other offerings Goings had on his Facebook page, and I was blown away by this posting.

1,094 calls to the police? In one week? And that was just in Waterloo according to Goings' data. To me, that's crazy numbers, so I wanted to get an idea of what other cities saw for calls for service.

In 2015 study of the city of Louisville, Kentucky's Police Department, there was an average of 1,582 calls for service per day (11,074 per week). The have an estimated population of 253,000. That means approximately 4.3% of the population contacted the police.

The city of Biloxi, Mississippi fields about 2,500 calls to the police per week. There population is about 46,000. That equates to 5.4% of the populous callign the BPD.

The population for Waterloo, Iowa is roughly 68,000, and that would mean about 2.3% of the citizens contacting the police. Low by the standards that seem to be happening in Louisville and Biloxi, but 1,500+ still seems like a big number to person that grow up in an age where you didn't always lock the front door. Now I lock it even when I'm home.

I tip my hat and salute the men and women in blue and everything they go through to keep us safe.