High temperatures lead to increasing in police calls

Salt Lake City, Utah  — Extreme heat causes a large number of calls to local police departments.

According to the police, they received more than 3,600 calls for service during the first week of June, nearly 1,000 more than they received during the first week of January.

Officers say they are currently very busy from the moment they report for duty.

“That would indicate that, yeah, we’re seeing more calls for service during this time of year and you know, heat may be a factor, may play a role in that,” said Sgt. Keith Horrocks of the Salt Lake City Police Department. “Some of our specialty units, like our motors unit, gangs, our bike units are now call-responsive to help with that just so that we can help bring those response times down.”

Police warn people to not leave children or pets in a vehicle outside for any length of time, especially during this heatwave.

“We’ll run into a store real quick and think, it’s just going to be a few minutes, but that, sometimes that’s all it takes and you come out to a heat stroke victim of a pet, or heaven forbid a child, then we have a totally different scenario there,” said Horrocks.

It only takes a few minutes for the temperature inside of a vehicle, even with the windows down, to reach well into triple digits, which can cause heatstroke and possibly death.