Sulphur and DeRidder are two of the safest cities in Louisiana

LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) - The National Council for Home Safety and Security released a study showing DeRidder and Sulphur are two of the safest cities in Louisiana.

It broke down the total population of the cities, comparing violent crime, property crime, total law enforcement employees, and total crimes.

Both Police Chiefs for the cities stated that their departments say a decrease in a majority of crimes when comparing 2018 to 2019.

“Yeah, we actually had a down-tick in everything other than vehicle burglaries,” said Sulphur Police Chief, Lewis Coats.

“Property crimes were down in 2019 from 2018,” Chief Craig Richard with the DeRidder Police Department said. “Violent crimes were down from fifteen in 2018 to six in 2019. Our homicide rate was the same. Three in ’18 and three in ’19. Sex crimes were up this year from eight to twenty-four. Person crimes went from ten in ’18 to eleven in ’19 and our financial crimes were nineteen in 2019 and seventeen in 2018.”

“There’s three things that we look at to see how we are doing on patrol: vehicle burglaries, overall thefts, and residential burglaries,” said Chief Coats.

Coats says his department is looking at where crimes happen often and have been boosting patrols in those areas around Sulphur.

At the beginning of last year, Sulphur had over 100 vehicle burglaries in one night. (NOTE: The number went up after we had reported it.) Vehicle burglary is the only area Sulphur Police reported increased from 2018 to 2019.

Coats says burglaries are going to be a big focus for his department for the rest of 2020.

In DeRidder, Chief Craig Richard says the only stat that went up for his department are sex crimes.

He says training the officers is critical in learning how to help victims.

"We are looking at working in partnership with some of our crisis centers, as well as education,” Richard said. “Helping the victims seek proper help and we are pushing the officers to get more training in sexual crimes and help people and see what we can do to prevent it."

Richard says DeRidder Police is also investing more into community policing, calling the trust between the community and law enforcement critical in helping solve cases and keeping the community safe.

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