By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — COVID-19 has changed the focus of many areas in Hutchinson and the police and fire service are included.
"This is fascinating to me," said Hutchinson Police Chief Jeff Hooper. "My degree is in sociology, so I just love seeing the social effects on crime. We have seen kind of a shift in the types of crime we have and the amount of crimes that we've had in our community. A lot of that is based off of COVID and people's change of lifestyle because of what's going on in society now. It's challenging for us as a law enforcement agency, because we have to shift our focus and adapt to that."
On the fire side, Chief Steven Beer says some risk has gone up.
"One thing that we've seen, with everybody staying at home, we knew a lot of people were going to do more home cooking," Beer said. "Home cooking is the number one cause of residential fires, the number one cause in the city here and across the country. A lot of these fires never make the paper, because there's not flames blowing out the windows and stuff like that. They're confined to the room of origin, or like, in a stovetop case, grease catches on fire, maybe the cabinets and its quickly knocked down."
Both Hutchinson Police and Fire are looking for new recruits to serve the public. If you're interested in helping your community, check out their social media pages for details.