With Labor Day weekend and Northwest Missouri State University back in full session, area law enforcement agencies report an increase in crime or violations.

Lt. Randy Houston, with the Nodaway County Sheriff’s Department, said nothing out of the ordinary had occurred last weekend.

Keith Wood, director of Maryville Public Safety, also said crime had not gone up over the holiday weekend, nor had it gone up when Northwest students returned last week for the fall trimester.
Wood said that Maryville tends not to have crime go up over holidays.

“The nature of our community is that usually crime diminishes instead of increasing,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s because students tend to go home, although with this weekend being the home football opener, I think a lot of them stayed.”

Wood said that although crime hadn’t increased, lake activity did go up over the Labor Day weekend. He said lake patrol commented that the water was busy over the holiday, but that officers didn’t need to increase their normal patrol any. Labor Day is usually a busy holiday for Mozingo Lake, Wood added.

“Maybe it was the last big hurrah for the lake this season,” he said. “It usually seems that after Labor Day there is less and less activity.”

Houston said that crime doesn’t necessarily go up over holidays.

“As far as traffic accidents and those types of things, you might see a spike in that sort of activity, and domestics are higher on that sort of weekend,” he said.
With the first three Bearcat football games at home, Northwest’s family weekend and the Arts Festival coming up, Wood anticipates some busy weekends.

“A lot of these community events that bring a lot more people into town, bring a lot more traffic and the things that come with it,” Wood said. “That’s nothing for alarm, just understand that there will be more people and more activity around than usual.”

As college students started moving back over the last couple of weeks, Wood said bar patrol has increased steadily.

“When they first start up again, we usually sit back and wait to see what happens,” he said. “Start up has been relatively smooth this year. There is an increase in the number of those (bar patrols) at the beginning of the semester to set the tone.”

Larceny update
Both Maryville Public Safety and the Sheriff’s Department are still investigating larcenies that occurred mid-August in Maryville and in the outskirts of the city.

Neither agency has made an arrest in the case.

Houston said no more larcenies have occurred in the Village O area — the area where five larcenies and a vehicle theft were reported on Aug. 14 and 15.

Wood said that while a theft still occurs every once in a while, there had not been a rash like the seven larcenies reported on Aug. 15 and 16.