While drug possession remains number one for the top 10 common crimes in Washington County this year, four of the remaining nine all involve motor vehicles with drunk driving (officially operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated), which ranked second.  Third on the list is possession of drug paraphernalia, followed by number 4, driving while license is denied, suspended, canceled or revoked under Iowa code 321.218.  

Then at five is theft (of all kinds), followed by violation of no contact order at number 6.  Driving while license is barred is number 7 and is one that regularly shows up in the daily police reports.  At number 8 is domestic abuse assault, followed at number nine by assault.  Rounding out at number 10 is speeding.   

Although not in the top ten, driving without a license and driving without insurance (or proof of insurance) is also common.  Frequent complaints also involve scam calls either via telephone or the Internet.  In some cases, the fraud was caught in time with no monetary loss to the victim.    Unfortunately, there also are reported losses totaling well into the thousands of dollars.

On the other side, there was, to date, a total of 466 criminal indictments filed against suspects in 2022, compared to 427 in 2021.  The annual average of 348 is for the years 2013 through 2020

For this year, highest number of indictments was 57 in February, and the lowest was 29 in October.  Figures for December are not yet available.

For the collection of legal fees for which the county hired a full-time collections coordinator this year, the 11-month total (without December) is $248,139.  For the years 2013-2020, the average annual total was $204,138.