How does a police call end?
Asked August 25, 2026 Figures as of October 18, 2026
Mostly as “Necessary Action Taken”, the city's closing word for the officer dealing with it, with nothing else recorded. Of 84,118 calls from Oct 1, 2025 to Oct 18, 2026, 64% end that way, 14% as a “Case Report”, and 1% as an “Arrest”. The ending depends on the asking: 38% of calls filed as “Burglary” end as “Unfounded Alarm”, and a state accident report closes 24% of “Traffic” calls against 1% of the next category. Calls run highest from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. and lowest from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m.; Friday is the busiest day of the week and Sunday the quietest, by 2 points of the week's share. A call is a request for police, not a crime, and 39% of them are filed under the one category “Disorderly Conduct”.
How calls end, citywide
The city's disposition field, verbatim, for the twelve largest values. The long tail holds 61 more.
| Disposition | Calls | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Necessary Action Taken | 54,085 | 64% |
| Case Report | 11,950 | 14% |
| South Dakota State Accident Report | 4,141 | 5% |
| Unable to Locate | 3,037 | 4% |
| Citation Issued | 1,416 | 2% |
| Gone on Arrival | 1,353 | 2% |
| Unfounded Alarm | 1,031 | 1% |
| Supplement Report | 851 | 1% |
| Arrest | 801 | 1% |
| Tagged | 709 | 1% |
| Parks | 707 | 1% |
| Subject lodged at LINK | 682 | 1% |
How each category ends
The eight largest categories and the three dispositions each most often ends in.
| Category | Calls | Ends as |
|---|---|---|
| Disorderly Conduct | 32,802 | Necessary Action Taken 72% · Case Report 13% · Unable to Locate 4% |
| Traffic | 17,449 | Necessary Action Taken 47% · South Dakota State Accident Report 24% · Case Report 7% |
| Other | 16,869 | Necessary Action Taken 78% · Case Report 10% · Unable to Locate 3% |
| Drugs/Alcohol | 3,600 | Necessary Action Taken 59% · Case Report 16% · Subject lodged at LINK 7% |
| Burglary | 2,665 | Necessary Action Taken 44% · Unfounded Alarm 38% · Case Report 12% |
| Theft | 2,211 | Necessary Action Taken 54% · Case Report 37% · On Line Reporting 3% |
| Sex Crimes | 1,976 | Necessary Action Taken 91% · Unable to Locate 4% · Case Report 3% |
| Assault | 1,852 | Case Report 57% · Necessary Action Taken 31% · Arrest 4% |
When
Busiest at 3 p.m. (6%), quietest at 5 a.m. (1%).
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13% | 14% | 14% | 15% | 15% | 15% | 14% |
Method
Counted: every Call in the Section's window, Oct 1, 2025 to Oct 18, 2026 — the twelve full months before the current one, plus the current one so far — 84,118 of them, one row per call identity (call number and timestamp together, ADR-0006). Category and disposition are the city's own fields, shown verbatim; empty values are counted as "(no category)" and "(none recorded)". Hours and weekdays are read in the city's fixed clock, as the Section reads them. Nothing is excluded beyond that and nothing is Not charted.
Nothing here is broken down below the city. The record carries a block-level location for most calls, and a table of blocks by call count would read as a rating of the people who live on them; that is outside what a Finding may say. The city corrects a call by appending a second row rather than editing the first (ADR-0006): in this window 276 calls arrived twice, collapsed to one row each before counting, and 23 of them changed disposition in the correction.
The city excludes some call types before publishing, and says so on its layer; what is not published is not counted. A disposition is how the city closed the call, not what happened: "Necessary Action Taken" is the record's word for the officer dealing with it, and this Finding does not read further into it.
Sources
- Police Calls as of October 18, 2026