WESTON, W.Va. — The city of Weston is highly visited by tourists, with attractions such as the West Virginia Museum of American Glass and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, but the county seat of Lewis County is also gaining attention for its safety.
Yet another publication has named Weston as the safest city in West Virginia, this time by online outlet SafeHome.org.
SafeHome’s study examined 2015 data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program, giving Weston a safety score of 99.34. The UCR data is reported in two categories, violent crime including murders and nonnegligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault, and property crime including burglary, larceny theft, motor vehicle theft and arson.
One factor not taken into account in the SafeHome study is drug arrests, which Weston Police Chief Josh Thomas said continues to make up a large portion of their yearly arrests, particularly prescription medication and meth, but even those numbers are improving.
“We haven’t found an actual meth cook in quite awhile. The meth we’re finding now is all imported. It’s believed to be from maybe Mexico,” Thomas said.
Most notable is that the data showed no violent crimes, which Thomas said has been a trend over the last few years.
“Some of that obviously would have to be attributed to a slight decline in population,” he said. “The last couple violent crimes we have had, they were gun crimes. We partnered with the folks with the ATF, and hopefully we sent a very clear message that those will not be tolerated. All of those people who were involved were prosecuted, both state and federally, for those crimes.”
However, while the city has seen great progress, there are still many challenges that Weston faces.
“We experience the same issues that every department in the state has experienced, as well as across the country,” Thomas said. “Obviously there’s always budget concerns. There’s just not an endless supply of money in order for us to go out and work, so we have to manage what we have to try to get the job done.”
Those budgetary concerns also create issues with hiring and retaining police officers, which Thomas said is another issue the department is still working to overcome.
“We’re budgeted and staffed for six police officers and the chief, and for years we were operating with a chief and two, maybe three, police officers. We were significantly understaffed,” he said. “We have built that back up now and have reached our full budgeted staffing, so that has helped us tremendously.”
For years, officers would use the Weston Police Department essentially as a “training ground” before moving onto higher paying departments, Thomas said.
“Officers would get hired by us, they would get sent to the academy to get trained, and then shortly thereafter they would leave for a higher paid job at the sheriff’s department or wherever,” he said. “We’re trying to reverse that, too, at the same time there’s only so much we can do financially to reverse that, but we’re trying to reverse that in other ways also.”
Thomas himself has been with the Weston Police Department for 16 years, serving as police chief since July 2016, and has seen several changes, both positive and negative, in the city as well as the department itself.
“I remember when I first started, there was a huge issue with driving under the influence. We’ve seen that completely do a 180 degree turn,” he said. “One of the bad things I’ve seen is I’ve seen the population decline. I’ve seen businesses leave and not reopen, so that creates a further issue for us as well because at times, people, if they can’t find work, they do have a tendency to turn toward crime.”
But with a fully staffed police force, Thomas feels the department is capable of continuing to keep the city of Weston safe.
“We’ve kind of adopted a philosophy of giving a full day’s work for a full day’s pay,” he said. “That’s really the biggest thing is holding them accountable and making sure that they’re doing the job that they’re entrusted to do by the citizens.”
To read more about the SafeHome study, visit https://www.safehome.org/safest-cities/wv/