Ask an Officer: Felonies, Speeding Cars in Neighborhoods

If you have questions for the Prince William County police department, we'll pass them along to Officer Jonathan Perok and First Sgt. Kim Chinn, public information officers with the department.

Questions can be asked anonymously. Submit your questions to us via e-mail at laurenj at patch.com, by posting a comment on this article, or by sending us a Tweet or a message on our Facebook page. 

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Question: Our main concern as parents is that as much as we watch our kids play, there are several drivers (who I would assume reside) in that street that still do not observe the speed limit. We do not have speed bumps and on many occasions, besides the fact that they are going too fast, they do not slow down at all. There was one incident when kids almost got run over.

What do we do in situations like these? Can we call a cop on these drivers? Can they be ticketed? Reported?

Answer: You can call this in. Use the police non-emergency line of 703-792-6500 to report such incidents. Depending on the circumstances and the situation, a driver can be charged. The most vehicle and driver information you can obtain, the better, such as description of driver, tag, make model of vehicle and any other identifying characteristics such as bumper stickers, body damage etc. However, please DO NOT put yourself in harm's way. You can also report traffic complaints to our hotline, see link below.

http://www.pwcgov.org/government/dept/police/Pages/Traffic-Safety-Hotline.aspx

Question: Can you please tell us how many officers are actually in police cars (on average) for any given shift? I know our county has over 400,000 residents spread over 348-square-miles, so what is the ratio of citizens to officers? 

Answer: For tactical purposes, we cannot answer this question pertaining to the number of officers on the street per shift. Our total sworn staffing is 569 officers. With the population hovering around 400,000, we have 1.37 officers per 1,000 residents.

Question: What constitutes a felony in Prince William County?

Answer: Prince William doesn’t determine what crimes are felonies or misdemeanors. Laws are decided by the state legislators in Richmond which are then enacted statewide. The main difference in the two is the punishments. Felonies usually can carry jail time over a year and can include the death penalty. Misdemeanors carry punishments which can include large fines and jail time less than a year. Typically the seriousness of the crime or the frequency of the number of times a person commits a crime is what constitutes a felony. See the link below to the code of Virginia to look up specific crimes.

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+TOC

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