The matter of how many calls the Butler police get came up Tuesday at the city council meeting.

Police Chief Ron Brown said at the meeting that he expects the police would get at least 22,000 calls this year, which is up from about 14,000 in 2015.

Brown mentioned those numbers when he asked council to hire two full-time police officers rather than hire four part-time officers.

The number of calls the police get has shot up in recent years. In 2013, the number was 10,705, while in 2014 it was 10,123.

As of Thursday, Butler County 911 coordinator Rob McLafferty said city police had gotten 10,237 calls, which is 18 percent of all 57,230 police calls the county has gotten this year.

He noted that number doesn’t include calls that Butler officers may have encountered while on patrol and may not have reported to 911.

“When you look at how many departments we have, that is (high),” McLafferty said of the calls the city gets. “That’s a busy department, there’s no doubt about that.”

This change in the number of calls comes at the same time as the change in who reports calls for the city police.

On Aug. 1, 2015, the police department switched from having a desk sergeant, who recorded calls, to having the county 911 center record calls through its computer-aided dispatch (CAD).

The desk sergeant position was moved to get another officer on city streets.

Butler Mayor Tom Donaldson said the CAD has played a primary role in the increase in calls. He said that because desk sergeants were multitasking by answering phones, working on police radio and handling other duties, at times unintentionally a number of the calls didn’t get logged.

“By going to 911 we got a better, more accurate count of the calls we got,” Donaldson said.

But that’s not the only reason the calls have gone up.

Deputy Chief David Adam said that from reports he reads from officers, it’s clear that gun-related calls have been increasing.

“We’ve probably had more gun calls in the last 16 months than the last five years,” he said.

Drugs also are a problem.

“There’s more people using drugs,” Donaldson said. “We’re taking drug dealers out. The problem we’re having is more and more users. Political (figures) and police can’t stop that. That’s a family issue.”

Adam also noted drugs as an issue.

“Drugs are a major problem, and people will do anything to get them,” Adam said. “We want to make our department a proactive department, not a reactive department. With the manpower we have, we can’t do that.”

The police department is staffed at 21 officers, two shy of its full capacity of 23.

When asked if the rise in calls is due to the CAD reporting or a rise in crime, Brown said, “I think it’s a combination of it.”

Brown said the police get a wide variety of calls, ranging for more serious offenses such as domestic violence, assaults and gun calls to less serious occurrences such as disputes between neighbors, questions and residential parking issues.

“Some are more serious than others but they’re still calls, and they’re still something that you have to answer,” Brown said.