Woodmoor Public Safety answered 87 dispatches in August, thirteen fewer than in July, according to the monthly report Chief Darrin Abbink posted on September 3rd. Animal complaints and assists tied for the largest category at 19 each, and five of the month’s calls were bears in unsecured trash. Behind the dispatch count sit the two routines that dwarf it: 1,379 business checks and 540 vacation checks, walked one property at a time.
August 2026, by Category
| Category | June | July | August |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alarm | 3 | 3 | 5 |
| Animal complaint | 12 | 22 | 19 |
| Assist | 22 | 16 | 19 |
| Criminal activity | 7 | 16 | 8 |
| Fire/fireworks | 1 | 9 | 1 |
| Juvenile complaints | — | 2 | 4 |
| Noise complaint | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| Open doors | 18 | 15 | 13 |
| Other | 2 | — | 1 |
| Property | 2 | 2 | — |
| Solicitor complaint | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Suspicious activity | 19 | 10 | 11 |
| Vehicle/traffic | 8 | 2 | 2 |
| WIA activity | 19 | 9 | 12 |
| Charted categories, summed | 118 | 109 | 99 |
| Grand total, as the report states it | 99 | 100 | 87 |
| Business checks | 1,250 | 1,277 | 1,379 |
| Vacation checks | 768 | 714 | 540 |
A Patrol That Runs on Covenants
Woodmoor is not a town, and its patrol is not a police department. Woodmoor Public Safety lost police powers in 1995, when the community’s standing as a homeowners association rather than a taxing authority placed it outside the state’s peace-officer system. Officers are trained and armed, they patrol seven days a week around the clock, they work alongside the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, and the department’s stated goal is the lowest crime rate in the county. Only certified peace officers can write motor-vehicle tickets, and the roads inside Woodmoor belong to El Paso County. That is why an abandoned truck on Top O’the Moor Drive West on August 10th — facing the wrong way, hood up, battery gone — ended with an officer asking a colleague to watch it and hand it to the sheriff’s office if nobody came back for it.
What officers can do is verify covenant violations, and the Woodmoor Improvement Association publishes the dividing line. Officers should initiate violations for matters of public safety — open pit fires, fireworks, discharging firearms in the common areas, loose and aggressive dogs. They will respond and attempt to verify complaints about barking dogs, loose dogs, loud parties and after-hours construction noise. They will not initiate trailer, commercial-vehicle or parking violations while on patrol or during a vacation check. That division shapes how most of August’s entries close: a door secured, an owner contacted, an agency notified, and four covenant violation notices left at four front doors.
The Bears Went for the Trash
Four of August’s animal complaints were logged as wild-animal bear calls, and a fifth arrived as a citizen contact. Every one of them was about trash.
On August 5th a resident on Pebble Beach reported that a bear had again got into the cans at the Country Club at Woodmoor and that the bar securing them had again been left unlocked. She told the officer that she and her neighbors had raised it with the club several times, in person and by email, and that the bears would keep coming back until the cans were secured. Six days later a bear broke through a wooden enclosure on Oak Hills Drive; the officer told the resident that the only safe place for the cans was inside the garage, and texted the information to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. On the 14th a can lay on its side in a driveway on Lone Scout Lookout with trash across the concrete — the homeowner had died, and the caller thought his adult children might not know the rule. On the 21st a bear worked through the cans in front of the garage of a short-term rental on Thunderbird Trail overnight, and the officer reached the management agency, which sent someone to clean up. On the 29th, during a business check, an officer found the dumpster at the Church of Woodmoor turned over.
The association’s rules are specific about this. Containers must have secure lids “in order to discourage animals from attacking the trash”; residents are encouraged not to put bags or cans out overnight for a morning pickup; and containers must be off the pickup location the same day. Woodmoor Public Safety’s own page puts it more flatly still: keep receptacles in a secured, closed location at all times except at the designated pickup time. Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s guidance runs to one line — always keep trash indoors overnight — and the agency states that leaving trash cans out where bears can reach them violates state law.
How a Barking-Dog Call Gets Verified
Nineteen animal complaints tied assists for the largest category, and eleven of them were barking dogs. Seven closed as unfounded and four as founded, and the department’s own account of the procedure explains the split. Excessive barking is a covenant violation; an officer responds and attempts to verify the complaint; a violation notice follows only if it is verified. The association’s rules define excessive barking as barking the owner has not stopped before verification. In practice that means an officer parks out of sight for ten minutes and writes down what he hears.
On August 10th, on Winding Meadow Way, that was nothing — no barking, no dog in either yard. On the 29th, on Caribou Drive, the officer arrived to find the complainant herself in the trees by the fence line, recording; he sent her back to her house, moved the patrol car where the dogs could not see it, and heard nothing further. Four calls went the other way. A dog barked non-stop on Kings Deer Point on the 1st, three dogs ran the yard on New London Way on the 15th, and a dog went at it for nearly an hour on Misty Morning Drive on the 28th; each of those three produced a violation notice. The fourth, twenty minutes of barking on Fawnwood Road on the 18th, ended with no answer at the door or on the phone. The month’s fourth violation notice came from a different kind of animal call. On the 27th, on Bowstring Road, an officer watched a large dog come under a fence into a neighbor’s yard twice in an hour, and left the notice at the owner’s door.
The one dog call that produced an injury went outside the association’s reach. On the 23rd a resident on Top O’the Moor Drive East reported that a loose dog had bitten her dog while they were out walking; the officer searched the area, did not find the dog, and referred her to the region’s animal law enforcement. The association’s rules say why. Woodmoor’s covenants mirror the county’s leash requirements, but the association does not enforce county animal control law, and victims of aggressive dogs are directed to county authorities, who conduct any investigation and issue any summons.
Nineteen Assists, Eight of Them Medical
Assists matched animal complaints at 19, and eight of them were medical calls run with the Monument Fire District — on Wildberry Way, Doewood Drive, Winding Hills Road, Top O’the Moor Drive East, Caribou Drive, Academy Circle and Scrub Oak Circle, plus a page for an unknown problem behind the high school where the caller could not say where he was and the officer drove every road looking for the vehicle.
Three more were fire assists. On the 22nd the fire district was called to a fire alarm on Masthead Way where a resident reported an unfamiliar smell in the basement; no fire was found and the homeowner was told to call Black Hills Energy. On the 23rd a power-line pole caught fire near Furrow Road and Silver Saddle Road, and was out by the time crews arrived. On the 27th a fire alarm at Ascent Church turned out to have been set off by a construction crew.
The rest is the ordinary business of the job. An officer let himself into a front door on Woodmoor Drive on the 4th to put a delivered package inside for an owner who was away. On the 22nd, two calls twenty minutes apart reported the same small deer dead on Woodmoor Drive; the officer moved it clear, set a cone and left a message for County Roads to collect it on Monday. On the 27th he waited with a driver on Fairplay Drive until her tow truck arrived. On the 29th, unable to find a phone number for neighbors mid-move who had left their garage open, he closed the door using the wall control and ran out underneath it. And on the 1st, in the parking lot of Lewis-Palmer High School, a man flagged him down looking for an Indian food festival; the officer looked it up, found it had been at the school in 2025 but had moved to Colorado Springs this year, and gave him directions.
Seven Trespass Calls, Five of Them at the Lake
Eight calls were logged as criminal activity, and seven of those were trespassing. Five were people fishing at Lake Woodmoor.
The lake is not common ground, and the association’s rules say so in a line of their own: Lake Woodmoor is not a Woodmoor common area, the association does not own it, it is owned by Woodmoor Water and Sanitation, and the district strictly prohibits trespassing. The district bought the lake in 2001 to store exchange credits from Monument Creek and supplement its wells, and it is now the source of the water coming out of Woodmoor taps. The association’s own ponds are a different proposition: fishing from the shore is permitted, no state license is required because the ground is private, and no boats or swimming are allowed.
None of that is obvious from the water. On August 4th two people who had driven up from Denver were found on the east shore, having seen the lake listed on a fishing website. On the 21st four juveniles were fishing from the west side and were warned that a repeat would be a trespassing charge. On the 22nd three more were found on the east side, and the callers thought they were the same three from three weeks earlier; the officer who had taken that earlier call said they were not. On the 27th two were contacted at the boat launch and asked to tell their friends the lake was closed to all recreational use. On the 30th two more were near the inlet. A sixth trespass call, on the 5th, was a vehicle parked in a drainage ditch off Lower Lake Road at the district’s property with two people inside. None of it produced an arrest.
The eighth criminal-activity entry came on the 31st at Saint Matthias Church, where a caller reported at least three incidents of food being thrown at the building. A report was taken.
Thirteen Open Doors, and What the Business Checks Are For
Thirteen dispatches were open doors or windows, and nine of them were at three commercial properties: four at Woodmoor Center, three at Ascent Church, two at Prescotts Inc.
The number that explains them is 1,379. Business checks are the department’s routine walk-around of commercial property, and they are what turns an unlocked door into a dispatch rather than a burglary report. At Woodmoor Center an officer found a brewery’s rear patio door unlocked on the 11th and again on the 12th, and a coffee shop’s main entry door unlocked the same night. Twice the contact number on file rang through to a voicemail box that was full, and the officer sent a text message instead.
Vacation checks do the same work on the residential side and are requested by residents: an officer walks the property once a day, looks for unlocked doors, vandalism and newspapers, and notes any packages that have been delivered. Two of August’s open doors came out of one. On the 4th, on Smugglers Road, an officer found the rear patio door and the garage door unlocked after a plumber had been in the house all day; the owner stayed on the phone and talked him through locking up. On the 6th, on Fairplay Drive, it was the upper and lower deck doors. The vacation-check count has fallen in each of the last three months — 768 in June, 714 in July, 540 in August — while business checks have risen: 1,250, then 1,277, then 1,379.
One Fire Call, and a New Rule for Short-Term Rentals
August produced a single fire-or-fireworks call, against nine in July, most of those clustered around the Fourth. The one August entry, on the 17th, came from Sherwood Glen North, where a caller reported that guests at a short-term rental had been spitting fire from their mouths and asked that it be documented because of ongoing problems at the address. An officer drove past to check the following night. Fireworks of all types are prohibited throughout Woodmoor — “if it has to be lit or is combustible, it is prohibited,” the rules say, sparklers included — and open burning is barred outright, though recreational fires in an enclosed pit with a spark arrester are allowed under eleven conditions covering wind, clearance, flame height and what may be burned.
Short-term rentals appear three times in the month’s entries: at Sherwood Glen North on the 17th and again on the 18th, and at the Thunderbird Trail bear call on the 21st. The association wrote a rule for them this year. Under the rules and regulations the board adopted on May 27th — the same revision that banned e-bikes and every other motorized vehicle from the common areas — any member using a property as a short-term rental must file an application with the association, supply a 24-hour point of contact and agree to inform short-term guests of the covenants. And owners are jointly and severally liable for violations committed by their guests and tenants, which is to say the trash on the lawn is the owner’s, whoever left it out.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Woodmoor Public Safety’s July: 100 Calls and Nearly 2,000 Property Checks — the first report in this series, and the source of the July comparison used here · Woodmoor, Explained — why Woodmoor is not a town, how the improvement association governs it, and which districts supply its water, fire and schools · Woodmoor’s Musty Water and the Renewable-Water Project It Now Plans Alone — on Lake Woodmoor, which August’s trespass calls were about and which now supplies the district’s taps · E-Bike Rules in the Tri-Lakes — on the association’s May 27 rewrite of its common-area vehicle rule, the same revision that carries the new short-term-rental requirement.
Primary documents: Woodmoor Public Safety Dispatch Summary, 1–31 August 2026 — six pages, the category chart and the full incident log, generated September 3, 2026, and posted with the association’s August report announcement · the July 2026 and June 2026 dispatch summaries, used for the three-month comparison · the association’s Policies, Procedures, Rules and Regulations, Parts I–IV, adopted by board vote May 27, 2026 · its published statement of WPS’s role in covenant violations, both filed on the association’s governance page.
Entities: Woodmoor Public Safety · Woodmoor Improvement Association · Woodmoor Water and Sanitation District No. 1 · Monument Fire District · El Paso County Sheriff’s Office · Colorado Parks and Wildlife, Living with Bears.
Methodology
All figures are taken from the Woodmoor Public Safety dispatch summaries for June, July and August 2026, each read in full — the category chart and every page of the incident log. Category counts were read from the rendered charts rather than from extracted text, because the text layer scrambles the pairing of axis labels to values. The August log was then tallied entry by entry and the tally reconciled against the chart.
One recurring feature of the report is worth stating plainly, because it now appears in three consecutive months. The chart carries a WIA activity bar, and that bar is excluded from the stated grand total and itemized nowhere in the incident log. In June the charted categories sum to 118 against a stated total of 99, and WIA activity is 19. In July they sum to 109 against 100, and WIA activity is 9. In August they sum to 99 against 87, and WIA activity is 12. In each month the difference is exactly the WIA activity figure, and in each month the log itemizes precisely the stated total and contains no WIA activity entries. The report offers no explanation, and none is inferred here. The totals used above are the report’s own. Business checks and vacation checks are counted separately from dispatches and form no part of either figure.
Incidents are summarized from the officers’ own narrative entries. Locations are given as the report gives them, by street or property rather than by address, and the resident, vehicle and unit identifiers that appear in the log are omitted. Body-worn camera footage is noted as used or available on 29 of the month’s 87 entries. The incident log identifies officers by first name only. Eight names appear in the August log; seven of them match the seven officers on the association’s published roster, and one, Reece, does not appear on it — as was also the case in the June and July logs. No officer below the chief is named here. Businesses whose premises were found unsecured are described but not named.
The covenant rules quoted here are from the version the association adopted on May 27, 2026, which is the copy currently published on its governance page; an earlier version dated 2017 also remains online elsewhere on the site and differs in several of these provisions. Background on the department’s powers and services comes from the association’s Woodmoor Public Safety page as published on September 8, 2026. Woodmoor Public Safety was not asked for comment.