Officers Coming out of FTO – GREAT! Now, Where Should They Go?

Agencies can boost their efficiency and provide higher quality service to their community by strategically plugging in newly-minted cops.

There’s a staffing crisis in policing. No one is disputing that. Agencies are competing for the few and far between that decide law enforcement is a career choice for them. Some agencies are making great strides in that direction as more recruits make it through the background process and academy classes grow. Once those newly minted cops are ready to hit the street, the choice has to be made as to which shift needs them the most.

Which shift gets the coveted resources has historically been decided, and is still common practice, by command staff sitting around a table and making their pitch to put the new cops in their district or on their shift. I’ve heard from many agencies that continue to allocate patrol staff this way. Staffing decisions based on who makes the best pitch will only reward the best salesman in the room. It’s unlikely this method will alleviate the days and hours with the heaviest workload. If there were an unbiased way to allocate staff based on defensible needs, would you use it? I hope everyone reading this post answers a resounding “yes” to that question.

Whether you refer to it as data-driven or evidence-based policing, those terms have become synonymous: there is a lot of information at law enforcement’s disposal to help make smart decisions. The obstacle for many agencies may be the capability to harness that data at the level of specificity to provide a defensible and actionable solution that addresses staffing down to the day and hour.

Agencies can be ready to boost their efficiency and provide higher quality service to their community by strategically plugging those newly-minted cops into the exact right place. The number of officers scheduled to work can be balanced to match the varying demand within different areas.

Here’s what that could look like in practice. This agency has 48 officers assigned to 12 teams on this schedule.

This agency is trying to address issues related to Priority 2 call response times. This is the majority of their call load, the best and most frequent opportunity they get with their community to deliver quality service. With their current allocation of 48 officers, they are experiencing longer response times between 06:00 – 12:00 on most days of the week. The community is seeing a poor reflection of police response during the hours in which they feel they’re needed most.

There are 4 cops coming out of FTO that will need to be placed into the schedule. A common practice is to distribute the cops so that the team sizes will be equal. This would alleviate officers feeling slighted because their teams have fewer officers on the days they work than the same teams working on different days. Watch commanders could make the argument that their teams should get the new cops because, on the schedule, they appear to be understaffed. The below example places officers to equalize A teams and B teams.

Based on the above allocation of the 4 new officers, this is how the projected response time will be affected. There’s some relief to the response times throughout the week. However, from 06:00 – 07:00, the response time is still anticipated to be quite lengthy. There are still multiple hours with anticipated response times over 10 minutes.

Adding 4 officers, going from 48 to 52, may not seem like it would make much of a difference to response times. Yet, even small incremental additions can be impactful. It requires examining the data in such detail that it will reveal precise weak spots throughout the week. It also requires evaluating the available resources at those exact same intervals. Is it possible to allocate those 4 officers to surgically address those weak spots? YES!

Using Deploy, this agency tried every possible combination of where the four officers could be added and found the best way to positively impact Priority 2 response time was to add one officer each to the A Days teams and two officers to the B Days 07:00 team.

This allocation of the 4 officers made significant improvements to many more hours throughout the week. The original troublesome hours, 06:00 – 12:00, were reduced to an anticipated response time of less than 10 minutes, with the exception of Tuesday between 06:00 – 07:00, which is just slightly above 10 minutes.

These improvements were made by only adding 4 officers. Imagine adding many more officers multiple times throughout the year. The positive impacts can be significant! The key to maximizing those impacts is to utilize the CAD data available in such a detailed way that it will expose specific pain points and then apply your resources precisely when and where they do the most good.

To see how this could work for your agency or to learn more about how Corona Solutions maximizes patrol efficiency, click here.

How Crucial is the Schedule to Staffing?

A patrol schedule that does not consider the demand for service when allocating officers will leak efficiency.

In the face of high attrition and low recruitment plaguing the law enforcement sector, the conversation frequently revolves around increasing hiring bonuses and bettering pay rates to attract and retain staff. But perhaps, there’s a pivotal solution that we’re missing – could an improved scheduling process better allocate existing resources, easing the workload for officers? In this blog post, we dive into the possibility of refining the current schedule as a tool to mitigate staffing challenges. We’ll consider how efficient resource use can become a game-changer in times of dwindling numbers and growing demands, and why we need to prioritize this often overlooked aspect of law enforcement administration.

Even if agencies could hire a plethora of cops today, those officers won’t be ready to work for many months to come. The training process is lengthy and, by the time those officers are ready, several more will have left the organization. Getting ahead of that cycle is next to impossible. In the meantime, the calls keep coming, and the demand is still heavy. No one wants overworked and burned-out officers responding to critical situations and, the more they burn out, the greater the chance they’ll quit. Longer hours and more overtime are dangerous and most certainly not sustainable. Efficient use of resources is more important now than ever.

There is efficiency hiding inside patrol schedules that few agencies are tapping into. To better understand this, let’s look through a lens we can all relate to.

There is a finite number of officers to deploy within an agency just as there is a finite amount of money we have within our budget. Each month we allocate proportional amounts of money to maintain a balanced life. We pay a mortgage or rent so that we have a place to live. We pay utilities so that we have electricity and heat. We allocate our available funds responsibly and efficiently.

If we didn’t allocate those funds responsibly, efficiently and proportionally, there would be consequences. If we paid the same amount of money to the mortgage company as we do to utilities, then we would lose our housing due to underpayment. Conversely, it would be wasteful to pay the utility company the same as we pay our mortgage company. The same applies to not allocating our patrol resources responsibly, efficiently and proportionally.

We are seeing those consequences play out with overworked and burned-out cops. If some officers are running from call to call while others are not feeling that pinch, then there’s inefficiency hiding in the schedule. The most efficient schedule allocates the number of officers proportional to the demand. Just like you allocate the appropriate amount of money proportional to the amount of the debt or bill, the same applies to patrol scheduling.

A patrol schedule that does not consider the demand for service when allocating officers will leak efficiency. This leakage can occur by the hour of the day or by the day of the week. For example, if you had 80 officers and 4 teams and wanted to equalize the span of control across all the teams, you could put 20 officers on each team. This seems fair and balanced. In addition, this schedule could rotate so that officers only worked every other weekend. The example below, which is very similar to a schedule configuration recently recommended in a staffing study for a large metropolitan agency by a different consulting company, assumes two 12-hour shifts per day, so there is no overlap between day shift and night shift.

This allocation treats every day the same and every hour the same. It assumes that the demand for service is the same every day and every hour. There is the same number of officers working Sunday evening between 17:00 – 19:00 as there are working Thursday evening between 17:00 – 19:00. While both periods are understaffed, according to the demand during those hours on those days, Thursday is severely understaffed.

Using a tool like Deploy, we can analyze exactly how suitable this schedule is given the demand recorded in the CAD system.

Sunday at 17:00 is understaffed by 8, and 18:00 is understaffed by 10
Thursday at 17:00 is understaffed by 15, and 18:00 is understaffed by 14

Officers working Sunday evening at 17:00 may feel a little busy, but the officers working Thursday at 17:00 will feel crushed by the demand. The short staffing is almost double Thursday than it is on Sunday.

But what if you could make the workload easier for all of the officers, no matter what day or hour they’re working? Let’s take the same number of officers, 80, and create a schedule that allocates the officers proportionately to the workload. We added some teams and adjusted the days they work and the hours they work. Not only did we alleviate the crushing understaffing hours, but we also incorporated training into the schedule, and each officer actually works fewer hours on the street than the previous schedule.

Sunday at 17:00 and 18:00 are now understaffed by only 2
Thursday at 17:00 and 18:00 are now only understaffed by 4

In conclusion, the significance of an efficient patrol schedule in dealing with staffing issues cannot be overstated. Demand-driven deployment paves the way for balanced workloads, even in scenarios of high attrition and short-staffing. By harnessing the power of smart scheduling, we can alleviate the pressures on our law enforcement officers, making their jobs manageable and reducing the burnout rate. This strategy goes beyond merely filling vacancies; it’s about making the most of the resources at hand to ensure the safety and well-being of our officers and the communities they serve.

For more insights into our innovative solutions addressing staffing concerns, follow this link. Let’s rethink scheduling as we know it and embrace a future of more efficient law enforcement operations.

2022 – Adjusting and Recalibrating

The ability to adjust and recalibrate is crucial for an agency to run its patrol division smartly and efficiently

As 2022 wrapped up, a reflection on the state of police staffing gradually started to appear. Gathering insight on staffing woes from across the country at different conferences and symposiums illustrated that, while each agency is unique, there are some basic problems they all face.

Three years ago, the world plunged into COVID uncertainty, and policing had to adjust. Next came the reckoning after the George Floyd incident, and policing had to adjust. Officers became disenchanted with the profession and left in droves, and policing is again having to adjust.

As we start 2023, law enforcement is dealing with high attrition and low recruitment. Anyone who has worked in law enforcement for more than a minute knows this will not be a quick or easy fix. Support for law enforcement is climbing back up. A lot of resources are now being devoted to officer wellness and safety, trying to address the underlying problems that led to high attrition and low recruitment. Isn’t that what those POP problem-solving classes taught us all those years? Address the underlying problem or condition; don’t just treat the symptoms. Law enforcement is entering an updated enlightenment phase. However, just like a cruise ship doesn’t turn on a dime, it will take a while for this transformation to occur. In the meantime, agencies need the ability to adjust and recalibrate in order to meet the demands of their community whilst hanging on to the staff they have.

As this metamorphosis occurs, there’s still the business of policing that needs to be done every day. During 2022, in an effort to try and adequately staff patrol, agencies reported disbanding specialized units, pulling detectives back to patrol, enacting 12-hour shifts (which may not be a good solution – see our previous blog post), and that excessive overtime is creating overworked and weary cops.

In 2022, law enforcement leaders, analysts, planners and researchers came to conferences and symposiums looking for insight and tools, such as Deploy Plus from Corona Solutions, to help them adjust and recalibrate when it comes to dynamic staffing challenges like high attrition, reduced budgets, and union demands.

Those insights included moving from thinking in shift averages to hourly averages for a more defensible, targeted approach to relieve specific pain points throughout the week in “Use Time Analysis to Recalibrate Patrol Staffing” at the:

  • AACA Spring Symposium (Arizona Association of Crime Analysts)
  • New England Crime Analysis & Intelligence Conference hosted by MACA (Massachusetts Association of Crime Analysts)
  • FCIAA Annual Conference (Florida Crime and Intelligence Analyst Association)
  • National Sheriff’s Association Annual Conference
National Sheriff’s Association 2022 Annual Conference – Kansas City

Insights also included which metrics are important to use and the best way to measure them for effective patrol staffing during “Ease the Pain of Attrition Through Patrol Staff Recalibration” at the NYS Division of Criminal Justice Public Safety Symposium in Albany, NY.

NYS Division of Criminal Justice 2022 Public Safety Symposium – Albany

While staffing woes continue to increase, it was saddening to see the collapse of the IALEP (International Association of Law Enforcement Planners) in 2022. These are the professionals tasked with staffing analysis if agencies are fortunate enough to employ them. With dwindling support and membership, the IALEP felt there wasn’t enough interest to continue. So, what is the future of staffing analysis for law enforcement agencies? There’s certainly a need for it based on the interest of the conference and symposium attendees. In April, the presentation “Ease the Pain of Attrition Through Patrol Staff Recalibration” will be given at the 2023 NORCAN Training Conference (Northwest Regional Crime Analysis Network).

Thorough patrol staffing analysis takes a lot of time and isn’t easy. There are no common off-the-shelf tools to which analysts and planners can turn that answer the hard questions: How can we effectively manage demand for service with decreasing staff? Will changing to a 12-hour schedule make officer workload better or worse? How much will response times be impacted when the next 10 officers leave?

Patrol is the biggest part of an agency’s budget (less a jail). It’s the division that most feels the impact of attrition, and it’s the most scrutinized of any department. Staffing to demand will not be answered by looking at a one-time snapshot in time, as demand is changing too fast, and historical workload was interrupted by COVID. The ability to adjust and recalibrate is crucial for an agency to run its patrol division smartly and efficiently. The way both the communities and the cops deserve.

To learn more information about new tools for demand-driven deployment, click here.

How Do You Really Know How Many Cops You Need?

The key is to know exactly which elements you need, how to scrutinize and clean that data, how to organize it, and most importantly how to apply it.

Law enforcement is now a data-driven profession, forcing agencies to provide statistically-defensible articulation for how many patrol officers are needed to maintain or reach specific goals such as emergency response times or backup unit availability.

This is quickly becoming a hot-button issue, and we are witnessing a collision between politics and demand. If demand dictates more officers, is the area then being over-policed? There is a struggle between officer safety and budgets, and sometimes there simply is no more money to spend. Some officers working the street may feel their safety is being disregarded and they are being taken for granted while others may think everything is great. That’s the byproduct of an imbalanced workload. Then there’s the issue of minimum staffing. An ambiguous number that becomes cemented in the agency culture. We can all agree that there needs to be a certain number of officers on duty, but what is the basis for that number? Is it by shift? Is it by the hour, so the minimum can be met by different shifts?

Even if an agency had all of the officers they’re allocated, there could still be an imbalance in the workload. Officers could struggle to keep up during certain hours while at other hours officers don’t run call-to-call. That’s the byproduct of an inefficient schedule. It’s nearly impossible to consider all of these factors and come up with a patrol schedule and deployment plan that feels perfect for everyone. So, how do we find a defensible and agreeable plan to move forward? What is the best way?

The answer lies in the first paragraph of this blog post…. a DATA-DRIVEN solution. Upfront, everyone needs to know that they won’t get exactly what they want. This means the community, the officers, the command staff, the purse-string holders, and anyone else who thinks they know the right answer.

It’s hard to argue with numbers and when those numbers are shown to everyone, they become fact. It’s important to be transparent in how these numbers were derived. Once, during my years as an analyst, there was a neighborhood that felt neglected by the police department. They claimed they never saw the police patrol their neighborhood, even as they had high crime and drive-by shootings every weekend. Wow, I thought, we’ve really dropped the ball with these guys. Guess I better see what they’re talking about. I did my analyst thing, pulled the data, cleaned the data, and gathered additional data just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Where was this high crime they spoke of? Drive-by shootings, surely we’d have records? The data was succinct. Low crime, and no drive-by shootings. Did they have crime, sure, but it was minimal in comparison to other neighborhoods. We sympathized with their perception that they were neglected by the police. But, when we showed them (with DATA) that we really need to spend our time in the neighborhoods that had higher crime and we couldn’t justify pulling cops from high crime areas where they are needed more, they actually agreed! They didn’t come away with what they wanted but were satisfied with the reason why.

The same solution applies to patrol staffing. There’s a plethora of data available to do this, specifically within CAD. The key is to know exactly which elements you need, how to scrutinize and clean that data, how to organize it, and most importantly how to apply it.

Interested in learning more about the most efficient way available to deploy our patrol officers? Click here

The Need to Recalibrate Staffing as Attrition Rises and Recruits Dwindle

Assuming there was no other option, many agencies moved to 12-hour patrol shifts, thinking that was the only way to maintain minimum, or close to minimum, staffing levels.

To say that workloads have changed for patrol officers in the recent past is an understatement. For some, pandemic shutdowns altered which calls officers respond to in-person and temporarily decreased the day-to-day workload. Then more serious resource-intensive calls related to violent crime started creeping up. When the shutdowns lifted, society was anxious to get moving again. As all of this happened, law enforcement officers reevaluated their career choice and began leaving in droves. Agencies suddenly found their patrol ranks dangerously short-staffed.

Many responded by disbanding specialized units, pulling detectives out of investigations, and sending all warm bodies to cover patrol shifts. Assuming there was no other option, many agencies moved to 12-hour patrol shifts, thinking that was the only way to maintain minimum, or close to minimum, staffing levels.

48 officers on a 12-Hour schedule

It may seem like an intuitive move. However, inefficiencies can hide in 12-hour shift schedules. Either there is no overlap between shifts and officers frequently get held over, or, if there are overlapping cover shifts, then too many hours become overstaffed.

The inefficiency of a 12-Hour schedule

Recruiting woes were being felt by law enforcement agencies even before the pandemic hit. Now recruiting is even more difficult and agencies are upping their game, offering hefty monetary incentives to attract the pale number of applicants.

Realistically, it will be a long while before recruiting catches up with attrition, if it ever does at all. In the meantime, robbing Peter to pay Paul is not sustainable. There’s a need for specialized units, now probably more than ever, and there has to be personnel dedicated to investigating and closing cases. Agencies need to ask themselves if they’re running patrol operations as efficiently as possible. Besides pulling bodies from other areas, what can agencies do to better staff patrol? The answer is to look at their SCHEDULE. Examining how patrol officers are deployed can uncover inefficiencies. By capitalizing on better deployment configurations, agencies can find a better fit between the number of officers they have and the workload their community demands.

48 officers on a 10-Hour schedule
More efficient 10-Hour schedule

Creating, changing, altering and adopting a patrol schedule requires computations on vast amounts of data. Utilizing this data, Corona Solutions harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to provide service projections based upon any given schedule. Deploy PlusTM from Corona Solutions provides detailed insight into patrol workload and the Deploy application. Visit our website to see how the value of this platform can work for your agency.

Scheduled vs Actual

How many hours throughout the week does the number of officers scheduled match the number of officers actually working? Does it matter? Can you obtain that data?

“Why are there so many overtime slips?” Lieutenant Harris asks Sergeant Frank. “It’s been a rough month LT, remember my shift has been down two people and one more just got hurt last night.” Upon closer examination though, Lieutenant Harris realizes these aren’t overtime requests for fill-ins to replace missing cops, rather it’s holdovers as too many officers are working past their end-of-shift. The overtime budget is dwindling fast. “Why are they not going home on time?”, he asks himself.

Working past the end-of-shift is not unexpected, but how often that happens is a clear indicator that the schedule may be askew. Even after officers are done handling calls they’re still on the clock. Often officers are hurriedly trying to complete the stacked-up reports at the end of their shift, which only degrades the quality of those reports. Subpar reports end up getting returned to the officer for corrections, only adding to their already long to-do list. The impacts of a mismatched schedule can snowball and are far-reaching.

Agencies are surprised at how many officers they think are on the street versus the actual number working at any given hour. More importantly, though, agencies are often at a loss of how to obtain this information. Without this data, it’s impossible to know if the schedule is out of alignment.

The graph below, from Deploy PlusTM, shows that many hours throughout the week there are more officers on duty than expected. This agency is quickly burning through its overtime budget.

Many more officers on duty than expected throughout the week = lots of overtime

Examining the difference between how many officers are expected to be working and how many are actually working could be the key to fixing a dwindling overtime budget. The graph below shows that there is some leakage of overtime, but not as drastic as the previous example. It also illustrates that there are more officers being held over on Friday and Saturday than the rest of the week. This agency can quickly identify where the shift overlaps need to be addressed.

Just a couple officers are held over a few times throughout the week = less overtime

Throwing officers at a schedule is not going to fix this problem. The solution lies in the ability to determine which hours of the week are suffering and most importantly recalibrating the staffing numbers to match the demand. A well-aligned schedule and allocation create a balanced workload for all and when it’s time to go home……. you can go home.

Click here to see how the Deploy PlusTM platform from Corona Solutions identifies the pain points, recalibrates staffing, and helps save your overtime budget.

Counting Calls vs. Counting Time

The most valuable resource that patrol officers possess is time, so how should it be measured?

Many decisions about staffing, allocation, and scheduling are made primarily on the CFS (Calls for Service) counts, and if time spent is included it is usually a generalized number across all CFS events. You’ve likely read something like “the average CFS took 18:41 to complete”. This is a very broad brush to apply when looking at resource consumption, and won’t provide the data needed to match your resource to your demand.

The most valuable resource that patrol officers possess is time. Time to respond and handle calls when citizens need help. Time to proactively engage their community. Time to write reports and take care of the day-to-day business. Time to collect information and investigate. Time to attend training and gain the most recent skills and knowledge available. So, when it comes to measuring this most valuable resource, how should it be done?

Average number of hours spent per officer per year

Adding up the time spent on CFS may seem straightforward, but the actual resource consumption is more complicated. It is not just looking at the time elapsed from the time of arrival to the time the call is clear. What if multiple officers respond? What if officers return to the call later? Each CFS is not equal and should not be treated as such.

Take for example a shoplifting call at your local big box store. One officer can typically handle a shoplifting call in about 30 minutes. Now, let’s look at a disturbance call outside a bar in a crowded entertainment center of town. One officer is not sufficient for this call, rather four officers are needed and it will take much longer than 30 minutes, probably one hour or more, to handle. So, while each call gets one tally in the count column, the time spent is vastly different; 30 minutes compared to four hours (4 officers @ 1 hour each = 4 hours). Time should not be seen as linear, rather it should be viewed as stacked.

Correct measurement of consumed time on calls per unit.

What if officers make multiple trips to the same call? For example, they clear the call but need to speak with the parties again later. Each instance of work on the call needs to be calculated so the true demand can be captured. Measuring from the first on-scene to the last clear would greatly inflate the time spent on the call. In the sample below, the actual time spent on the call was less than 2 hours, yet the first arrival to the last clear adds up to over 5 hours and would be an inaccurate measurement of resource demand.

Click here to see how the Deploy PlusTM platform from Corona Solutions rigorously measures demand so the appropriate resources can be scheduled for each hour of each day.

Impacts of Attrition and Juggling the Work Left Behind

In recent years law enforcement is being asked to “do more with less,” and at the same time, more and more societal ills are falling to the police for solving. But, bandwidth is shrinking and the workload is expanding, stretching resources so thin that the slightest extra tension could collapse the entire system.

At the same time, policing is experiencing a mass exodus of seasoned officers, and few recruits are ready to step in to take their place. The institutional knowledge walking out the door is going to take years to rebuild. Recruiting woes were the topic of discussion amongst law enforcement leaders long before the current staffing crisis, and things just got worse.

The Deploy Plus™ platform from Corona Solutions is the right tool to balance the workload and buy back officer time. The Deploy™ web application helps find the best allocation and schedule to prevent burnout amongst officers and empowers quick adaptation as workload and personnel change.

Redistributed, more equitable and balanced workload

There are no simple or short resolutions to recruiting and training when it takes 18 – 24 months to put an officer in a car answering calls on their own. Even if agencies are fortunate enough to over-hire in anticipation of attrition rates, the line of recruits waiting to get in is far shorter than it used to be. And, while hiring practices and standards are being evaluated, adjusted, modified, and revised to get more diverse bodies in the door, the work left to do has not subsided.

High saturation levels per officer

Continuing to use overtime to fill shifts is not sustainable. Officers will burn out from constantly running call-to-call, no backup units will be there when needed, and the overtime budget will explode.

When you can’t add cops, the only way to buy back officer time is to maximize the efficiency of your deployment of officers. An evidence-based approach can redistribute the workload across the remaining staff which will be more equitable, safer, and economical.

Click here to learn how Deploy Plus can help.

How Many Officers Do You Need?

To successfully answer the question of how many officers you need is completely dependent upon first answering “to do what?”

This question is constantly posed to police chiefs and sheriffs across the country. Law enforcement leaders ask for more bodies, then the stakeholders limit the number or deny it all together. To successfully answer the question of how many officers you need is completely dependent upon first answering “to do what?”

The answer does not lay within a simple finite number, rather it is dependent upon the schedule employed. Minimum staffing levels will change and be impacted by the number of officers scheduled for each hour of the week. This requires the workload to be examined hourly while recognizing the different workload during different days of the week.

In making the request for additional personnel, many agencies compare themselves to others based on simple calculations like officer per capita, but if stakeholders don’t really see the pain points, no additional positions will be allotted. If the agency is getting by with the staff they have, then stakeholders will ask the department to continue operating a lean force.

What if leaders could specify the ‘bang-for-the-buck’ they’re asking for? Stakeholders, do you want 5-minute response time to priority calls at all hours? Then it will require an additional 7 officers.

Stakeholders, do you want officers to spend time engaging the public and furthering the community policing effort? Then it will require an additional 10 officers.

It is vital for agencies to illustrate exactly what the impact will be on police services in these current times of budget decreases, restrictions and hiring freezes. What if you could show stakeholders and community members that decreasing the patrol compliment by 10% will result in not only reduced services, but exactly when and by how much it will delay response to priority calls? Perhaps that delay isn’t something they’re willing to trade for the cost savings.

The ability to specify exactly when and what the additional dollars and positions will buy adds legitimacy to the request and improves the chances it will succeed. Agencies need data and evidence to show exactly when and where the pain points are currently or when and where they will be without adequate staffing.

To see how different schedule configurations can improve officer safety, watch the video “Scheduling for Officer Safety” at www.coronasolutions.com, and reach out to see how we can make this work for your agency.

Who Will Respond in the Meantime?

Over the last few decades, policing has evolved to be the catchall for societal ills that were previously not considered to be law enforcement related. The amount of police resources spent on non-criminal activity has been creeping up over the years, requiring agencies to take on more responsibility and driving decisions regarding enforcement directives. On May 25, 2020, a historic fracture occurred in the direction policing will take in the future. How policing will look moving forward remains to be seen. Demands appear to center around redirecting response of non-criminal events to entities other than the police.

If police will no longer be responsible for dealing with non-criminal activity, you won’t find many police agencies complain, but diverting that response is going to be like turning a cruise ship….. s l o w!

In the rush to defund police, many city leaders are becoming aware that there are no viable solutions for not having police services today. The future may see a host of community-based teams and trained personnel equipped to respond to non-criminal calls. We can all hope, right? In the meantime, it will likely continue to fall on police agencies to handle these non-criminal situations. But, how do agencies deliver these services whilst their budgets come under scrutiny and face cuts?

For police agencies to survive these cuts, they must quantify the resources required to respond to non-criminal calls, not only to protect their fragile budgets, but also to provide solid data for the next corp stepping up to take on that responsibility. How many co-responders, licensed social workers and therapists will communities need to hire? What days should they work? What hours should they work? Leaders will turn to police departments, those that have handled these crises, for answers. The smart thing for agencies to do right now is to start quantifying the services they provide the community and justifying the resources they currently need to defend their budget dollars.

Workload analyses consistently reveal that a large volume of patrol resources (including the number of officers that respond to calls, time spent by each officer on the calls, and ancillary patrol costs) are spent on non-criminal activities. Being homeless, transient or mentally ill is not a crime. However, calls that revolve around these circumstances are where the bulk of patrol resources continue being consumed. In the current era of policing, resource justification needs to be evidence-based. Police agencies need data to justify how much it costs in salary, benefits, equipment, and the like for non-criminal response. There’s a treasure trove of information that agencies can harness to justify the need for resources and help tell their stakeholders “don’t be so quick to cut our budget or here are the services we will no longer have the capacity to provide.”

With a detailed account of the resources they expend on non-criminal activity, police agencies can preserve budget dollars. Agencies can show stakeholders, including government leaders and the community, exactly what services, and how much of those services, their budget dollars are buying. If police agencies can’t justify how they are spending the money, the community is unlikely to give them any. In the below sample, the police agency can clearly illustrate how many non-criminal calls, how many officers responded to the calls, how much time each officer spent on the scene, and how much cumulative time was consumed (over 6,700 hours!) on just three non-criminal activities.

Sample analysis from Deploy Plus Report

While the future of policing is being hashed out amongst community leaders, there are still non-criminal events that need to be dealt with. The only entity currently able to handle these are the police. Presently there are no teams of trained personnel at the ready the next time a call is received about the person walking in and out of traffic talking to themself or the homeless camp that popped up behind a business overnight. Those calls will still land with the nearest police agency and, hopefully, there will be an available officer to send.

Deploy Plus by Corona Solutions easily and economically provides agencies with the tools to show stakeholders the exact services their budget dollars are buying. More importantly, it illustrates what services will be lost to budget cuts. Who will respond then?