VIDEO: Police-staffing study = not just numbers

March 23, 2016 4:00 pm
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 |   West Seattle news | West Seattle police

As previewed during Councilmember Lisa Herbold‘s visit to the West Seattle Block Watch Captains Network last night (WSB coverage here), the new police-staffing survey was reviewed by a City Council committee today.

The video above shows the meeting of the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, and New Americans Committee, chaired by West Seattle-residing at-large Councilmember Lorena González. While Herbold isn’t a member of the committee, any councilmember is welcome to join any committee meeting, so she was there today to bring up some questions.

First, the report itself – you can download the slide deck here. Previews published last Friday mentioned that it calls for SPD to add more officers, but the numbers are just part of what was discussed.

SPD and city-budget managers who led the meeting offered frequent caveats that the 120+-page report – which was made public months later than expected – doesn’t necessarily reflect current staffing levels or philosophies. For example, they said, the concept of “responding to Priority 1 calls within 7 minutes, 90 percent of the time” might deserve a further breakdown – splitting up types of what are now considered Priority 1 calls, between what’s happening now (like a burglary in progress) and what could probably wait (someone who died at home). Also, what about Priority 2, 3, 4 calls – are the current labels for each type of call really the way SPD views and wants to respond to it?

Also, as Herbold had mentioned last night, SPD has a goal of splitting its time between proactive duties and reactive duties. The report, it was pointed out, calls investigations “proactive,” but that might not be how SPD sees them. Councilmember González said she agreed with Herbold that this is a key point of analyzing and evolving SPD operations. Herbold said that some granularity in staffing assignment, such as bicycle patrols, might help boost the proactivity.

Meantime, the briefers said, while SPD might choose to maintain the scheduling of three 9-hour shifts in each day, the overlap might be worth changing – if they overlap an hour instead of a half-hour, that “could provide better coverage.”

In all, the report was described as more of a “jumping-off point” than a blueprint for where SPD should be going. And in the meantime, it’s “hiring at an aggressive rate, a fast clip,” the councilmembers were told; Herbold said more use of civilian personnel might help with the challenges posed by the time-consuming process of getting sworn personnel on board.

What’s next? SPD managers said they want to come up with their own model for staffing and deployment.

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