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I worked for a municipality of approximately 5500. It was a college town, dry, and had only a small area of public housing. (typical problem area) We generally had 3 squad cars and a utility car. Day shift was one officer, with two on in the afternoon and at night. The Chief was the secondary officer on days. That was 21 yrs ago. Now I work for the State Police. Times have changed. More officers are needed on a given shift, simply because the volume of calls has gone up over the years. More traffic, more cars, more people and more complicated lives have caused an upsurge in all sorts of calls for service over the years. Increased violence and the overwhelming increase in methamphetamine usage have made it very unsafe to operate at or below what would be considered "minimum staffing," although I see it happen all the time due to budgetary constraints and overtime issues. I can't give you an answer as to what the most practical staffing is for your venue, as there are far too many variables in play. The demographics of the community, the size, type and hours of operation of industrial/business areas, the actual physical geography of the area ,(large and spread out vs concentrated). As far as vehicles, if I am reading your question correctly, there are primarily two schools of thought. Take home cars vs pool cars. Heres a few thoughts:
TAKE HOME CARS
PROS: Officers generally take better care of take home cars reducing maintainence costs. Officers can be held more accountable to vehicle condition as they are the sole operator Response times may be affected, depending on the size of the venue, as officers can respond from their residence on a callout. Officers can carry more specialized gear, eg Tactical officers can get most of their gear in their car and have it readily available. Greater officer presence perception, if only slightly
CONS: Higher initial expense on vehicles themselves. Duplication of equipment. Additional radios, radar units, cages consoles, trunk gear, etc. Public perception of wastefullness. Need for "utility" cars, to be used if the officer's squad is down for mechanical repair. POOL CARS PROS: Less initial expense for both car and equipment. Easier to monitor maintainence schedules CONS: Officers generally don't take as good of care of pool cars as their is less sense of accountability. Officers usually carry minimally required equipment because "switching cars" is a headache. Fewer cars available for large scale incidents, making officers "double up" or be without a car entirely. I have a "take home" car, and as my HQ is 50 miles away from my home, and I patrol and respond to calls in my home area, its really not practical to have pool cars. Most county sheriff's depts have the same issues and also use take home cars. There are lots of things to consider before determining the appropriate staffing level for a police dept. and what sort and size of fleet to maintain. The best judge of that is usually those in the dept itself. Today's departments spend a lot of time compiling statistics to help determine how best to deploy what resources they have. Its been my experience, in dealing with many, many depts over the years, that almost all have need for more resources and tools to keep up with societal demands. A couple of the quickest ways to get a body of government sued successfully is to show that injury resulted from failure to train,(officers) or failure to provide for the safety of a community when a known deficiency exists. Yes, I realize that objectivity is a concern, but that is what the city councils are for, to provide a check and balance system... usually solely due to funding. Don't know if that helps or just muddies the waters for you, but if you have any other questions, feel free to contact my email.... probably a better venue to discuss those matters than this forum....Most folks wouldn't find this very stimulating discussion...
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