D.C. police have enough patrol officers on the street to do the job. That’s the upshot of a new staffing audit, but there’s push back from the department.
A new Office of the D.C. Auditor report says the District has enough officers on patrol but should deploy them differently to better handle the workload.
The report gave an example: “As of July 2023, a third of all officers assigned to Police Service Areas were allocated to the midnight shift, yet only a quarter of the calls for service occurred during this shift.”
Ron Serpas, a senior adviser for the Public Financial Management Group Consulting, the management group that organized the audit, told WTOP that the number of detectives on duty should match the average workload.
“Are the right number of detectives in a particular unit based on the amount of work, touch time, how many hours? How many days? How many witnesses? How many warrants?” he said.
It also identified how detectives accumulate “more than double the average overtime and compensatory time hours per employee” than all other department employees.
The report recommends the department hire 65 more detectives.
D.C. police said in a statement that the report is “at odds with reality and does not align with the feedback from residents and businesses throughout the city.”
“Chief Pamela A. Smith hears continually from residents and businesses that want to see more officers in their community,” the statement said. “With MPD’s current sworn workforce at a 50-year low, we are listening to residents and continuing to work to increase staffing while making the Department more efficient.”
One suggestion in the audit that D.C. police agreed on was efficiency. The study suggests the department should shift administrative roles held by officers to civilians, which would allow those officers to return to working in the streets.
Eric Melancon, part of the audit team and former Baltimore police chief of staff, said the shift would allow the department to “maximize its resources” for other responsibilities, including calls for service and monitoring local neighborhoods.
D.C. police also said that the department plans to hire dozens of civilians next year to take over administrative roles and “move sworn officers to more operational roles.”
The audit says its findings are based on a workload-based staffing model, recognized as an industry standard for assessing police staffing needs.
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