WORKSTUDY-A_SANTA ANA PD - STRATEGIC PATROL STAFFING PLAN - FINAL REPORT

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Response times to Priority 1 calls are measured from the time an officer is dispatched to the call for service to arrival at the scene. Data obtained from SAPD indicate that the average response time to Priority 1 calls for service by patrol district ranges from a low of 6.78 minutes to a high of 7.43 minutes in 2013. The response times to Priority 1 calls are too high in comparison to the experience of the research team with other agencies and with national norms. As previously mentioned, Priority 1 calls for service are the most serious calls received by SAPD and commonly involve crimes in-progress and incidents that put citizens in imminent danger where rapid response matters. These incidents are critical, where minutes, and even seconds, can have a major impact The strategic staffing plan for patrol that is described later in this on the outcome of the incident. report will focus significantly on decreasing the response time to Priority 1 calls for service in the future . Critical Issue #3: Insufficient Self-Initiated Time One of the core responsibilities of patrol officers is to conduct proactive, self-initiated activities. community policing and problem solving activities, stopping suspicious individuals, making traffic stops, among others. As discussed in a later section of this report, SAPD patrol officers spent slightly less than 8% of each shift on self-initiated activities in 2013. The amount of time SAPD patrol officers spend on self-initiated activities is very low in comparison to the experience of the research team while researching other agencies and in comparison to national norms. The long-established national standard is 33% of each shift should be allocated for self-initiated activities which is over 4 times more than the activities currently performed by SAPD patrol The strategic patrol staffing plan that is built in the next section of this report will officers. increase the amount of time patrol officers have for self-initiated activities . The critical issues discussed provide evidence that the SAPD Patrol Division is stressed due to insufficient staffing. When patrol is not sufficiently staffed, Priority 1 calls for service are held in dispatch because of a lack of availability of officers to immediately send to the call, response times become excessive and self-initiated activities are minimal which are all currently occurring in SAPD. MODELING PATROL STAFFING NEEDS The primary issue addressed in this report focuses on the question: How many sworn police officers should be assigned to patrol in the Santa Ana Police Department (SAPD) through fiscal year 2019-20? The methodology employed to answer the above question was the use of the Model for the Allocation of Patrol Personnel (MAPP). MAPP is a validated allocation model created by the author and has been successfully used in other cities and jurisdictions to accurately project the Ѝ