Every budget, we have a discussion about how many police to add . . . and recently, mayoral candidate Ray Allen called for 6 more detectives for the department. Which got me thinking . . .
In 2002 I sat on the police staffing committee and we did a police staffing report. The reason I agreed to sit on the committee was my naive hope that if we had a plan, we could just follow that. Silly me.
In looking back at that report, there are several things I would have done differently, but here’s some interesting facts:
- In 1997 a similar committee agreed that if we got federal funding (COPS grant) that we would recommend increasing staffing to 1.9 officers per 1,000 by 2000, absent funding, the ratio would be 1.8 per 1,000 people.
- Since 1974 (through 2002) the police department has added 100 sworn positions including 1 person added to the Management Team, 3 Lieutenants, 3 Sergeants, 12 detectives, 1 investigator and 80 police officer positions.
- In 2003, hiring a new police officer committed us to $65,481 for salary ($38,207), benefits ($18,577) and overtime, uniforms, equipment and supplies.
- 128 of our commissioned officers are command staff. 254 are police officers.
- Command staff consists of 1 Police Chief, 2 Assistant Chiefs of Police, 9 Captains, 19 Lieutenants, 34 Sergeants, 53 detectives and 10 investigators.
- Of our 254 police officers (not command staff), 184 were on patrol. At the time we had 16 Neighborhood police officers, 4 Educational Resource Officers (work in the schools), 1 Acting Sergeant, 14 Task Force Officers, 12 Traffic Enforcement Safety Team Officers (this has since been cut in half), 2 Traffic Specialists, 7 court officers/baliffs, 4 training officers, 3 Criminal Intelligence Officers, 4 Safety Education officers, 1 crime prevention officer, 1 public information officer, 1 crime stoppers officer.
- Out of 333 sworn officers, only 184 were patrol officers.
- They had an additional 83 civilian positions including 26 parking enforcement officers
- In addition, the City of Madison also has other law enforcement officers due to the UW and Capitol Police.
- In 1988 the police department budget was 21% ($20,517,917) of our total budget, 14 years later, by 2002 their budget had more than doubled and it was 23% ($41,397,279).
- From 1988 – 2002 we added 87 commissioned personnel and we went from 1.66 officers per 1,000 to 1.79 per 1,000 people in Madison.
In 2006 the police deparment budget remained at 23% of our total operating budget or $47,331,958. In the past, I have been concerned that we don’t have much information about the police department budget. With all this recent attention to “rising crime” (or not) and the mayor’s race, this will likely be a hot topic. I sure hope we can get good information this year on the police department budget so we can look at efficiencies so we can get more officers on the street if that is what is needed.
