When you are the City of Madison police department.
Ok – you asked for it. Several people asked me, “why isn’t that on your blog?”, so here it is.
The need for 30 new police officers is partially based on a formula and a committee recommendation that we try to get to 1.9 police officers per 1,000 people in the city of Madison. Although I thought we were getting away from that formula and that is why we authorized spending on a study, for the sake of simplicity, we’ll go with the 1.9 figure. There is one fatal flaw in that reasoning and it is as follows:
The City of Madison has 398 authorized police. (Organizational Chart)
The University of Wisconsin Police have about another 50 police officers.
The Capitol Police have about another 50 police officers.
398 + 10 new officers approved last year that will hit the streets in 2008 + 50 UW police + 50 Capitol police + 30 new police = 538
The population of Madison is $224,0000 (from police website).
That means, we actually have 2.4 police officers per 1,000 residents of the City of Madison.
The next question people seem to ask is, so what? How does that compare? According to the 2003 Police Staffing report, here’s how that compares to others based on data from 2001 (see appendix H):
(Note, I made an error, this number includes officers AND civilians, new numbers are here.)
Durham NC (190,217) 2.90
Reno NV (190,218) 2.47
Columbus GA (190,262 377) 2.46
Orlando FL (190,769) 4.95
Modesto CA (192,366) 1.90
Huntington Beach CA (193,117) 1.89
Irving TX (195,963) 2.32
Yonkers NY (196,447) 3.53
Tacoma WA (196,638) 2.01
Des Moines IA (198,468) 2.50
Glendale CA (198,596) 1.72
Spokane WA (198,744) 2.02
Grand Rapids MI (198,842) 2.28
Shreveport LA (199,986) 3.10
Richmond VA (200,842 648) 3.80
Montgomery AL (202,350) 2.97
Lubbock TX (204,093) 1.70
Fort Wayne IN (206,886) 2.43
Fremont CA (207,193) 1.55
Madison WI (209,537) 2.14
Scotsdale AZ (209,686) 2.76
Rochester NY (220,177) 3.87
Garland TX (220,665 275) 1.79
Lincoln NE (225,841) 1.82
Glendale AZ (226,348) 1.98
Plano TX (227,069) 2.03
Baton Rouge LA (227,637) 3.34
Greensboro NC (227,700) 2.85
I’m not sure how these cities were chosen, but note, that even in 2001, when the recommendation of the committee was to go from 1.8 to 1.9, the City of Madison was at 2.14.
