By Philip Haldiman, Independent Newsmedia

A study commissioned by the city of Peoria indicates there is an extreme imbalance in police patrolling between the northern and southern parts of the city.

Peoria Police Department has severely deficient patrolling capabilities in the southern part of the city while the north’s resources are extremely high, according to the study, conducted by Matrix Consulting Group and presented Feb. 20  to City Council.

The city paid $68,000 for the study that encompassed the entire department and reviewed a variety of metrics from staffing to operations and includes a 10-year strategic growth plan analyzing the department’s operational capabilities and efficiency in light of rapid growth and evolving community needs.

The study showed insufficiency in patrolling, specifically in the southern part of the city.

Richard Brady, president of the Matrix Consulting Group, said “proactive capabilities” are an important part of evaluating patrol. “Proactive” in this context is the percentage of patrol officers’ time in which they are available and on-duty that is not spent responding to community-generated calls for service.

The target threshold for effective patrol services and “proactive capabilities” is 40 percent, and the city as a whole is at about 48 percent.

However, Richard Brady said that under closer analysis, that statistic is misleading, with the southern portion of the city falling below 10 percent at times.

“While there is an extensive amount of proactive time for officers assigned to the northern part of the city because there isn’t a lot of development, and staff needs to be deployed to provide a certain amount of service when a call does occur, it is the exact opposite is in the southern part of town where they have very little or no time to be in a problem-solving mode or be in proactive types of activities, which is the centerpiece of what makes a department effective — solving problems in a proactive way rather than just responding to calls for service,” he said.

North vs. south

In the north, resources are extremely high throughout all hours and days of the week. From a proactivity standpoint alone, there are more resources assigned than are needed to handle community-generated workloads, the study said. However, other factors, such as response times, officer safety considerations, and emergency response capabilities largely outweigh patrol proactivity as the primary factor driving staffing needs in the north.

By contrast, the study said, proactivity in the south is extremely low at many times throughout the day and week, with resources severely inadequate during many times of the day. Tuesday through Friday, proactivity levels drop below 10 percent by 8 a.m. before falling to less than -6 percent between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m., the study said.

Ian Brady, a senior manager in public safety consulting services at Matrix Consulting Group, said there are severe issues in the south that need to be addressed, in large part, because of scheduling and deployment decisions made by the department.

“The workloads are far above what patrol can actually handle, so beyond even proactive time they don’t even have the resources to handle and respond to calls,” Ian Brady said.

Staffing

Crime went up in most categories in Peoria from 2015 to 2016, according to the FBI’s annual report on national crime statistics. Additionally, response times have gone up every year since 2010, according to a public records request, prompting a call from some residents for more patrol officers.

However, like many police departments across the country, Peoria is experiencing a national trend of understaffing.

At the time of the Matrix analysis, there were 89 total sworn officers — 41 in the north and 48 in the south.

There were 14 vacancies, for a total authorized strength of 103 officers.

The study stated the department’s turnover is relatively high, at an average of 9 percent of sworn positions per year relative to patrol. It is evident, based on turnover and overall workload levels alone, no fewer than 92 positions should be allocated to patrol, the study said.

The study determined three more sworn officers need to be hired by 2022, for a total authorized strength of 106 officers.

Ian Brady said the city is not keeping up with growth and people are leaving  the force quicker than they are being replaced.

“The current rate of turnover is much less than the number of vacancies that currently exist,” he said. “You’ve had this build-up of turnover over the years and haven’t been able to fill the positions, and the result of that is this abnormally large number of vacancies.”

Police Chief Roy Minter said at the meeting the department currently has five vacancies for sworn officers. He said eight people are enrolled in the police academy, which concludes in June. Two are in officer training, four are going through background checks and a pool of six candidates have gone through the application process.

It can take anywhere from three to nine months for someone hired to move into solo patrol service, a time period which can include academy training, post-academy training, or field training, during which any prospective officer along the way could fail. Additionally, a city official said around 45 percent of the applicants fail the background check. Richard Brady said a department the size of Peoria’s is going to lose around 10 sworn officers a year.

Other strategies

Ian Brady said the city needs to ensure that effective levels of proactivity exist in both the north and south, and that several strategies should be used to solve these issues, aside from staffing increases.

One possible solution is to divert calls for service normally handled by patrol officers to police service officers, which could relieve sworn officers of an estimated 3,000 incidents a year, Ian Brady said.

“We looked at diverting low priority calls that don’t necessarily require a sworn officer to respond to a civilian within the department (police service officer) who is trained to be able to do things like minor, non-injury accidents, and other things you don’t need a sworn officer responding to,” Ian Brady said.

Other recommended solutions included altering shift schedules to better deploy resources when they are most needed, and reconfiguring the beat boundaries so some officers can be shifted from north to south.

However, most of the council took issue with the shifting of officers from north to south

Councilwoman Vicki Hunt, who represents South Peoria, said it would cause some real problems in the north to have their police taken away.

“I care very much that some go to the south because that is obviously where the deficiencies are,” she said. “I don’t want to take anybody from the north but I would ask that new recruits be placed in the south. We’ve asked for this report and it shows that is where we need them.”

Councilwoman Bridget Binsbacher, who represents the fastest growing part of the city in the north, said a lot of the information presented in the study is a surprise and some of it isn’t. More time is needed and more is deserved before determining the direction the council takes, she said.

“I don’t want to see deficiencies in my city anywhere, and I just can’t support removing any personnel. The public perception is great. People feel good about the job we are doing with regards to public safety and we want to maintain that. We are a growing city and need to stay in front of this,” she said. “So I think taking away is not a good idea. But when you look at the shifts and the percentages and restructuring of beats, all of that is very helpful with how we change and enhance what we already have.”

The study recommended adding more patrol members by 2022, however, Councilman Jon Edwards said personnel should be added sooner.

“We can’t do a division of north and south like we’ve done in the past,” he said. “If we need to add more resources, then we need to add more resources. I don’t  care if they are the north or the south, but my recommendation is, as we are getting ready for the budget talks, to look at adding resources now rather than later.”

Peoria resident Joe Clure took issue with the study. The police department is understaffed as a whole, needs more officers and the council didn't need a study to show that, he said.

Mr. Clure served more than 30 years with the Phoenix Police Department, and has served as president of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, the city’s police union for the rank-and-file.

"There's been a deficiency all along," Mr. Clure said. "What a waste of money. They recommended nothing to get service levels up to reasonable and sufficient levels. They are just going down same path."