1. Police Executive Leadership Workshop
Police Resource Allocation

2. 2
What This Module is All About
• Police executives make lots of decisions, few
are more critical than staffing.
– How many officers do we need?
– How should I assign and schedule these officers to
maximize performance?
– How can we do this efficiently? That is, getting the
most output for our investment.
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Deciding how many officers we need.
• Four widely-used approaches
– Authorized Strength
– Population Rate
– Minimum Staffing
– Workload-based
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Authorized Strength
• Many departments compare their actual staff
with their authorized strength.
• This is the level of staffing that has been
approved-typically as part of the budget
process.
– Largely incremental
– May not reflect actual needs (High or Low)
– Will typically be below authorized because of
separations, recruitment, training.
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Population Rate
• Many communities rely heavily on comparison
by rate (number of officers per population).
• Driven in the past by the FBI that often
suggested appropriate levels.
• These rates can be a good planning tool but
are not well suited for critical allocation
decisions.
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What’s Wrong With Rates?
• Says little about the nature of the community
being served or of the organization
• Institutionalizes inefficiency
• Sends a message to the organization that “we
do not have enough officers”.
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Rates and Minimum Together
• "Our current staffing as it relates to sworn personnel is not
where it could be or should be for a city this size," Police Chief
Art Acevedo said the additional officers are needed to
maintain a ratio of two officers per 1,000 residents. That ratio
is a kind of benchmark among many departments across the
country to determine staffing; having two officers per 1,000 is
considered ideal and is also city policy. The city has 2.08
officers per 1,000 residents, according to the study by the
Police Executive Research Forum .But Assistant Police Chief
David Carter said that is only the ratio if the department is at
its full authorized strength of 1,740 officers, which it is not
because of vacancies, attrition and cadets waiting to become
full-fledged officers." We've never been effectively ever at
2.0,” PELW 2012

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Minimum Staffing
• Most police departments, particularly small
ones, use this approach.
• Increasingly popular with medium and large
agencies.
• Often tied to number of beats-but can be
very arbitrary.
• The real problem is the overtime cost
associated with filling vacant positions.
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Problem Areas
• Incremental
• Institutionalized
• Becomes the optimal staffing level
• Often times the levels are set so high that it
is likely that a vacancy will occur.
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Some solutions
• Street Strength
• Minimum during overlap times
• Reduce the hire-back time
• Using workload-based models to identify
staffing requirements
• Shared services
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Using Workload
• We will partition these activities into two
groups: community-generated and
discretionary.
• If we know how much time is consumed by
community generated work we can build a
model that incorporates the discretionary
activities.
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Workload Based Allocation
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Allocation of Time
Ratio is Community-Based
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What is Citizen Generated?
• Delaware Ohio Police
Department :”The City prides itself
on being one of the safest, and
annually handles more than 60,000
calls for service”.
• Can a city of 30,000 have 60,000 police
calls for service?
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Not likely!
• CAD systems often record all kinds of activities as
calls for service.
• In Delaware they would record a “call” every time
an officer came into the station.
• Actual number of citizen generated call per year is
16,000.
• If the average call takes 30 minutes this represents
about 8000 hours of community generated work-
not 30,000!
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CAD Data Example
• LOSTP 3D 13
• LOSTP 1C 1
• LOSTP 3B 1
• LOSTPR 3D 16
• LU 3D 17771
• MEETB 4 616
• MISION 4 746
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Calls for Service (CFS)
• Best Indicator of Citizen Generated Activity
• What is included
– Travel time
– On-scene time
– Number of officers assigned***
– Follow-up?
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19. Example of CFS Computation
Travel 6 min. 10.min.
• Domestic
Disturbance (Two- On-Scene 24 20
officers)
Arrest 30 0
Sub 60 30
Total 90
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CFS as Obligated Time
• Once we have this CFS time we can begin the
process of estimating the number of officers
to handle this demand.
• We can do it by shift or for the entire day.
• Let’s do it first by shift.
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Shift example
• Total CFS for one year for swing shift (3-11pm)
is 30,000 hours.
• If an officer worked every day in a year they
would work 2920 hours a year (8 X 385).
• So in order to handle 30,000 hours of CFS we
would need 10.27 officers (30,000 / 2920).
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Calculating Relief Factor
• Relief Factor = Tells us the number of officers
that we have to assign to a shift in order to
provide the appropriate staffing
• Will be different depending on whether
officers work 8, 10, or 12 hour shifts.
• May differ by shift or work group.
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Relief Factor Example
 Regular days off 104
 Vacation 15
 Holidays 10
 Training 2
 Court 7
 Sick 12
 Total Benefit Days Off 150
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Relief Factor
• 365/365-150
• 365/ 215 or 1.7
• This means that to staff on position you need
1.7 employees.
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Using Relief Factor
• Our RF was 1.7.
• We need 10.27 officers to handle CFS.
• Thus the total staffing required is 17.46
officers (1.7 X 10.27).
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But officers do more than handle CFS
• Based on what we have done thus far our 17.5
officers would spend all day answering calls
for service. Lots of other stuff to do!
• The question now is how we will spend our
discretionary (unobligated) time.
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Performance Objectives
• Let’s say we want our officers to spend 50% of their
time on CFS and 50% on other activities (officer
initiated, patrol, community policing, administrative).
• We could simply multiply the number required for CFS
times 2.
• Thus we would need 34.92 or 35 officers (17.46 X 2)
• For 1/3 patrol, 1/3 admin, and 1/3 CFS multiply X 3 ( 52
officers).
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Performance Objectives (2)
• Your assumptions are important.
• You may not have enough staff to meet a
performance objective. That does not mean
you do not have enough officers!
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Work Schedules
• Work Schedules are an important component
of resource allocation.
• Tendency to separate them, but this can have
serious consequences for management.
• Let’s talk first about general scheduling
properties.
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What is a good work schedule-depends
where you sit!
• Management Objectives
– Maintain staffing levels
– Proper supervision
– Effective policing
• Officer Objectives
– Should help them do their job
– Compatible with personal life
– Equity
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Why are work schedules problematic?
• Appear to be complex and difficult to analyze!
• Work schedules are viewed as “traditional” or
at least idiosyncratic to the agency.
• Change is always tough- work schedule
changes can be paralyzing.
• Most agencies build a work schedule around
the number officers they have-not what they
need!
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Scheduling Issues
• Length of work periods
• Shift Rotation
• Time-off Periods
• Staffing levels
• Holidays and Vacation time
• Overtime
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Shift Analysis
• Duty Cycle: Repeating of On and Off days.
• Four Properties
– Duty cycle length
– Number of on and off duty patterns in the cycle
– Staffing level by day of week
– Average work week
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37. Analysis 5-2 with uniform staffing
M T W T F S S
• Number of days off in
1 X X
each weekly cycle are
1 X X same
1 X X • Equal staffing by day of
1 X X week (71 %)
1 X X • Fixed days off
1 X X
1 X X
71 71 71 71 71 71 71
%
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38. 6 on / 3 off repeated 7 times over a 9 week period
M T W T F S S
1 X
2 X X
3 X X X
4 X X X
5 X X
6 X
7 X X X
8 X X X
9 X X X
% 67 67 67 67 67 67 67
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39. 10 Hour Shift (Equal staffing by day of week)
M T W T F S S
1 X X X
2 X X X
3 X X X
4 X X X
5 X X X
6 X X X
7 X X XX
% 57 57 57 57 57 57 57
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40. 10 Hour Shift: Holland Michigan
M T W T F S S
1 X X X
2 X X X
% 50 50 50 100 50 50 50
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41. 10 hours unequal by day of week
M T W T F S S
1 X X X
2 X X X
3 X X X
4 X X X
5 X X X
% 60 60 60 60 60 60 40
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4/11 Plan
•Two Teams M T W T F S S
•Several Start Times and 1 X X X X
Overlap
2 X X X X
•38.5 AWW
3 X X X X
•Training Days
4 X X X X
5 X X X
6 X X X
7 X X X
8 X X X
% 50 50 50 50 50 50 50
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43. 12 Hour Schedule
M T W T F S S
1 D D X X D D D
2 X X D D X X X
3 N N X X N N N
4 X X N N X X X
% 50** 50 50 50 50 50 50
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44. 8 vs. 10 vs. 12
12 10 8
Work days 182 218 273
Days Off 182 146 91
Potential 26 21 13
weekends off
% holidays 50% 60% 75%
worked
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How about staffing.
• 10 hour shifts result in overlaps in 24 hour coverage.
You are providing 30 hours of coverage a day!
– May be inefficient
– Will be costly
• 8 and 12 hour shifts are nominally the same for
coverage
– Three shifts of 30 officer- 2/3 on each day= 60
– Two Shifts of forty five- ½ on each day 45 for 12 hours is the
same 60
– Each officer works 1.5 days
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47. Minimum Staffing and Ten Hour Shifts
• Of particular concern is the combination
of ten hour shifts and minimum staffing.
• Consider the more traditional eight hour
shift. 71% of personnel are assigned to
work each day.
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From 8 to 10 Hours
• There are three squads-each with seven officers.
• Minimum staffing is four per shift
• In the 5-2 (8 hour schedule) each day 5 are assigned, so it is
likely that at least 4 will be there.
• The department switches to 10 hour days but maintains the
same minimum staffing level.
• In the 4-10 plan only 4 of the 7 are assigned each day-any
absence will require a hire-back, and that may be a 10 hour
hire back.
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RPD Overtime Costs 2004-2009
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Attributes of 12 hour shifts
• Average work week is 42 hours
• Longest workweek 48 hours
• Fewer shift changes
• HR policies must be changed
• Absence management can be tough
• Fatigue
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Schedules and Fatigue
• Lots of concern about fatigue among shift
workers and others
• Fatigue can lead to officer injury, accidents,
and citizen complaints. It may impair
judgment.
• It is still hard to make strong, reliable
statements about schedule and fatigue.
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Here is what we know!
• Officers on 10 and 12 hour shifts report less fatigue.
• Fatigue is worse for older officers
• Officers with small children reported more fatigue
• Long commutes contribute to fatigue
• Officers with regular hours (limited overtime and
special assignments) reported less fatigue.
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What does this all mean?
• Fatigue is more related to what officers do on
their off-duty time than their work schedule!
• What to do:
– Look at policy and work schedule focusing on off
duty time.
– Let officers participate in work schedule process
– Integrate discussion of fatigue with other wellness
and safety discussions.
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Police Foundation Study
– Compared 8, 10, and 12 hour shifts
– No difference in performance
– No impact on health
– 10 hour shift=more sleep and higher quality of life
– No examination of deployment
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Some Concluding Thoughts
• Policing is a labor-intensive activity
• Budget cuts will almost always result in fewer
people
• Watch overtime and other structural costs
• Pay attention to benefits
• Don’t insist that fewer people will lead to
Armageddon!
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Contact
• Alexander Weiss
– alexanderweiss@ymail.com
– 847-332-1160
– 847-644-3930 (mobile)
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