Patrol Staffing Study

The department is now undergoing a study to determine staffing needs for the patrol division. The department has hired ETICO, a consulting firm out of Illinois, to complete this study. I have met with two of the ETICO representatives who conducted a site visit at MPD. They are professional and have conducted similar studies around the country. This study will be vitally important to the future of the organization. The most important part of the study is a workload analysis of the patrol division. In the next few months it will be very important for members of patrol to call out their activity on the radio so the dispatch center can capture the activity and log the amount of time required to complete it in our computer systems. While it may seem burdensome to call out even minor activity, we believe that members of patrol do a lot of work that does not get documented or captured anywhere. To many patrol members it feels like we dash from radio call to radio call and try to fit in other activities when able to. Unless that anecdotal hunch is backed up by data, it is hard to build a staffing argument. We know how busy we are, we just need to capture that information in an understandable form so we can demonstrate that to the decision makers both within and outside of the MPD. This study will benefit us all, please do your best to call in all your activity.