By Nicole Chavez and Andra Lim
Austin American-Statesman
AUSTIN, Texas — Austin police have quietly introduced a plan to add 410 officers over the next five years — more than double the amount of officers that city officials anticipated adding just one year ago.
The rough blueprint for next year’s city budget includes funding for the first 82 of those positions, a nearly 40 percent increase over the 59 new officers added this year.
Assistant Police Chief Troy Gay said the goal is to double the amount of time officers spend on community policing, such as meeting with business owners or walking apartment complexes, from about 15 percent to 30 percent.
“It takes a community to ... police our whole city,” Gay said. “If we make those relationships, they’ll know their officer. They’ll be more apt to call and report crimes.”
The projected cost for adding 82 officers in the first year is $10.2 million, an amount that includes salary and benefits, as well as police equipment such as vehicles, computers and other technology, said Brian Manley, the Police Department’s chief of staff.
And that the doesn’t include another 38 officers the department is requesting to boost services in priority areas, such as property crimes and robberies, Gay said. Those positions were not included in the city’s projected budget, but council members could decide to add some, none or all of them.
About two-fifths of the city’s projected tax revenue-supported $903.6 million general fund could go toward police the next budget year — about $373.2 million.
But these new officers are not a done deal. City Manager Marc Ott will release his proposed budget July 30, and the City Council can add and cut items before adopting it by Oct. 1.
A Flawed Ratio?
The Police Department’s plans are a departure from the way police officials have proposed adding officers in past years.
Former Council Member Bill Spelman said that during his first stint in office in the 1990s, he casually mentioned that when he worked for the Police Executive Research Forum and was asked how many police officers a jurisdiction should have, he’d say at least enough so that the officer-to-population ratio was 2 per 1,000.
Somehow, Spelman said, by the time he rejoined the council in 2009, that ratio had “morphed” into being the “law of the land” — meaning there was little chance for Austin police to adjust their staffing levels up or down based on factors like crime rates or calls for service.
After Spelman made headlines for criticizing the ratio, a 2012 study by the Police Executive Research Forum backed him up, saying that 2-per-1,000 ratio is “convenient and provides dependable increases” in police officers, but did “not appear to be based on an objective assessment of policing needs in Austin.” The study recommended adding 257 officers by 2017.
Spelman said the last budget year was the first time the Police Department didn’t explicitly use the ratio to justify adding officers but instead discussed what the new officers would do. The plan then was to add 187 officers over the next five years.
“I was not overwhelmed by the argument,” said Spelman, who is a professor at the University of Texas Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “But at least it was an argument.”
Spelman said there’s a body of research showing the benefit of adding officers who do “proactive police work” in places where crime is high, but he said the true question is whether the city needs 82 extra officers to achieve that goal or could use its existing force more effectively.
Gay said that, looking at staffing citywide, putting 82 additional sets of boots on the ground doesn’t represent a significant increase in police presence, which he said is key in deterring crimes.
“Let’s do the calculation. You take 82 officers and span them out over a 24-hour period over nine different districts in our city,” Gay said. “You’re not putting but just a couple people in each area in a 24-hour period.”
Digging Deeper
The community policing budget metric is reflective of what Gay described as a years-long shift in the department.
Officers were first introduced to “community policing” by then-Police Chief Elizabeth Watson in the mid-1990s; former Chief Stan Knee started the district representatives program by taking about 40 officers off patrol duties and turning them into liaisons between police and the community.
“Their assignment is to look at the long-term challenges and really dig deeper into the issues that affect a neighborhood,” Manley said.
Training in community policing begins at the 32-week academy, as cadets are asked to interact and learn as much as they can about a minority group, Manley said. But when cadets graduate and hit the streets, they can spend most of their time responding to service calls instead of proactively policing and building relationships with the community.
“Policing is taught but not practiced,” said Ken Casaday, president of the Austin Police Association. “The department is short-handed; we just go call to call.”
That’s not true for all officers, though. With a $1 million federal grant, Austin police are partnering with neighbors, researchers and other community groups to clean up the Rundberg corridor. That includes placing officers on bikes or on foot in the area at least three days per week — and thus not at the beck and call of the radio in their car.
“They are not handling calls. They don’t have the pressure to go out and make arrests to show how productive they are,” said police Cmdr. Donald Baker, who oversees the Restore Rundberg initiative. “It has reduced violent crime and improved the overall quality of life.”
A Cost-Benefit Analysis
Council members have so far seemed receptive to the idea of adding police officers to boost the amount of time they spend getting to know communities.
After a short briefing from Austin police at a recent budget session, the feedback from council members partly focused on crimes and police presence in their districts.
Council Member Don Zimmerman said he “constantly” hears of property crimes in his Northwest Austin District 6. District 1 Council Member Ora Houston said small businesses in East Austin still don’t know who the patrol officer assigned to the area is. Council Member Ellen Troxclair said Circle C residents in her District 8 are trying to start a neighborhood watch program in response to property crime.
Zimmerman, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, said in a recent interview that he’ll be pondering the “cost-benefit analysis” for adding officers to boost community policing time. If he decides the cost is worth it, Zimmerman said, one way to make up for that expense could be cutting the library budget, which he said includes a “dramatic head count” of staffers for the new downtown library.
Copyright 2015 Austin American-Statesman