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The investment in a new Computer Aided Dispatch and Records Management <br />system will be of great benefit to the department and city. Not only will it better <br />manage day to day operations and make the department more efficient, it will <br />also provide more accurate data in summary formats that will assist future City <br />Councils in making decisions on the levels of service both desired and expected <br />from their department. This same data will allow Council Members to make more <br />informed decisions regarding the level of service they can afford. <br />Patrol Operations <br />By using the staffing model based on time needed to perform the functions <br />currently required of patrol, and the current number of citizen generated calls, the <br />Patrol Division appears slightly understaffed for the recommended level of 45 <br />percent proactive patrol time. The model predicts a need of nine officers on days <br />and eight on nights. In reality at present both shifts have the equivalent of 7.5 <br />officers assigned however several of these officers are in field training and not <br />yet capable of working alone. Minimum staffing on both shifts should remain at <br />the current six officers although on night shift, after 2 A.M., the on-duty <br />supervisor should have the authority to drop to five officers due to the lower call <br />load. This current staffing level is providing a proactive patrol time of only 18 <br />percent on days and 41 percent on nights. On day shift the proactive patrol time <br />percentage is much lower than needed to perform many proactive community <br />policing activities and officers find it difficult to maintain high levels of self initiated <br />activity and follow-up investigations. In order to complete many of these <br />activities, officers are forced to rush call handling as well as other activities and <br />frequent use of overtime should be expected. <br />No recommendation for additional staffing is made at this time, however, <br />due to the predictive computer model not having accurate data. As noted earlier, <br />the staffing model was run with several estimated times due to the current CAD <br />Page 44 <br />