TITLE
Recommendation to request City Manager to present the Council with a Police Personnel Strategy that could benchmark goals for hiring, compensation and benefits within 45 days.
DISCUSSION
As we strategize on how to best deal with threats of terrorism and gang violence
in our city, we continue to stretch our local police force.
It is clear that we must increase the number of police officers on our streets, and
provide competitive compensation and benefits so we can continue to attract the
best and the brightest men and women to our police department.
It is estimated that the city needs anywhere from 200-300 more uniformed
officers to adequately patrol the city. While the numbers vary and change, our
police chief has indicated that the numbers could be as high as 300.
As we work toward resolving our structural deficit problems, we cannot defer or
postpone an aggressive agenda to provide more police officers to our existing
force.
Increasing our police force should be the City Council's top priority. As we enter
our budget planning process, we should begin by establishing a Police Personnel
Strategy.
This initiative can establish exactly how many new incoming officers we need to
hire and earmark new incoming resources towards adding more personnel to our
future police academy classes.
The Police Personnel Strategy can serve as a multi-year plan that sets
benchmarks and goals for hiring, compensation and benefits. It could be
modeled after our three-year budget plan.
TIMING CONSIDERATIONS
[Timing Considerations]
FISCAL IMPACT
[Fiscal Impact]
SUGGESTED ACTION
Approve recommendation.
BODY
[Enter Body Here]
Respectfully Submitted,
Frank Colonna. Councilmember Third District