I recently read an interesting assessment of how police officers spend their time. The point was made that officers typically spend 90% of their time on 10% of the community. While this was not a scientific fact based on documented social research, it does beg for at least some consideration.
Do the police spend the vast majority of their time on such a small percentage of our community? That just might be the case.
Officers and public safety aides will often respond in a reactive manner to calls for service, many times returning to problem locations more than once. High crime areas demand a high percentage of police resources to deal with ongoing crime problems. Additionally, the number of crime victims and arrestees in our community is 10% or less of the total population. It might not be too far from the truth to suggest such a ratio is the case in Lakeland.
So what does that mean for the rest of the people who make up the remaining 90% of our community?
It can be argued the rest of us derive a benefit from police programs that attack crime throughout the community. To obtain such a benefit does not always require direct contact with the police. However, requiring the police to focus so much of our time (the basic resource we use to service the community) means there is not much time left over for other initiatives, community contacts, etc. that form what we call community-oriented policing.
The style of policing that we want to use to provide service to residents under community-oriented policing requires a higher amount of resources than traditional policing. We have always argued that COP is manpower intense. It is why we seek additional officers on our staff, so we can meet the expanding needs of our community. Officers need a certain amount of time to handle traditional police service calls and then additional time to engage in neighborhood-oriented and problem-oriented policing. That additional times comes in the form of more officers on staff, not less. We are not staffed at the required level to do all three elements of community policing, and pending budget cuts will put us even further in the hole.
If community-oriented policing is about servicing the entire community and addressing local problems, be they big crime problems or little order maintenance issues, how we spread our resources (time) across the community is limited to those areas with the greatest problems and will often be focused on reactive responses to community problems.
The 90%/10% ratio may be very accurate for Lakeland.
- Asst Chief Bill LePere
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