Evaluating Police Department Policy Decisions Using a Simulation Model of Sworn Officer Deployment
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijps.2007.9.4.341 |
| Author | Jerry Place |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Evaluating police department policy
decisions using a simulation model of
sworn officer deployment
Jerry Place
School of Computing and Engineering, University of Missouri — Kansas City,
570J Flarsheim Hall, Kansas City, MO 64110, USA. Email: placej@umkc.edu
Received 21 July 2006; accepted 11 December 2006
Keywords: simulation models, police manpower planning, police
deployment
Jerry Place
received a BBA from the University
of Missouri—Kansas City in 1972, an MBA from
the University of Missouri—Kansas City in 1974,
an MS in Computer Science from the University
of Kansas in 1979 and a PhD in Computer Sci-
ence from the University of Kansas in 1984. Dr.
Place is a founding faculty member of the Com-
puter Science program at the University of
Missouri—Kansas City where he is an Associate
Professor of Computer Science. His current
research interests include modeling and simula-
tion of computer and communications systems,
optical networking and numerical methods.
A
BSTRACT
In this paper we describe a simulation model built
to study police manpower planning and schedul-
ing at the strategic level. The model was designed
to analyse current officer shift scheduling and to
report average response time for different classes of
calls and utilisation of patrol officers. Since the
model produces officer utilisation, it could be used
as a planning tool supporting shift scheduling,
budgeting for new officers and supporting com-
munity policing efforts. We describe construction,
verification and validation and the parameters for
the model. We present results from a baseline
study and we show how our model could be used
to support several policy decisions about officer
utilisation and deployment.
INTRODUCTION
Information technology (IT) is a key
enabler of problem-oriented policing as
enumerated by Herman Goldstein (Gold-
stein, 1990). Community-oriented policing
(COP) is an essential way to provide a
‘. . . systematic, thorough, insightful, dis-
criminating and honest . . . understanding
of the problems . . .’ which sworn officers
face (Scott, 2000). Effective COP depends
heavily on extensive IT support for applica-
tions, data, analysis and presentation (Asso-
ciates, 2000).
Extensive studies have been directed at
effective IT analysis of crime data to pro-
vide insight into problems faced by law
enforcement agencies; however, little work
has been done to provide strategic decision-
making support based on these analyses to
be used for manpower planning and budget
development.
In this paper we focus on an IT applica-
tion that can be used strategically to organ-
ise and schedule sworn officers and which
will support the evaluation of policy deci-
sions on these schedules.
BACKGROUND
Police and city officials commissioned a
detailed quantitative analysis of police
International Journal of Police Science & Management Volume 9 Number 4
International Journal of Police
Science and Management,
Vol. 9 No. 4, 2007, pp. 341–356.
© Vathek Publishing,
1461–3557
Page 341
workload. They wanted to know how
sworn officers spent their shift time. Police
officials wanted to commit more officer
time to COP but before those commit-
ments could be formalised, a thorough
understanding of current duties was essen-
tial. This study showed that officer work-
load was very high measured by the time
spent answering calls for immediate service,
eg 911 emergency calls. This measure was
particularly important because department
officials had set a goal that no more than 35
per cent of an officer’s workload would be
committed to answering calls for service,
with the balance of shift time dedicated to
COP.
From Figure 1 it can be seen that officers
in the five divisions of the Patrol Bureau —
Central, Metro, East, North and South —
spent much more than the goal of 35 per
cent of their time answering calls for ser-
vice. In several observation periods, over 60
per cent of the average officer’s shift time
was spent responding to calls for service.
Also, Figure 1 indicates that the patrol force
deployment does not appear to be balanced
across patrol divisions — some patrol divi-
sions provide better service than others sim-
ply because the resources allocated to those
divisions resulted in less time spent in hand-
ling calls.
Also of serious concern to officials and to
the general public were the times when no
officers within a division were available to
answer calls. These periods were unfortu-
nately named ‘blackouts’ by the press when
the study was released. The study indicated
that blackouts occurred in every division
and on almost every day in the week.
Motivated by problem areas highlighted
by their quantitative study, but also con-
cerned by the lack of quantitative support
for strategic manpower planning, police and
city officials jointly commissioned the
development of a simulation model of
sworn officer deployment called the Police
Deployment Model (PDM). The PDM was
commissioned to support both tactical day-
to-day officer scheduling as well as strategic
analysis of future manpower requirements.
Figure 1
Average committed time
percentage for all
divisions
Evaluating police department policy decisions
Page 342
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