APD needs patrol officers, will their new plan help?
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin Police Department is making some changes to help with patrol officer staffing and to help with 911 response, but the staffing crisis in the department is far from being fixed.
"The whole backbone of any organization is patrol," said APD Chief Lisa Davis.
There are currently 540 APD patrol officers according to APD. The department said those officers are driving around the city, responding to emergency calls and keeping an eye on communities, but Davis said there aren't enough officers.
"To have that number of officers on patrol in a city this size, it is not safe it is just unacceptable," said Davis.
To fill that void, APD had about 40 personnel, which includes detectives and non patrol officers filling in.
Davis says this was causing problems with moral and work life balance. It was also causing many officers to use overtime, APD said.
"So you think about backfill and officers that are detectives in aggravated assault or robbery coming to take time out to come do a 10 hour shift, then they have to come back and do overtime to catch up on the case and prepare for court," said Davis.
To help with the issue, APD will send 72 officers from specialized units back to Patrol.
"There was no one taken from any investigative unit so when you are looking at violent crime you are looking at the sexual assaults those were given extra bodies," said Davis.
Davis says she's also hoping cadet classes continue to grow to add to APD numbers and eventually build these units numbers in the future.
"As we start growing and we get the people back in, how does that look moving forward to bring back different services," said Davis.
Austin Police Association Responds
"These types of changes are tough. We need more officers in general and patrol is where the greatest number of vacancies are. Re-arranging our department, again, has an impact on morale and officers lives. Limiting the specialized units an officer can move to also is likely to impact recruiting. It's another example of APD officers bending over backwards to try and meet the needs of the city, while still facing significant resource shortfalls such as manpower, recruiting resources, and vehicles. This past year was the first year we had more officers join the department than leave since 2018, thanks to being back under contract. But significant staffing changes like this have the potential to undermine that positive progress and have a marked impact on morale. The bottom line is we need more officers because the department can only reorganize itself so much and I believe we've hit the limit. We're over 300 short from our authorized strength, and 700 short from where we should be."
-Michael Bullock, Austin Police Association President