WS - E - Analysis of Police Department Staffing

Key Variables in Making Staffing Decisions Armed with all the information developed in a typical study, a further examination of staffing is possible. With these data in mind, which variable, if any of them, are influential to a department in making staffing decisions? Table-2 presents the correlation coefficients that compare the number of officers per 100,000 in a police department with all of the variables included in Table 1. Table 2: Correlation Analysis – Officers per 100,000 Population Officers per 100,000 Officers per 100,000 Population 1 Patrol Percent 0.049 Index Crime Rate 0.144 VCR 0.141 PCR 0.14 CFS Rate .638** Avg. Service Time Police CFS -.279* Avg. Service Time Public CFS -.635** Avg. # of Responding Units Police CFS -0.155 Avg. # of Responding Units Public CFS -0.008 Total Service Time Police CFS -0.25 Total Service Time Public CFS -.514** Workload Percent Weekdays Winter -0.255 Workload Percent Weekends Winter -0.278 Workload Percent Weekdays Summer -.316* Workload Percent Weekends Summer -.337* Response Time Winter -.630** Response Time Summer -.639** *Significant at the p<0.05 level **Significant at the p<0.01 level As can be seen in Table 2, there are six variables from the initial analysis that are significantly correlated with the number of officers per 100,000 population in a department. The CFS rate, or the number of calls through 911, is very strongly correlated with department staffing. With an r=0.638, police staffing is significantly correlated with 911 CFS rate. In other words, the more 911 calls in a community, the larger the police department. The other significantly correlated measures show an inverse relationship with overall staffing rate. Average service time for both police and public CFS is inversely correlated with staffing levels, which means as officer staffing increases, total service time decreases. This makes sense because the more officers a department has on staff the faster they will be able to handle CFS. Similarly, 11