Reducing positions while maintaining service

I wrote in my last blog about the staffing challenges the budget for this fiscal year (which began Sunday) presented to our department. We now have worked out exactly where we are going to reduce positions, and I wanted to share that with our community. Keep in mind we are eliminating positions, not people. All the positions that are being reduced this year already were vacant or are expected to be vacated through attrition. Many of these spots have been vacant for years, so it's not as though we're embarking on a sudden reduction in force.

To balance our budget, we had to decrease our 1,457 sworn law enforcement positions by about 8 percent. As a comparison, that’s about the equivalent of the staffing of a whole suburban patrol division (like South, North or Shoal Creek patrol divisions) and then some. Of course we spread these reductions out to minimize the impact on neighborhoods as much as possible. And not all are in patrol. Some will be detective spots, others are training officers, and more.

Here is how eliminated positions break down in some of the most visible bureaus – Investigations and Patrol:

• 24 from the Investigations Bureau (includes Violent Crime, Violent Crime Enforcement and Narcotics and Vice divisions)
  
• 85 from the Patrol Bureau:

     - Central Patrol reduced by 24 positions to 162 officers
     - Metro Patrol reduced by 14 positions to 150 officers
     - East Patrol reduced by 17 positions to 155 officers
     - South Patrol reduced by 13 positions to 94 officers
     - North Patrol reduced by 9 positions to 92 officers
     - Shoal Creek reduced by 2 positions to 92 officers
     - Special Operations Division (includes Tactical Enforcement, Canine, Mounted Patrol, Helicopter and Bomb & Arson) reduced by 2 positions to 81 officers
     - Traffic Division reduced by 4 positions to 85 officers.

This undoubtedly puts more pressure on the officers in the field and increases caseloads for those in investigations. As I mentioned previously, continued reductions in force could lead to increased response times for 911 calls. But we’re doing what we can to abate that.

We’ve come up with a number of ways to help reduce the demand on patrol officers so they can spend the time needed to provide the service our residents expect and deserve, rather than running from call to call. Our Tactical Enforcement officers are increasingly responding to 911 calls for service. Officers in the Traffic Enforcement Division are helping secure crime scenes – a job that used to belong to district officers. This frees the district officers up to answer calls or help with the on-scene investigation. I’ve shifted our Hot Spot program to put officers into the areas that are most in need of police attention. They’re working on everything from seeking out parole absconders and violent crime suspects to helping with community clean-ups and neighborhood meetings. You can read more about those changes in last month’s Informant newsletter.

We’ve realigned several things in investigations to streamline casework and ensure detectives properly follow up with all cases. Our Quality Control Unit is working with officers and detectives to ensure the best cases possible are presented for prosecution, which should help assist detectives as they take on more work.

We're always looking at ways to improve our efficiency. One of the things we're currently examining is how officers' shifts are scheduled. We must work within the budget we are allocated. As you read in my last blog, we have made many cost-cutting moves over the last few years. With law enforcement under more scrutiny than ever before, we will continue to serve our city with professionalism and integrity, no matter the circumstances or budget.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org. 

Area-specific violence is being addressed

Some recent acts of violence have prompted inquiries about possible rashes of crime in different parts of our city. I’ve heard concern about the old Northeast and the 18th and Vine entertainment district among other areas, lately. 

Let me assure you that no area of the city is having an abnormal outbreak of violent crime. As I discussed in my previous post, homicides and assaults with a weapon are up this year compared to the record-low last year, but we still remain well below where we have been for the last four decades. All other types of crime in the city are down.

This is not to say we aren’t doing everything we can to prevent and solve crime and make people feel safe. I’ve talked a lot about our prevention efforts on this blog, ranging from the Kansas City No Violence Alliance to deploying extra resources to hot spots. There are so many other things happening. Weekly intelligence-sharing meetings keep everyone in patrol and investigations abreast of the most serious crime trends, suspects and problem areas. We then deploy the necessary resources – from increased police presence to covert operations – to stop the criminal activity. These intel-sharing efforts have gone down to the patrol division level, too. Your local officers work with schools, businesses, prosecutors, non-profits, and most importantly, of course – residents – to identify patterns of crime and ways to prevent them. The officers who work in your neighborhood know the areas experiencing issues, and they usually know who is engaging in criminal behavior. They need your help to further identify those suspects and get them into custody. And detectives need community assistance to gather enough evidence for successful prosecution.

Let me share a recent success story of all these pieces working together. The Historic Northeast neighborhood was recently plagued by a burglar who broke into victims’ homes while they were still inside. Crime analysts and district officers recognized the pattern and deployed resources ranging from extra patrol to cameras to under-cover officers. Neighbors and East Patrol officers held a community meeting to discuss the problem, actions residents could take to prevent crime and how to assist police. More than 100 people came to the meeting. Afterward, the burglar was caught and linked to about 20 crimes. This was an excellent collaboration between residents and police.

Similar work is happening in the 18th and Vine area. Central Patrol Division, the Vice Unit and the City’s Regulated Industries are working with business owners in the entertainment district to address violence that has erupted there. Additional officers also will be deployed at busier times like nights and weekends. Everyone should feel safe patronizing Kansas City’s entertainment districts. They are an integral part of our culture and make our city unique. KCPD constantly works with the management of these districts, as well as the businesses located within them, to ensure a safe environment. We also have excellent partnerships with the private security agencies who work in these areas. Everyone’s goal is to provide a fun place where people can enjoy themselves without fear.

Once a crime takes place, we also devote significant resources to solving it. During the first two weeks of September, Kansas City experienced multiple homicides. The Violent Crime Division alone expended more than $60,000 on overtime those two weeks. That is 1,206.3 extra hours put in by a few squads of detectives in just two weeks to solve these cases. That does not include the work done by crime scene investigators, analysts at the Crime Lab, or specialized units like the Illegal Firearms Squad, Career Criminal Squad or the many others who are involved in investigating these cases, arresting suspects and submitting cases for prosecution. We also have victim advocates who work every day with violent crime victims and their surviving loved ones.

We have incredibly dedicated people who work around the clock to get dangerous people into custody and provide justice. They work long, hard hours to ensure those who commit acts of violence will be stopped before they can hurt others. And as always, they need the help of other segments of the community to make that happen.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org. 

Area Command Unit gets 200 illegal guns off the street in 2013

The Area Command Unit marked an impressive accomplishment last night: it took its 200^th illegal gun off the street.

I activated the Area Command Unit on January 1, 2013. The unit was tasked with the primary goals of targeting active, violent criminals involved in firearm violations and suppressing violent crime. In addition to the target objectives, the Area Command Unit works collaboratively with all department units to continually stay aware of active criminal elements in the city. The unit is aggressive in its efforts to seek out these elements and pursue successful prosecution of individuals found to be violating laws, with a concentrated focus on illegal firearms. The Area Command Unit also serves as the primary enforcement arm of the Kansas City No Violence Alliance (KC NoVA).

Last night, Area Command Unit officers did a “knock and talk” at a house in the 4100 block of Monroe, where officers conducting surveillance previously had seen guns being sold in the front yard. The resident consented to let officers search part of his house except for one room, and the officers then got a warrant to search that room. They recovered five guns, ammunition and magazines. They were illegal because the resident is a convicted felon, and felons are prevented from possessing firearms or ammunition by federal law.

Those five guns brought the Area Command Unit’s total of illegal weapons taken off the street this year to 200. Illegal weapons are used in a significant amount of the city’s violent crime, and now there are 200 that can’t be.

We initially activated the Area Command Unit within the boundaries of the East Patrol Division, then expanded to Central and Metro patrol divisions in March. The Area Command Unit consists of three Squads, made up of six officers, one detective and a sergeant. The Unit also has an operations sergeant and is commanded by a captain who reports to the Patrol Bureau. I look forward to seeing more of their great work in 2014.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org 

The future East Patrol Division / Crime Lab campus - where do you think it should be?

Thanks to Kansas City voters renewing the quarter-cent public safety sales tax in November 2010, we are moving forward with capital improvement plans. First on the list is a new campus to house the East Patrol Division and Crime Lab. We're working with the City Architect's Office, City Manager's Office, City Council members and the Mayor to find the perfect spot for these buildings, and we'd like your suggestions.

Below are some of the factors that will be considered:
* Cost
* Size and shape of the site - it needs to be 12 to 15 acres
* Public accessibility (both by vehicles and pedestrians)
* Visibility of the surrounding area and security
* Possible environmental hazards or contamination
* Sufficient distance from railroad tracks and major highways to protect the Crime Lab from ground vibrations
* An opportunity to build in a blighted area in order to serve as an anchor for neighborhood improvement.

If you have an idea of where you think would be the perfect spot for the new East Patrol and Crime Lab, go to www.saferkc.com/east to submit your suggestions.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org.

An interesting day at CSTAR

Today was an interesting CSTAR (Comprehensive Strategic Team Accountability Review) meeting. All of the department’s commanders gather weekly to go over crime statistics and special problems and projects in each division and discuss solutions. The East Patrol and Special Operations divisions were up today, and we learned a lot.

Two visitors from the Urban Farming Guys came to tell us about how they moved from the suburbs into Kansas City’s urban core to raise their families there, improve the neighborhood and start an urban agriculture movement. Mayor-elect Sly James also visited today’s meeting and told us an illegal and dangerous party house that we’re trying to shut down is right next door to where he grew up.

Detectives reported that an arrest had been made in a series of Craigslist robberies. Multiple victims showed up to buy or sell something they saw on Craigslist and ended up getting robbed. (Our best advice on this continues to be to conduct transactions with someone you connected to online at a police station.) Detectives also said a good portion of East Patrol’s burglaries and arson fires took place at vacant homes, many of which had absentee landlords, making them difficult to prosecute. We even heard about a search for drugs in an East Patrol home in which officers found three alligators, a macaw parrot and a 12-foot python.

The Special Operations Division also reported that KCPD’s Commercial Vehicle Inspection Section received a national award for reducing commercial vehicle-involved fatalities on interstates from 2007 to 2010. Kudos to that hard-working group.

Finally, we got an update on Operation Constant Gardener, a multi-agency effort to target marijuana-growing operations today, on “4/20,” which is something of a holiday in the drug culture.

CSTAR does a great job of keeping KCPD accountable and keeping all elements informed about what’s going on elsewhere in the department. I encourage you to check out our CSTAR unit’s web page to learn about how they help us make the city safer.

Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org.

Community prosecutors focus on East Patrol Division

We're seeing some success with a program the Municipal Prosecutor's Office started about five months ago: neighborhood prosecutors. Read this story from our Informant newsletter to learn about the difference they're making in the East Patrol Division:

A whole sector of East Patrol Division officers were persuaded to show up to Municipal Court in February to get a persistent offender behind bars.

“We wanted to make an impact on the judge,” said Monica Smith, one of two community prosecutors assigned to East Patrol as part of a grant-funded pilot project with the Municipal Prosecutor’s office. “We wanted to show the defendant is affecting the quality of life of people who live and work in that neighborhood.”

“Who better to come to court than the people who see him everyday – the officers?” said Lindsay Arbuthnot, the other community prosecutor.

The community prosecutor program has been operating since October 2010. Five months in, Captain Bob Zimmerman said it’s getting results.

“They’ve really helped in a situation that’s been mostly frustrating for a lot of officers,” he said. “…There was never an outlet before if you had a problem house or a person you’re constantly taking to jail. The bad guy gets probation in one courtroom and then goes on to another.”

But now officers are turning information on these habitual offenders over to Arbuthnot and Smith.

“With the 1,000 to 2,000 cases that hit Municipal Court every day, prosecutors working at that pace don’t have the time to concentrate on the cases they need to,” Assistant City Attorney Beth Murano said. “The idea of community prosecutors is to be able to let the police and community bring the knowledge they have so the prosecutor can have a strategy for prosecution and not just go through the motions.”

Smith and Arbuthnot are currently monitoring the cases of 38 different people, all persistent offenders. Twenty of them are in the high-crime target areas of 27th and Prospect and Independence and Benton. Officers picked 10 of their most repeat offenders at each location and told Smith and Arbuthnot about them. Smith and Arbuthnot move to have judges ban the offenders from re-entering the target areas as a condition of their probation. If they’re spotted there again, they can get more than 180 days in jail.

“We monitor their cases, and we’re there when they go to court,” Smith said.

A prostitute who repeatedly was arrested at Independence Avenue and Benton presented a continual problem for officers, who even tried to get her into several social services. She rejected their efforts and kept breaking the law, so the community prosecutors got her a two-year jail sentence, nearly unheard of in Municipal Court, Captain Zimmerman said.

In addition to the police, Smith and Arbuthnot are collaborating with neighborhood associations and residents. They work out of the Vineyard Neighborhood Association’s offices and are involved in a number of area task forces. They attend neighborhood meetings and pass on crime information they hear to police.

They’ve also made it a point to get to know EPD officers by regularly attending roll calls, sectors-as-teams meetings and going on ride-alongs. The officers keep them up to date on their problem individuals, and the community prosecutors keep the officers apprised on how those individuals’ cases are making their way through the court system.

Murano said she would like to expand the community prosecutor program into the Central Patrol Division and beyond and is looking for ways to fund it.


Send comments to kcpdchiefblog@kcpd.org.