The Austin Police Department is experiencing a staff shortage that has led to an increase in violent crime, delayed response times and caused traffic fatalities, said Detective Kenneth Casaday, president of the Austin Police Association, a police organization that fights for equality in the workplace.
Frank Dixon, assistant police chief for the APD’s South Patrol Bureau, said South Austin, however, remains competitive in crime rates, traffic fatalities and response times despite the staff shortage.
In 2012, Austin City Council commissioned a Police Executive Resource Forum Report, a police staff study that recommended adding 228-257 officers over the next five years. In 2016, City Council commissioned another staffing report—the Matrix Report—that recommended adding 94 police officers by 2017 and an additional 20 in 2018.
Casaday said the city added 190 officers since 2012 and 12 more since 2016. Based on independent studies and council decisions, APD is still 38-82 officers short. APD is seeking more officers to meet the recommended report numbers—1,946 uniformed officers by 2017—and the Matrix report numbers—2,014 uniformed officers by 2018.
“This is a hard time,” Casaday said. “The city is growing fast, and we cannot keep up with the growth in the area.”
Case investigations, community policing and traffic enforcement have also suffered in the city as a whole as a result of the shortage, Casaday said. He added that the issue has also led to fatigued employees and less time spent in the office for officers to do paperwork.
“This is just adding stress to our officers,” Casaday said. “[APD] is pushing officers to get more work done without being able to take a break. We were so shorthanded last year that officers were pulled away from their desk for patrol, so cases aren’t being investigated.”
How South Austin measures up
In 2016, South Austin saw a 4 percent reduction in violent crimes and a 7 percent reduction in property crimes compared to 2015, Dixon said. The area is also above average in clearance rates, or the rate at which cases are solved by police for property crimes, robberies and homicides.
The South Austin Patrol Bureau covers 80 square miles of south Austin, beginning at Lady Bird Lake down to Onion Creek and stretching from Oak Hill to Montopolis, Dixon said.
Citywide response times have seen a negative increase compared to 2015, Dixon said. Although the South Austin area saw a 1 percent increase in call volume in 2016, Dixon said South Austin is still competitive in its response reflexes compared to the city as a whole.
The South Austin Patrol Bureau’s “hot shot,” or top-priority, calls saw a slight increase in response time from 4 minutes, 39 seconds in 2015 to 4 minutes, 43 seconds in 2016. The urgent calls saw an increase as well from 6 minutes, 18 seconds in 2015 to 6 minutes, 21 seconds in 2016.
“We are working to bring those numbers down, but we are still doing a good job of responding to our community when they call for help,” Dixon said.
More recruits applying
Although some police departments are still struggling to recruit officers nationwide, Austin avoided the problem with one small change.
Dixon said APD updated its application process in December to include an electronic portal, which resulted in a 400 percent spike in applications over the last few months.
“We did a robust, in-depth look at our recruiting process,” Dixon said. “We are a very progressive city, but we were still using paper applications.”
Officers who want to be part of the APD have to go through the department’s training program. APD offers three classes a year for cadet training.
“We have two full classes [for new applicants] and one modified class for those men and women who are current officers but want to transfer into our department,” Dixon said.
Dixon said the police department is on target to be fully staffed at 1,932 uniformed officers by the end of the year, which is below the suggested numbers from the staffing reports.
