Consultant: Reduce Calls For Service By 40%

A consultant’s report on how the Oakland (Calif.) Police Department conducts business has made several recommendations for improving comm center operations, including reducing calls for service by 40%, using injured officers to handle incidents by telephone, and even prohibiting dispatchers from eating at their consoles. The report by Strategic Policy Partnership, LLC is the second of three reports intended to help Oakland reduce a crime rate that has made it America’s “most dangerous city,” and to cope with severe understaffing caused by budget constraints. The 39-page report says that, “As with many police agencies, the Oakland Police Department has had a policy of sending an officer to every 911 service request received.” This policy has created an enormous number of calls for service—348,081 for 2012. In fact, “Oakland receives a greater number of calls for service per officer than any other city, as shown in a survey of California cities,” the report states. Other law enforcement agencies have established a policy that police officers are dispatched, “only if having an officer on the scene is the best way to resolve the problem or situation being reported.” To handle the other reported incidents, agencies adopt other methods, such as appointments for an officer contact, intervention by an officer over the telephone, increased use of Internet reporting, and the use of a 311 non-emergency call center. The report also recommends diverting administrative telephone calls from the comm center, ensuring dispatchers take breaks, diverting officers from low-priority to high-priority incidents, and having a standard way of giving callers a response time estimate. Download (pdf) the comm center-specific recommendations here, and read an earlier news story about the distribution of Oakland’s crimes here.