In the face of on-going staff shortages at the Flint (Mich.) police department, a consultant has recommended taking a drastic step—stop responding to any incident that isn’t a crime in progress or an immediate life-and-death emergency, and refer all other callers to the city’s Web site to make a report. The consultants also recommended moving police dispatching services to Genesee County’s comm center. The intent is to free up more patrol and investigative time to handle a rate of violent crimes higher than Detroit, and reduce a constant backlog of calls for service. At its core, the problem is caused by the department’s philosophy that “no call is considered too minor to warrant a response and no case is too small to warrant an investigation,” the consultant said. Discretionary patrol time per hour has increased from three minutes per hour in 2010 to 15 minutes in 2014 through various staffing changes. But the consultants say there are no more easy steps to improving that figure to 30 minutes per hour, the recommended level. Download (pdf) the consultant’s full report, including the comm center recommendations (p. 64).
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