Members of the Prairie Village City Council want to know if the city’s police department is adequately staffed to combat rising crime in the area.
In response to a request from City Councilman Al Herrera, Prairie Village Police Chief Wes Jordan and Captain Tim Schwartzkopf gave the council a presentation on departmental staffing last week, laying out their current and ideal patrolling practices.
At present, the department has 45 sworn and 15 civilian employees. Thirty-three of the sworn officers are in the patrol division. A fully staffed patrol shift in Prairie Village has three officers and a supervisor on the streets at any given time with a fifth patrol car in Mission Hills. (Mission Hills’ police services are provided by the Prairie Village police department through an annual contract). A minimally staffed patrol shift has two officers and a supervisor plus a fourth patrol car in Mission Hills.
Departmental statistics show that for the past four years, patrol shifts have been fully staffed less than 30 percent of the time. That said, the patrol staffing rates don’t appear to have any significant correlation with the city’s crime rate. The rate of fully staffed shifts hasn’t changed significantly from 2007, before the city’s burglary rate spiked.
The council advised Jordan and Schwartzkopf to come back to them with a recommendation about the department’s staffing level — specifically, whether Prairie Village needs to hire more officers.
Schwartzkopf, who heads the patrol division, said he and Jordan were taking a hard look at the matter.
“Our inclination would be to be able to have every shift fully staffed when it started,” he said. “But we need to take a look at some things we could do to accomplish that without bringing on additional staff before we make our recommendation.”
