Police Staffing

“Our people are our most important asset” is a frequently used phrase in police management. This saying magnifies why employee turnover is an important issue facing police organizations. Read More

Staffing police departments is a continuous challenge and one that has become more complex in recent years. Immediately prior to the onset of the 2008 recession, police agencies had difficulty recruiting officers and responded by implementing a number of creative recruitment incentives. Read More

This work aims to summarize literature on police recruitment and retention and how changing conditions may affect these. It uses a bucket metaphor to conceptualize and present visually how these changing conditions can interact with each other and create a dynamic police staffing challenge. Read More

The COPS [Community Oriented Policing Services] Office presents this Essentials for Leaders, which provides summaries of existing and new COPS Office publications and resources, tailored for executives. ‘Essentials for Leaders: A Performance-Based Approach to Staffing and Allocation’ provides a practical step-by-step approach for any agency to assess its own patrol staffing needs based upon its workload and performance objectives. Read More

A Performance-Based Approach to Staffing and Allocation highlights the current staffing allocation landscape for law enforcement agencies and provides a practical step-by-step approach for any agency to assess its own patrol staffing needs based upon its workload and performance objectives. Read More

Research has long focused on the size of police agencies, giving little attention to the composition of the workforce itself. Using data from a national survey, we examine personnel cohorts (i.e., distribution of junior, midlevel, and senior sworn staff) as an element of workforce structure in the largest, U.S. municipal police organizations. Read More

How many police officers does an agency need? This question is difficult to answer in the best of times. It has become more so in recent years, as an economic downturn caused police agencies to consider hiring freezes, furloughs, lay-offs, salary and benefit cutbacks, and retirement incentives. Read More

This report summarizes an assessment of police staffing allocation and deployment in Traverse City, MI.

In spite of persistently high unemployment rates, police departments across the United States face immediate staffing challenges. These challenges also complicate the attainment of long-term workforce planning goals. Read More

Data analysis can lead to innovative ways to address some of the most pressing criminal justice problems. Data collection and measurement, for example, supported the implementation of several successful crime-reduction strategies in recent decades. Read More