Subtle or radical

I have mentioned in previous posts that phenomenon occurring in U. S. cities in which the police budget is consuming a growing percentage of the overall city budget.  Here’s an example* from Lincoln, but we are certainly not alone: 



The piece of the pie allocated to the police is growing because cities are trying to preserve public safety budgets by cutting other non-public safety municipal services.  If the trend continues, municipal services will increasingly become police, fire, and little else.  This can’t continue indefinitely, and several things may change it: sustained and robust economic growth, for example. 

The consensus among my peers, however, seems to be that something has to give on the expense side, and that policing and public safety services are going to undergo some significant changes to cope with these fiscal realities.  Just exactly how policing changes if the economic crunch we are experiencing turns out to be “the new normal” is an intriguing question.  The changes could be subtle or radical. 

On the subtle side, I expect that more and more police departments will adopt organizational structures and practices that maximize their efficiency.  The cost of policing varies hugely from city to city.  Lincoln delivers police services for a much lower cost per capita than most. Since personnel costs dominate police budgets, you can get a good feel for this by simply examining the number of police officers per 1,000 population.  You will find myriad examples of cities that have similar crime rates, similar demographics, and similar economics—yet one has far fewer police officers than the other, when normalized by population. 

Size does not seem to have any direct relationship to crime, disorder, or citizen satisfaction with police services. In my opinion, being small in comparison to your population forces police departments to be more efficient. In our case, we eschew specialization, use information resources strategically, flatten the organizational structure, deploy a larger percentage of our officers on the street than most, and focus our resources on our core mission.  You won’t find a huge traffic unit, an accident investigation unit, an equestrian unit, an aviation division, or a large grip-and-grin squad at the Lincoln Police Department.  In essence, then, I think you are likely to see more police departments looking like Lincoln, Fort Collins, and Fremont (CA), rather than some of the more bloated police departments with far more officers per capita. 

The better use of information resources, crime analysis, problem-oriented policing, and predictive policing will be part of these subtle changes.  Police departments can’t afford to waste their valuable resources, and will be much more interested in wringing a greater bang for the buck by using information, data, and research evidence to guide their activities.  Evaluation of results will be an accepted part of reviewing police strategies, which will increasingly focus on the outcomes, rather than the outputs.  This is already incorporated into Lincoln’s way of policing, and more cities will start to look like us in this regard.

Also on the subtle side, I expect to see a reduction in the range of services police departments provide, as they focus their limited resources on the core mission, and divest themselves of some duties and services that make a smaller contribution to safety and security.  In Lincoln, we’ve dropped tons of police services over the years: private property traffic crashes, funeral escorts, elementary school resource officers, DARE, money transfers, gas drive-offs, most medical emergencies, lock-outs, citizen police academy, and more.  Other departments are doing the same thing.  I chatted with Ken Burton, police chief in Columbia, MO last week at the meeting in Providence.  He stopped investigating non-injury traffic crashes on city streets a few months ago. We’ve had quite a conversation about that in Lincoln in the past two years.

At the more radical end of the spectrum, I expect we will see more regionalization of police services.  To some extent, this is already underway.  Many small municipal police agencies are folding as towns and cities contract with county sheriffs for their law enforcement services.  In a growing number of metropolitan counties, local law enforcement agencies are merging:  Charlotte, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and several others. This trend will grow.  At the far end of the continuum, I’ve got to think that more cities will be attracted to full-scale public safety agency merger, such as has existed in Sunnyvale, CA for 40 years. 

Subtle or radical, the cost of police services will drive some of these changes in future years. 

*Note: the police department’s operating budget does not include employee benefits, which are budgeted centrally in Lincoln from the General Fund Miscellaneous budget.  This is somewhat unusual in comparison to other cities. If benefits were budgeted within the department, our operating budget would be approximately 25% greater.