There are 3 central problems that are impacting our precinct that Chief Sizer is attempting to resolve.
1. PPD is losing many high level command officers. Additionally, we are losing patrol officers for various reasons, and the net effect of this is we have fewer and fewer police city wide. The Chief is moving officers out of "desk jobs" to fill patrol vacancies and planning on more civilian help to fill those spots. The recent decision by the Mayor to eliminate Executive Leave for high ranking police officers has served to accelerate the exodus of the most highly trained officers on the force.
2. The recruitment process is too long. Besides not offering salary structures that will attract qualified candidates, the pool from which these candidates come (born 1980-85) was small to begin with. Out of every 100 applicants about 7 will make it to the training phase, and the over all process will take approximately 18 months for the trainee to begin work on their own. Even by "over hiring," help for the shrinking police force is about two years away.
3. North Precinct has the lowest percentage of incident calls in 2006. Yes, believe it or not, the statistics are, North Portland Police Precinct has the fewest calls for police assistance of the entire city. 11% All the rest of the city statistically has twice the ratio of calls for help, or greater with East Precinct at the highest = 26%
So what can the chief do to provide the best service to the entire city given these three problems?
Saturday, March 22, 2008
THE CHIEF'S PROPOSED SOLUTION
As of this posting, there is only one solution that the Chief has said makes "good business sense" and that is to Remove the Administrative and Command Staff from North Precinct. She readily admits, however, that the community was not involved in the planning of this change, but that she has yet to hear of a better solution in the community meetings she has attended.
This plan is sometimes refered to in the community as Gutting the Leadership at N. Precinct or creating the Headless Horsemen Precinct, and it is the one that is tied into her budget which awaits approval by the City Council in April. There is no debate that this will be the easiest plan to carry out if the community will go along with it. To make it palatable, the chief will leave the detectives, one lieutenant and the patrol officers in the building in St. Johns. However, the lieutenant will be assigned to community policing work. The patrol officers will report to sergeants that are in the N.E. precinct and it is envisioned that these sergeants will come out to the N. precinct from time to time, but details of that are not worked out.
North Precinct will be the only Headless Horsemen Precinct in the city. Taking the 7 people who have helped make North Precinct the lowest incident rate of all the police precincts in the city, and sprinkling them around to other precincts offers a almost negligible amount of help. But it completely strips this community of an accountable police department and makes us a ward of NE Precinct, which has double our incident rate. Where would you think the most resources will be deployed?
This plan is sometimes refered to in the community as Gutting the Leadership at N. Precinct or creating the Headless Horsemen Precinct, and it is the one that is tied into her budget which awaits approval by the City Council in April. There is no debate that this will be the easiest plan to carry out if the community will go along with it. To make it palatable, the chief will leave the detectives, one lieutenant and the patrol officers in the building in St. Johns. However, the lieutenant will be assigned to community policing work. The patrol officers will report to sergeants that are in the N.E. precinct and it is envisioned that these sergeants will come out to the N. precinct from time to time, but details of that are not worked out.
North Precinct will be the only Headless Horsemen Precinct in the city. Taking the 7 people who have helped make North Precinct the lowest incident rate of all the police precincts in the city, and sprinkling them around to other precincts offers a almost negligible amount of help. But it completely strips this community of an accountable police department and makes us a ward of NE Precinct, which has double our incident rate. Where would you think the most resources will be deployed?
Friday, March 23, 2007
SOLUTION # 2
In February, at a St. Johns Neighborhood Assoc. meeting, the Chief brought a map that was produced by the PPD. The staff was asked to redraw the precinct boundaries based on the idea of evening out the 2006 incident calls. The map called "Portland Police Bureau Redistricting Configuration 2" showed that North Precinct (with the new boundaries) would have gotten 41,146 calls to respond to and NE would have gotten 41,388.
To accomplish this, North Precinct would no longer patrol on the west side of the St. Johns Bridge, would add Hayden Island and go east to NE 21st ave and south as far as NE Glisan.
The Chief said this plan did not make sense because N. Precinct cars would be driving past the NE Precinct to handle calls east of MLK. In other words, the NE precinct building would be part of the new N. Precinct patrol area. The NE precinct building has a lot of money invested in it to make it suitable for police work, as well as provide storage space for the patrol cars. It would be extremely expensive to abandon the site and rebuild the precinct in a more centralized location along NE Fremont which would be the center of the newly configured NE precinct.
Under this plan, N. Precinct would have had about 19% of the total calls for help as opposed to the 11% that they actually had in 2006.
So is this concept dead? No. It has been suggested by some that the east bondary of the proposed N. Precinct be negotiated westward so that of being a straight north / south line along NE 21st ave, it be made to appear more like the letter "P" taking in a bit more of the NE and pulling back toward Interstate on the lower end. This is workable.
The benefit of this plan, produced by the police department, is that it retains the command structure of the North Precinct while adding some additional territory to more fairly distribute the call load. And, it is the only plan so far that does this without creating a Headless Horsemen precinct.
To accomplish this, North Precinct would no longer patrol on the west side of the St. Johns Bridge, would add Hayden Island and go east to NE 21st ave and south as far as NE Glisan.
The Chief said this plan did not make sense because N. Precinct cars would be driving past the NE Precinct to handle calls east of MLK. In other words, the NE precinct building would be part of the new N. Precinct patrol area. The NE precinct building has a lot of money invested in it to make it suitable for police work, as well as provide storage space for the patrol cars. It would be extremely expensive to abandon the site and rebuild the precinct in a more centralized location along NE Fremont which would be the center of the newly configured NE precinct.
Under this plan, N. Precinct would have had about 19% of the total calls for help as opposed to the 11% that they actually had in 2006.
So is this concept dead? No. It has been suggested by some that the east bondary of the proposed N. Precinct be negotiated westward so that of being a straight north / south line along NE 21st ave, it be made to appear more like the letter "P" taking in a bit more of the NE and pulling back toward Interstate on the lower end. This is workable.
The benefit of this plan, produced by the police department, is that it retains the command structure of the North Precinct while adding some additional territory to more fairly distribute the call load. And, it is the only plan so far that does this without creating a Headless Horsemen precinct.
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