Police Department
THE IACP APPROACH (International Association of Chiefs of Police) Ready-made, universally applicable patrol staffing standards do not exist. Ratios, such as officers-per-thousand population, are totally inappropriate as a basis for staffing decisions. Accordingly, they have no place in the IACP methodology. Defining patrol staffing allocation and deployment requirements is a complex endeavor which requires consideration of an extensive series of factors and a sizable body of reliable, current data. In defining patrol staffing requirements, we consider the following factors, the mix of which is absolutely unique to each locality and agency: · Policing philosophy · Policing priorities · Police policies and practices · Number of calls for service · Population size and density · Composition of population, particularly age structure · Stability and transiency of population · Cultural conditions · Climate, especially seasonality · Policies of prosecutorial, judicial, correctional, and probation agencies · Citizen demands for crime control and non-crime control services · Crime reporting practices of citizenry · Municipal resources · Trends in the foregoing areas. Source: http://www.theiacp.org/profassist/PatrolDeployment.pdf