Police department should add nearly 50 officers, report says

Wichita should add 73 positions to its police force and turn some jobs now done by officers over to civilian personnel, a consultant’s report says.

Under the proposal, the department would add 49 newly sworn officers and 24 nonsworn support positions.

Of the additions, 22 officers, three sergeants, a lieutenant and a captain would be added to the patrol divisions, bringing that staffing up to 365 positions.

The staffing report was commissioned by the department and performed by the Matrix Consulting Group.

The goal is “to meet the demand of our community as well as a 21st Century police department,” City Manager Robert Layton said.

The study included feedback from about 63 percent of the department’s employees and a shift-by-shift analysis of how officers spend their time.

In terms of staffing, “This department’s basically where it was about 10 years ago,” said Richard Brady, president of Matrix Consulting.

The main reason for adding officers is to relieve the amount of time they spend going to calls and creating reports and allow them to spend more time on working with residents to help prevent and solve crimes, said Wichita Police Chief Gordon Ramsay.

The analysis found that officers spend about 68 percent of their time responding to calls and 32 percent on policing activities such as neighborhood problem-solving and community engagement.

Between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays, officers spend 78 to 87 percent of their time on call responses, the study found.

Ideally, the officers would spend 60 percent of their time responding and 40 percent on proactive activities, the report said.

The report, presented to the City Council on Tuesday, also recommends consolidating gang and drug enforcement, traffic enforcement, canine units and crime analysis into a newly created special operations bureau.

Those functions are currently spread out among the four patrol bureaus: East, West, North and South.

Police helicopters could also come under the new bureau if the city decides to continue to have its own air support unit, the report said. As an alternative, the city could explore joining with other departments for a regional air unit that would respond as needed in Wichita or other communities.

Crime analysis would be “civilianized,” and four officers now performing those duties would be reassigned to patrol jobs.

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 9:52 AM with the headline "Police department should add nearly 50 officers, report says."