EVERETT — A yearlong study of the Everett Police Department’s staffing concluded the city needs to add nine positions and possibly shift roles of several existing jobs.
Richard Brady, with Matrix Consulting Group, presented the study’s results to the Everett City Council at its regular meeting on Wednesday. The city hired Matrix on a $122,000 contract. Officers reported worrying over staffing and residents thought response priorities were “inconsistent,” Brady told the council during a briefing about the study in April.
The final report Wednesday focused on the core of the study covering scheduling and staffing, police Chief Dan Templeman said. It included recommendations for a school resource officer, a crime analyst, a records information specialist, a parking enforcement officer, two community liaison officers and adding a third unit that pairs a social worker with a police officer.
Brady used Everett’s 2021 data, including calls for service and staffing levels, to determine what was needed to shift from “reactive” to “proactive” work. Handling 911 calls is an example of reactive work, whereas community engagement and deploying where assistance statistically is needed are considered proactive work.
“You can’t say, ‘We’ll staff just to workload,’” Brady said.
Filling current vacancies is one of the first priorities. Reassigning four patrol officers from the night shift to the day shift was an immediate recommendation from the study.
Putting 14 new hires into two teams for a “power shift” from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. can expand the amount of proactive time officers have and “might be attractive to officers,” Brady said.
A third unit in the Community Outreach and Enforcement Team (COET), which combines police officers with a social worker to respond to homeless people and those living with addiction, was recommended for weekends.
Council member Liz Vogeli said expanding the COET unit, adjusting other positions and using other workers for some of the current calls police respond to can give them more time for crime response and prevention.
“I just see that as creating more opportunity for our law enforcement officers to do exactly what you have said would be great,” Vogeli told Brady. “They’re doing good work but they don’t have the amount of people to do it all.”
Mayor Cassie Franklin’s proposed 2023 budget has 252 full-time employees in the police department. It includes positions for a crime analyst and reclassifying two records information specialists to public disclosure specialists. The police budget proposal also has another $752,340 in expenses over this year, some of which comes from the new positions and some from expected wage increases.
Some of the study’s recommended position changes are subject to union negotiations.
The budget is being discussed in coming council meetings and is expected to be approved by December.
Ben Watanabe: 425-339-3037; bwatanabe@heraldnet.com; Twitter: @benwatanabe.
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