I don’t usually butt my nose into other cities’ and states’ problems but I found this editorial from the Pittsburg Post-Gazette thought-provoking. It’s notionally a lament about the paucity of police officers in Pittsburg:
Last March, the Post-Gazette Editorial Board revealed that “the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police faces a staffing crisis unprecedented in its modern history.” Nearly a year later, that crisis has only deepened — at an even faster pace than predicted.
On the night of Monday, Feb. 26, the Editorial Board has learned, only 14 officers patrolled this city of 300,000 people.
How does that compare with other cities?
At 743 officers for about 302,000 people, there’s one cop for each 408 Pittsburghers. Compare that to benchmarks Baltimore (271 people per officer), Cleveland (308), St. Louis (322) or Cincinnati (344). The idea the Pittsburgh Police are overstaffed — peddled by last year’s controversial Matrix Consulting Group staffing study — is absurd.
Chicago has one police officer for every 227 Chicagoans. But that brings us to the actual subject of the editorial. It’s actually a complaint about the consultant’s report:
When the Matrix study was released, both Mr. Scirotto and Mr. Gainey praised the document while distancing themselves from its most eye-popping recommendation: taking one-third of patrol officers off the streets. But they’ve done just that, and more. In fact, many of the changes to the bureau announced last week come directly from the study.
The Post-Gazette Editorial Board reported exclusively that members of the Gainey administration had lied as part of securing a no-bid contract for Matrix. Further, the consultants only visited Pittsburgh once in compiling the study, whose recommendations are nearly identical to other studies completed by the firm. It’s a cookie-cutter, slapdash document.
But it’s quietly determining the future of policing in Pittsburgh, even though those in charge won’t admit it.
and the city officials embracing it.
I have no idea how many police officers Pittsburg should have. Or Chicago for that matter. I do know that at 11,900 police officers Chicago was unable to dispatch police officers to more than half of the 911 calls deemed to require police intervention. And that arrests were only made in a fraction of those.
Although I’m sure there is some number of police officers, population of the jurisdiction, and geographical size of the jurisdiction below which there is a direct relationship among number of police officers, crime, and civil order but I’m skeptical there is any general relationship. There is definitely no straight line relationship among those things.
At least in Chicago I don’t believe that compensation has much to do with staffing problems for the CPD. As I’ve said before I think that the cops on the beat, the CPD, City Hall, the Cook County District Attorney, and the members of the judiciary need to be aligned better in their commitment to law enforcement. What impedes hiring police officers is widespread discontent. When police officers aren’t respected by City Hall, the Cook County DA, or the judiciary and when arrests are made they rarely come to trial and even when they do come to trial they rarely result in convictions, what’s the use?
Fun with statistics. Actually sad. And shame on the consultants.
Nevertheless. As you say. Unless the cops have the support of the DAs and pols, forget about it.
What a mess progressivism is.
I think this is forgetting how badly some of our police forces perform. Balko as part of his series on retconning Floyd goes over some of the details about the Minneapolis police and some others.
Steve
Link if interested. It’s pretty amazing how in some police forces they tolerate people casually abusing people and how they systematically avoid responsibility. I was surprised and when I worked in Philly it was the off duty cops who offered to have my (lemon) car stolen so I could collect the insurance money and the off duty cops who raped women in the ambulance they used to take psychiatric patients to the psych hospital.
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-retconning-of-george-floyd-part-382
Steve
In case my views are lost in partisan bickering, I do not believe there is a straight line relationship between the number of police officers and crime. In the past I have posted real life experiments that actually demonstrated that. Although I do suspect there is some minimum number of police officers needed we are nowhere near that, at least not here in Chicago. I also think that problems recruiting and retaining police officers are more closely related to how thankless a job it is than it is to pay or benefits.
I also think that crime is multi-factorial like practically everything else in life. Factors include the sort of policing that takes place as well as its quantity, the likelihood of punishment, the likelihood of gain, drug addiction and the types of drugs people are addicted to, feelings of entitlement, gangs, and, yes, poverty. Although IMO poverty is a pretty minor factor.
I think you should explicitly include the quality of policing. The Minneapolis report that the MPD officers maced people just because they were annoyed with them. People they never arrested and didnt even talk with. They just found them irritating so maced them as they walked by, because they could.
Steve