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Proposed review spotlights city's police officer shortage

St. Petersburg has one of the lowest ratios of officers to citizens in the state, according to the FDLE. A review would ask: What's going on?

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published April 15, 2006

ST. PETERSBURG - For years, city leaders have complained about the Police Department's inability to hire and keep enough good officers.

Now, they're on the verge of doing something about it. The City Council is poised to order a review of the St. Petersburg Police Department's management practices for the first time since 1988. The goal: focus on recruitment and retention practices in the department.

"We've increased pay and we've increased benefits. But we still don't seem to be able to hire enough officers," said council member Rick Kriseman. "You have to ask: "What's going on?"'

Kriseman proposed the review after still hearing complaints from neighborhood associations that the city didn't have enough police officers on the streets. They want to see more police preventing crimes instead of just responding to them, Kriseman said.

Chief Chuck Harmon declined to comment on the council's proposed review. Police spokesman William Proffitt said Harmon didn't want to give the impression that he was trying to influence the council's deliberations.

By some measures, the department has seen improvements since 2004, when it lost 22 officers. It lost eight officers last year. But already it has lost 12 as of April 3 this year.

As an incentive to attract more officers, the city recently began offering eight hours of annual leave to employees every time they referred an applicant who was hired by the police.

The council's budget, finance and taxation committee already has approved the review. The full council will discuss it during a workshop at 2 p.m. on April 27.

The department has struggled with recruitment for years. In 2002, for example, union leaders called for an independent study to learn if management problems were causing officers to quit. Over the previous five years, an average of nearly 30 officers a year had resigned.

"It's about time," said Mark Deasaro, a St. Petersburg officer and president of the Police Benevolent Association of Pinellas County. "We obviously have some problems."

Police are currently authorized to field a force of 540 officers. There currently are 511 officers, 34 police cadets and 10 more hires pending.

By comparison, the Clearwater Police Department is authorized for around 269 officers, and spokesman Wayne Shelor said it had "just a handful" of openings.

Deasaro blamed St. Petersburg's salary and benefits as a major impediment to recruiting. Police also are upset about issues like the department's restrictive police on taking cruisers home, he said.

The result is a department with a glut of young recruits and older officers, Deasaro said. He worries about the department's lack of officers with a midrange level of experience.

"Why is there a big void in the center?" he said.

State figures show one consequence of the department's recruiting issues.

St. Petersburg has one of the lowest ratios of officers to citizens in the state, according to 2003 figures from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

That year, the department had 503 officers to patrol a city of 252,000, the FDLE said. The figure of 2.02 officers for every thousand citizens was much lower than cities like Tampa, Clearwater and Miami.

Tampa had 967 officers for a city of 317,000, a figure of 3.05 per thousand. Miami has 1,030 officers for a city of 370,000, a figure of 2.78. The state average figure for police deparments in cities with 1,000 or more people is 3.08.

As president of the Council of Neighborhood Associations, Karl Nurse often hears residents describe the need for more community police officers. They get called away for other duties all the time, like filling shifts for other officers, Nurse said.

"If you talk to any cop, they'll tell you that they have to spend the majority of their time doing things not related to community policing," Nurse said.

He recently attended a neighborhood watch association meeting where residents complained about a house in Bartlett Park notorious for drug use. On Monday, St. Petersburg resident Laten C. Bent was shot and killed in an alley near the house because he was involved in a dispute over drugs with another man, police said.

On Thursday, police arrested the man they say shot Bent. But Nurse said that if the city had enough community police officers, it might have been able to shut down the drug trade at the house before a man was killed.

"That's part of the reason we think (cops) are so important," Nurse said. "They can prevent crimes."

Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 727 893-8472.

[Last modified April 15, 2006, 01:22:29]