Maybe some of our LEO members or others knowledgeable in such matters can help answer something I've been wondering about recently.
In terms of actual police "presence", I've seen the figure of 1 LEO per 100,000 citizens used many times. I'm not certain of its accuracy, but I guess that this figure was arrived at by the simple arithmetic of dividing the known population of the U.S. by the number of police on active duty nationwide. As it is, this figure is virtually meaningless as it lumps high crime and low crime areas together and makes no allowance for local population density or any other factors.
One thing that is for certain though is that not all the police on active duty are street cops. A certain percentage are clerical or administrative or have other duties that do not put them on the front lines.
In addition, despite what we often see on popular TV crime dramas, they're also not on duty 24/7.
So between the obvious division of resources that is inherent in shift work, when you factor in vacations, sick leave, court appearances, training days, etc., and subtract the clerical or administrative officers from the equation, just what percentage of a typical police force would actually be on the street at any given time?
People who take comfort in the fact that their community has a police force of 1000 officers to protect them might feel differently if they realize that there may actually only be 250 cops spread out over a couple of hundred square miles of territory. Suddenly, that expected 911 response time of 5 minutes might seem just a little unrealistic.
So if anybody could shed some light on this I would appreciate it.
In terms of actual police "presence", I've seen the figure of 1 LEO per 100,000 citizens used many times. I'm not certain of its accuracy, but I guess that this figure was arrived at by the simple arithmetic of dividing the known population of the U.S. by the number of police on active duty nationwide. As it is, this figure is virtually meaningless as it lumps high crime and low crime areas together and makes no allowance for local population density or any other factors.
One thing that is for certain though is that not all the police on active duty are street cops. A certain percentage are clerical or administrative or have other duties that do not put them on the front lines.
In addition, despite what we often see on popular TV crime dramas, they're also not on duty 24/7.
So between the obvious division of resources that is inherent in shift work, when you factor in vacations, sick leave, court appearances, training days, etc., and subtract the clerical or administrative officers from the equation, just what percentage of a typical police force would actually be on the street at any given time?
People who take comfort in the fact that their community has a police force of 1000 officers to protect them might feel differently if they realize that there may actually only be 250 cops spread out over a couple of hundred square miles of territory. Suddenly, that expected 911 response time of 5 minutes might seem just a little unrealistic.
So if anybody could shed some light on this I would appreciate it.