The Atlanta Police Department’s record on increasing sworn personnel from 2002 through 2007 is actually a remarkable success story. We went from 1,433 filled positions to 1768 – an increase of 335 over five years. Atlanta is adding police officers even while about 7-9% of the force retires or leaves annually (which is a fairly normal national attrition rate in the public safety sector).
With a total of 1,833 sworn positions, we have averaged about 50 vacancies over the past 18 months (the 2007 year end number was our low point for this time period; the current number of vacancies is about 53). Importantly, the 50 vacancies really represent a structural vacancy ratio typical for any large organization. Any organization of 1,800 employees will always have turnover and will never be able to immediately fill those positions. The time it takes to fill vacancies creates a structural vacancy level that is next to impossible to overcome.
Frankly, the Atlanta Police Department does an astonishing job at filling vacancies – 55 vacancies on 1,833 positions translates to a vacancy rate of only 3.0%. I suspect that this is as low as any large organization can be expected to go. By the way – this does NOT mean that we don’t need the vacant positions. Even if we abolished the vacant positions as a cost saving measure, we would still have an organizational 3% vacancy level (it never goes away), which just means that if we cut existing vacancies (resulting in a total of 1,780 sworn positions)our filled positions would eventually decrease to about 1,725 sworn officers. No matter how many officers we have at any one time, we are likely to have 97% filled sworn positions.
Some people have suggested that if we can’t ever fill these positions then they must not be needed and eliminating them is a painless way of cutting the Atlanta Police Department budget. That could not be further from the truth. Cutting Atlanta Police vacancies will mean fewer officers on the street. It is that simple.
In the last six weeks we have begun to see a turnaround in the reduction of crime. Compared to the same six week period last year, we are down about 9-10% in May and June of 2008. We are hoping this represents the turning of a corner. It is not out of the question to believe a 0% increase for 2008 is still possible. That’s what we’re working toward.