The Death Spiral — Is this Your County?

Well isn’t this a lovely news item for Fremont county residents to wake up to? Sheriff Beicker has been place din a horrible position here. His budget has been trimmed so he has to ask his deputies to patrol less. Crime is relentless, so this will undoubtedly result in more crime, the public will become more and more dissatisfied and Sheriff Jim (an elected position) may well be out the door come next election. Not to mention the possible tragedy that may befall one or more residents between now and when the county raises the budget, perhaps several years from now.

Well, aside from resigning early or drinking a lot of Grey Goose martinis (my personal stress relief favorite), is there anything the sheriff can do?

Well here’s a couple thoughts that might help. first of all, even the former standard of 175 miles per shift seems like very little to me. I have had experience with police patrol statistics for many years now and the first department I dealt with formally was in a tiny New Jersey hamlet about 1000 th the size of Fremont County, Colorado. there, the chief of police made it mandatory that each patrol officer logged 100 miles of patrol each shift. And being a small department with few officers (often only one on duty per shift) the chief read his odometers and made his standards stick. Problem? Ummmhmmm. The boss was looking for 300 miles per 24 hour period per car, so by gosh the officers saw to it that there was that mileage. Of course the fact that the day shift and evening shift routinely racked up 50 or so extra miles so that the officer on midnight shift could .. shall we say ‘rest his eyes’ taught me that managing fleets by miles alone is not a good technique.

In Fremont County’s case, they land area and highway mileage is much, much larger. It’s very possible that some deputies might be able to do an adequate job with 100 miles of patrol, but others might need twice as much. And then who’s to say that the guy who averages 90 couldn’t do it in less?

The key is in knowing not only how many miles each car is doing, but where and when those miles are being put on. In fact, why not a list of every call that an officer responds to and across-referenced report of which officers responded to that call, how long they sat with their engines idling while handling it, in fact even how fast they went while responding and if their overhead emergency lights were on or off? Buck Rodgers stuff? Hardly. A simple GPS business management tool on each car could be the answer to the sheriff’s dilemma?

When you can measure what you are supposed to be managing the whole job just becomes a little easier.