Assessing the Police – Part 9 – Uniformed Patrol Officer Job Task and Workload Analysis

You submitted your 26-page application to be a police officer, you took the written and physical ability exams, you participated in an oral interview, maybe two, then passed a full background investigation, you were given a conditional job offer, then underwent a psychological and medical exam, you graduated from the six-month police academy, then passed your 10-to-14-week Field Training Officer program. Congratulations, after all of that you are now a patrol officer who is likely on probation for the next 12 to 18 months.

So as a patrol officer, what do you do, what is your role, what is expected of you? If you work for a municipal police agency or county sheriff, you know uniformed officers have most daily interactions with the communities we serve. In California, patrol is the single largest expenditure of resources for every agency in California, typically between 50-70% of California agencies staffing is allocated to the patrol function, with the state average being between 55-60% of the department. To gain maximum benefit from your patrol division, proper allocation of resources is critical to having officers readily available to respond to calls for service and to provide efficient law enforcement services to the public.

POST has found that about one-third of each patrol officer's time is expended for administrative tasks such as report writing, an additional one-third is expended responding to and handling calls for service, and the remaining one-third is unassigned time, sometimes identified as “directed patrol” or “proactive patrol” time. Unobligated time is necessary so that sufficient patrol units are available, 1) when a call for service requires multiple patrol units, 2) when more than one call for service is received at the same time, 3) for officer safety, and 4) providing patrol units enough time to conduct proactive patrol and community policing activities. The agency will want to identify and meet operational goals which allow patrol officers adequate time to be effective when handling calls for service, administrative demands, and community policing activities within the city. The best methods to calculate proper allocation of resources is to conduct a job task and workload analysis for your agency.

Patrol Officer Job Task Analysis

Probably one of the earliest job task analyses was conducted in 1828 by Sir Robert Peel, Peel drafted the Metropolitan Police Act in which he identified the roles of the police, to include the basic mission for which the police exist, to prevent crime and disorder. Peel organized the department around a beat system, maintaining order, protecting life and property, preventing crime, arresting offenders, recovering stolen and missing property, assisting the sick and injured, enforcing regulations, and delivering services not available elsewhere in our community.

In 1979, POST completed a statewide job analysis of the entry-level patrol officer position. Undertaken largely in response to changes in fair employment law, the 1979 job analysis enabled POST to establish selection standards which, in turn, provided local law enforcement with the tools necessary to make job-valid employment decisions. The purpose of the study was to identify the important job duties that are performed by entry-level uniformed patrol officers statewide. The results provide a basis for subsequent analysis of entry-level patrol officer basic job requirements, that is, the knowledge and skills that are necessary for successful performance of entry-level uniformed patrol officer duties. A second study was conducted in 1998 by POST staff, the study gathered survey data from 1713 police officers and 61 patrol supervisors representing 63 POST agencies in California. The result of these studies was the identification of eleven core patrol functions identified as a fundamental part of the uniformed patrol officer job.  

The eleven job functions are: 1) Detecting and investigating crimes, 2) Documenting investigation, enforcement actions and other patrol activities and contacts, 3) Apprehending and arresting suspects, 4) Preparing for and presenting legal testimony, 5) Managing traffic, 6) Providing emergency assistance to the public, 7) Maintaining order in the community, 8) Advising and assisting the public, 9) Working with the community to reduce crime and address community concerns, 10) Enhancing police-community relations, and 11) Maintaining and improving job readiness. Law enforcement officers in general perform essentially the same important tasks regardless of their job title and across jurisdictions, importance weights assigned to those tasks and the knowledge, skills and abilities that were identified as stable, with differences found only in the relative time spent categories across settings. There is consistency of job analysis information regardless of the race, sex, or seniority of the respondents with consistency of the results over time.

How do we evaluate workload, how many patrol officers do I need to address my agency’s workload, what is the best deployment for the resources I have?

Why measure and evaluate the workload of our officers? How do we know if an officer is over or underworked, what is the optimal number of calls for service or police reports one person should be given in a shift? How do we know when they are effective or not? The workload of our officers is a concern in all law enforcement agencies, we seek to avoid burnout, improve morale, and maintain the wellness and resiliency of our people. Failure to monitor workload can result in less cases being solved and prosecuted, decreased satisfaction in the police, it damages the reputation of the agency, and results in negative health issues for our employees. Interestingly, officers who are underworked can exhibit many of the same symptoms of those being overworked. Low workload has been linked to higher error rates as well due to poor attention as they become bored and their attention drifts, making finding the balance between being over or underworked our goal.

Officers who are overburdened with work tend to hurry or rush their performance because they know calls for service are stacking up and they are under pressure to clear each call quickly, often this results in committing errors, yielding poor accuracy, and they often become frustrated and fatigued. Therefore, proper supervision of a patrol squad is critical, finding the balance needed to obtain optimal performance which is what every community wants from their police force. Most patrol officers do not complete a daily activity report, this absence of routinely collected comprehensive data as to staff’s daily activity often serves to the agency’s detriment.

From all we have learned reviewing research and evaluating police agencies around the state, it seems that officers do their best when their skills are exercised and developed and their abilities challenged, are neither bored nor overburdened, and when periods of work and rest are equitably mixed. A SWAT officer in the middle of a strenuous operation might exhibit signs of high workload only to exhibit signs of low workload while sitting in a debriefing later that same day. Looking at the entire day of activities, we might conclude that the two periods of high and low workload make up a part of a balanced diet of activities.

It should come as no surprise that researchers have devoted considerable time and effort to developing tools for measuring and evaluating workload. Efforts to develop workload measurement and evaluation tools have ultimately met with limited success and the measurement and evaluation of workload is far from the exact science we would like it to be. Workload means different things to different people. For example, the word “workload” invites us to think not only about the amount of work that must be performed but also the load or burden that we might experience while performing the work. Some people think of workload as something purely physical while others believe workload to be more about mental activity or stress on the officer.

We encounter other challenges when we consider differences in ability and skill among officers. A highly skilled officer might experience a fraction of the workload experienced by another officer who is performing the same task for the first time. Even comparing two officers at the same experience level, one may have figured out an innovative strategy for getting the job done easily while the other officer toils away, doing it the hard way, recreating the wheel in each case. In addition, how do we know when our officers reach their workload “boiling point”. When selecting a patrol squad, it is important to add a mix of senior and newer officers to balance the squad experience level as the speed and/or accuracy at which an officer can perform a task varies significantly based on experience level.

Measuring speed and accuracy can be as simple as using a watch or calendar to measure the time required to complete a task. For example, after the commercial introduction of the typewriter in 1870, researchers began to look at typing performance. These studies of typing performance used a simple speed and accuracy measurement technique, typists were presented with random sentences while the researchers measured the number of words typed in each period and the number of errors made. It was learned that a typist of average skill could transcribe roughly 60 words per minute using the touch-typing technique (using all ten fingers and maintaining eyes focused on the document to be transcribed). A more recent study of computer users showed that today’s average computer user can transcribe roughly 33 words per minute. Most cops I work with could be described as “hunt and peck” typists (who only use two fingers) produce an average of 27 words per minute. This is a simple illustration that two officers writing the same report will require more or less time to complete a report based on typing ability as one variable.

Another performance measure focuses on measuring the actions that must be taken to complete a task. The basic approach used by this technique is to simply catalog and count the number of steps or actions taken by the officer to complete the task. Large numbers of steps imply high workload, while a task that can be accomplished in only a few steps means low workload. This approach to measuring workload also has the disadvantage of ignoring skill differences between officers. One officer may effortlessly perform a task that requires great effort from another officer. It does however offer potential insight in creating procedures to accomplish a task to increase the level of efficiency for all officers at all skill levels to use.

One commonly utilized technique is a monthly report that allows for comparison of current month and year-to-date data against the prior year’s matching month and year-to-date data. This provides officers, supervisors, managers, and executives with the ability to easily assess current performance against prior performance. There are variables which can have an adverse impact on these deployments, including the need to ensure there is adequate coverage even during the hours where workload does not register a high demand. This can be a problem if the agency fails to address officer safety issues or fails to recognize the inherent nature of law enforcement events that can quickly grow in magnitude regardless of the hour of the day or the size of the workforce.

Sample Police Workload Study

Using a sample city in the Inland Empire, including data from the California Department of Finance, the population of our sample city is approximately 107,330 residents and covers 22 square miles. The sample population is approximately 76% Hispanic or Latino, 10% African American, 9.4% White, and 3.1% Asian. Sample has spent an average of 36% of its general fund dollars on policing, which is on the low end of the average as compared to similar agencies. The following factors were considered in evaluating workload in our sample city:

1.            Day of Week / Time Received: The day of week and time calls are received heavily impact a workload analysis. Calls for service vary based on the day of the week and time of day, staffing should be adjusted and allocated to ensure appropriate resources are in service on the days of the week with increased activity and calls for service.

2.            Priority: The relative importance of the call. The listed calls fall into six primary priorities. Priority 1 includes categorization of “Priority 0” imminent threat and probable injury calls, Priority 2 includes calls presenting some urgency, indirect threat, and violent crime reports. Priority 3 calls require a police response; however, there is no threat to life, and minimal to no urgency. Priority 4 calls generally have no suspect information and no victim injury. Such calls usually result in a report being taken for documentation purposes. Priority 5 are animal calls, and Priority 6 calls are for in-house tracking and do not require an officer response. The agency should evaluate the nature of the calls, many priority calls require two or more units to respond. Approximately seven percent of calls are categorized as priority 0 or 1. Approximately thirty-seven percent of calls are priority 2. This suggests that the agency is not receiving a high number of violent/urgent calls for service, most are more routine in nature, which should allow officers the opportunity to engage in community policing activities.

3.            Beat/District: The geographic area from which the call for service originated. Patrol officers are assigned to monitor specified geographic areas commonly called “beats”. Patrol officers move through their beats at regular intervals looking out for any signs of problems and are available for emergency requests for assistance. Even in small cities, the level of calls for service on a specific beat, or the population, or the amount of crime, or the size of the area, all impact officer workload. 

4.           Queue Time: The delay that occurs after a call is received by the dispatch center until dispatched. While the focus of this article is specifically on patrol workload, it is important to note that calls delayed in dispatch or calls pending dispatch can impact response time. The data in our sample did not show any unusual delay from time of call receipt to dispatch. This signifies that the communications unit is processing calls quickly and getting them out by priority to the units in the field.  Of note, the Sample Police Department scores well above average in terms of low queue times (within 1 minute for priority 0,1,2 and within 2 minutes on average for priority 3). On average, 4.8 calls per hour were received each day. The maximum number of calls received in any given hour was 9.5 on Saturday evenings. Data like this can help deploy more resources at times when they are most needed, such as on a Saturday evening.

5.            Travel Time: The length of time the first assigned police officer spends traveling to the call. This can vary significantly, our sample for example covers over 22 square miles, this requires officers to be spread out over beats to ensure appropriate response times.

6.            Response Time: The length of time after a call is received until a police officer arrives at the call (i.e., the sum of queue time plus travel time). Extended response times result in missed opportunities, for example a crime in progress where the suspects have time to get away as opposed to being apprehended at the scene; or an assault in progress could be stopped reducing the injury or death to crime victims. Also, community members see the failure to respond in a timely manner as a lack of concern and lose confidence in the police, slow response times can send a message to the community that the police are do not care about crime issues, which may have a corresponding decrease in community member’s desire to get involved and help the police solve future crimes. Some feel that police response times are intentionally discriminatory, and that non-enforcement of the law, such as the failure to respond quickly to calls in low-income areas is an intentional act, a term commonly known as de-policing.

7.           Consumed Time: The length of time the primary patrol officer (and back-up officers if dispatched) were out of service handling the call and were therefore unavailable for other assignments. To give more time to the patrol function, the sample PD should examine ways to minimize collateral and administrative duties for patrol officers, such as assigning duties to civilian professional staff that do not require sworn officer involvement so that officers are free to engage in patrol activities.

8.            City Square Miles: Our sample city is 22.33 square miles, with a total of 316.18 miles of roadway. The size of the area matters, how long does it take to drive from one side of the city to the other, does rush hour impact this, do we need to have officers strategically placed throughout the city to ensure an appropriate response time, such as in our sample city where priority calls are dispatched within 1 minute, then the response time is added.

Other Common Methods

Between 1972-1973, the Kansas City preventive patrol experiment was an experiment carried out by the Kansas City Missouri Police Department. It was designed to test the assumption that the presence (or potential presence) of police officers in marked police vehicles reduced the likelihood of a crime being committed. The Kansas City Police Department drew the conclusion that routine preventive patrol in marked police vehicles had little value in preventing crime or making citizens feel safer and that resources normally allocated to these activities. A significant factor realized was that crime prevention was more highly dependent on the willingness of citizens to report suspicious and/or criminal behavior to police than the levels or types of patrol. The study did not consider response times or focus on community policing, by having officers on patrol spread out around the city on beats, when a call requiring an emergency response is received by the dispatch center, the officer’s ability to respond in a rapid manner clearly increases.

1) Reported Crimes. The U.S. crime index is the rate at which crimes are tracked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI gathers and analyzes statistical crime data in all parts of the U.S. to compare and determine crime trends and changes in different parts of the country. Crime indexes can also be measured by state and city for a variety of analytical purposes. For crime index purposes a lower number is more desirable. In 2015, incidents of reported crimes in Sample for example have trended slightly above the national average. According to FBI data, the overall crime index for the city in 2015 was 254.6, as compared to the national crime index of 213.9. Regarding comparative crime rates and crime indexes for this type of workload analysis, it is important to remember that such measures can be heavily influenced by many factors, including short-term fluctuations, changes in jurisdictional demographics, fluctuations in jurisdictional financial resources, and several other socio-economic factors. Crime indices and crime rates are for comparative purposes and are therefore not always a good measure of an agency’s effectiveness.

2) A per-capita Approach. I have seen this one used many times, such as setting a 1 cop per 1,000 people ratios as a staffing goal. In our example here, the Sample Police serve a population of approximately 107,330 residents spread out over 22 square miles with a police department of one hundred and six (106) sworn officers, which is about 1 to 1,000 ratios. According to the FBI, on average, localities with populations of at least 50,000 employed on average 1.66 officers for every 1,000 residents (2015). While the FBI data is useful for comparing cities, it does not tell us how many police officers your department needs. In fact, there is no national standard for how many police officers a city should have per capita. If Sample Police were on par with the national average, they would need to hire 56 more officers. Based on a review of the statistical data alone and this approach, it appears that the patrol force is understaffed. The term “understaffed” signifies periods with less that optimal staffing for the most efficient deployment of resources.

3) Minimum Deployment Approach. The present size of the Sample police is 106 officers, of which the patrol force consists of 55 officers, or 52% of the total sworn officers. The patrol force is the primary response unit for incoming calls for service. Patrol personnel work 12.5-hour shifts where officers work three days per week, followed by four days off each week. Each officer therefore owes 2.5 hours per week during a four-week cycle. Every 28 days an officer must work a 10-hour shift (Paybacks) to make up the missing hours. Patrol squads consist of between six and eight officers assigned to specific areas of the city under the direct supervision of a patrol Sergeant, no less than six officers can be on duty at any time.

In each patrol workload study, a review of the patrol force absence factors must be conducted to determine if any time can be recovered to supplement gaps in deployment. Issues such as training, vacation, sick time, military time, officers out on injury, and comp time make up the absence factor. The absence factor signifies that officers are not available for patrol duties during these times. Every 2,080 hours (One full time officer for a year) that could be recovered from these factors equates to one additional patrol officer. Strategies to reduce the patrol time lost by leave time usage, while maintaining a well-trained, rested, and healthy staff, can and should be explored by all agencies. The Sample Police Department currently operates a 3/12.5 patrol shift with fixed days off. Data from police leave records showed that officers average between 280-350 hours of patrol absence per year. Absence factors need to be considered when developing a staffing plan and when evaluating how patrol back-fill staffing affects the overtime budget. This is critical for agencies using a minimum deployment approach.

The analysis of the patrol force listed above was based on only those peace officers who are primary responders to calls for service (i.e., police officers), and did not include line supervisors (sergeants), who may respond to calls, but are not normally the primary case handler for a call. The Sample Police Department provided POST with CAD data fields related to calls for service, officer-initiated activities, total officer activities, and the total number of units utilized to handle calls for service. The statistical workload analysis for departments can and will change over time, we must be forward-looking based on workload demand trend analysis. Police departments should consider working in concert with city management to develop a Service Delivery Plan to focus on future staffing needs of the organization based on anticipated changes in city demographics, annexations, economic development, crime trends, city finances, etc.

Like organizations and managers in any field, today’s law enforcement agencies and the professionals that run them are seeking more effective methods for achieving results. When officers and deputies in the field can receive information faster, when commanders and supervisors have a better understanding of crime and disorder trends, and when tasks can be accomplished more efficiently, the end result is inevitably a safer and more secure community.