Gazette - New Police Resourcing Model

NEWS NOTES

by Caroline Ross

How many general duty officers does your detachment need to provide more than just immediate call response? The RCMP National Police Resourcing Model can tell you.

Detachment commanders know how difficult it is to determine the number of general duty officers required to ensure a given level of police service within a community.

That task is now a lot easier, thanks to a National Police Resourcing Model (PRM) launched in 2007 by RCMP Community, Contract and Aboriginal Police Services (CCAPS).

The PRM is a workload-based measurement tool that crunches data on a detachment’s call volume, call types, travel time per call, event distribution and available officer hours. The tool then churns out detailed reports showing how increases or decreases in the detachment contingent affect service levels, and vice versa.

Commanders need only review a graph to see how a given scenario will play out — how many priority calls officers can immediately attend, or how much unallocated time will be left over for proactive work — says Insp Craig Duffin of the CCAPS Resourcing Model Unit.

The tool is intended for divisional use, and Duffin expects to have a national network of trained PRM analysts in place by spring 2009.

In Alberta, PRM analysts Peter Fullbrandt and Mary Day have run reports on 55 of the province’s 145 detachments. “I’ve surprised some detachment commanders in terms of when they thought their busy periods were (occurring),” says Fullbrandt, adding that the reports also help identify opportunities for targeted enforcement or crime reduction initiatives.

S/Sgt Gary Graham used PRM reports to flesh out a larger business case for increasing the RCMP establishment in Okotoks, Alberta. Graham presented municipal decision-makers with three options for police service, ranging from staying with the status quo to upping the establishment by four officers.

“What I like about (the PRM output) is that it really does give the community and elected officials an opportunity for meaningful input to the (police) establishment in the town,” says Graham. Partners have a clear idea of how their funding decisions affect public safety, he says.

PRM reports currently rely on historical data, but CCAPS intends to develop a forecasting capacity based on data collected over the next five years.