OnPolicing Blog

 

In an era of unprecedented challenges facing law enforcement agencies across the nation, strategic police staffing has emerged as a cornerstone of public safety management. Between budget constraints, evolving community expectations, and an ongoing crisis in recruitment, police departments are facing a perfect storm of operational pressures that mean they can no longer rely on traditional staffing approaches. 

Data-driven police staffing studies provide the analytical foundation necessary to optimize resources, enhance officer wellness, and deliver exceptional public safety services to communities that depend on them. Implementing these new methods can be the difference between agencies that thrive and those that merely survive. 

The Critical Need to Optimize Police Staffing 

Law enforcement agencies today face a difficult challenge: meeting growing public safety expectations while operating within tight budget constraints and with fewer officers amid declining recruitment and retention.  

Over the past five years, these staffing challenges have intensified, leaving law enforcement officers under increasing pressure to “do more with less.” Communities rightfully demand responsive, fair, and effective policing, but simply increasing officer headcounts without a strategic plan doesn’t work and isn’t sustainable. 

This reality underscores the need for smarter solutions—ones that optimize police staffing, improve efficiency, and ensure both sworn and non-sworn personnel are deployed where they’re needed most. 

To meet this challenge, forward-thinking departments are embracing strategic police staffing optimization. This approach goes beyond surface-level numbers to provide a deeper understanding of workload demands, operational patterns, and the unique needs of each community. 

A police staffing study serves as a point-in-time snapshot of resources and a strategic planning tool to help agencies align human resources with community needs. By matching staff allocation with workload demands, agencies speed up response times, improve public safety outcomes, lessen strain on personnel, and make optimal use of taxpayer dollars—all while building stronger trust through community-oriented policing services and more effective service delivery. 

What Is a Police Staffing Study? 

A police staffing study is a comprehensive analysis of how a police force employs its personnel across various functions, shifts, and locations. Traditional benchmarks such as “officers per 1,000 residents” provide rough estimates of staffing levels per capita, but lack nuance and fail to account for the unique demands of individual localities.  

Modern police staffing studies, however, use sophisticated data-driven methodologies to evaluate operational demands and identify optimal staffing levels through what are known as “workload-based models.” These contemporary models incorporate several components that distinguish them from outdated approaches, including: 

• Calls for Service (CFS) Analysis: Evaluates the volume, type, and origin of service demands, whether they’re police officer-initiated or from community-generated calls. 

• Time on Task Assessments: Measures the amount of time officers spend on various emergency and non-emergency calls generated by the community. These assessments provide crucial insights into resource and staffing allocation needs. 

• Spatial Deployment Evaluation: Studies where and when incidents occur with advanced GIS mapping technologies to inform geographic deployment strategies and maximize response effectiveness.  

• Relief Factor Calculations: Assesses time off, training, and other obligations to determine how many officers are genuinely available for duty. 

• Organizational Structure Review: Determines a department’s span of control, management layers, and opportunities for civilianization to optimize both sworn and non-sworn personnel deployment. 

Police Staffing Shortages and the Relief Factor 

The relief factor calculation represents one of the most critical (yet frequently overlooked) components of effective police staffing analysis. This fundamental metric determines the total number of officers needed to cover just one position around the clock. If police departments don’t regularly check and update this number, they may be understaffed and rely too much on overtime. 

To understand this concept, consider the difference between staffing a standard Monday through Friday position versus the 24/7 coverage required for most frontline police staffing roles. For a basic 40-hour position requiring no backfill coverage, the relief factor equals one. But for most frontline police jobs, continuous coverage is a must, and that changes the math completely. 

To cover one eight-hour shift position year-round requires 2,912 hours of staffing annually (56 hours per week multiplied by 52 weeks). And even though an officer gets paid for 2,080 standard hours each year, they don’t actually work all of those hours due to vacation, sick leave, training, and other commitments. Further, if an agency has comprehensive benefits and training, an officer might only be on duty for about 1,600 hours a year. This works out to a relief factor of 1.82, meaning nearly two full-time employees cover just one position throughout the year. For departments that need 24/7 coverage for every eight-hour shift, multiply that relief factor by three, so 5.46 full-time employees ensure continuous coverage for one position. 

The relief factor is just one piece of a bigger staffing puzzle, but it has a huge impact on both police departments and their officers. If agencies don’t properly account for things like changing training needs and time-off policies, supervisors will constantly be scrambling to cover shifts with overtime. This creates a stressful and unsustainable situation, leading to officer burnout. 

Why Police Staffing Studies Matter 

1. Evolving Law Enforcement Workload and Police Workforce Patterns

Police departments today face staffing challenges that are very different from the ones they faced in the past, mainly due to two big shifts: new ways of solving problems and better policies for officers. While recruitment and retention struggles dominate headlines, these additional changes are quietly reshaping police work requirements. 

For instance, police are now focusing more on problem-solving and community outreach, so they’re not just responding to calls, they’re also working to build better relationships with the community. This approach has many benefits, but may require more patrol officers to handle the workload and provide enough time for problem solving. 

At the same time, there’s a much greater emphasis on officer training and wellness. While these are positive steps for new officers and make law enforcement more professional, they also mean officers spend more time away from their regular duties. Both of these trends are good for policing but carry staffing implications that require objective, data-driven analysis to understand budget and operational impacts. 

2. Demand for Data-Driven Policing

Accrediting bodies like CALEA and oversight entities increasingly require agencies to justify police staffing levels with objective data. Professional staffing studies provide defensible evidence for budget requests, staffing reallocations, civilianization proposals, and consent decree compliance. With robust documentation, agency leaders can confidently engage in partnerships with city councils, labor unions, and community groups, establishing the foundations for shared understanding and better decision-making. 

3. Population and Police Service Changes

Police departments constantly need to rethink where and how they deploy their officers as cities change, populations grow, crime patterns shift, and the nature of service calls evolves. New demands include responding to mental health crises, dealing with traffic problems, and handling a wider range of non-criminal complaints. 

Local law enforcement must consider the effects of new entertainment venues, high-density housing developments, and economic growth on police staffing requirements. While these developments contribute to essential community services and tax revenues, they also create new “demand centers” requiring strategic police staffing adjustments. 

4. Agency Efficiency Through Civilianization

Modern police staffing optimization recognizes that not every task requires sworn officer involvement. Qualified professional staff can perform critical police services, such as records management, data entry, various investigations, and administrative duties. Staffing studies reveal civilianization opportunities within departments that reallocate primary law enforcement responsibilities to sworn officer positions, enhance operational efficiency, and reduce costs. 

5. Geospatial Equity and Service Access

Many people think of police beat boundaries as set in stone, rarely questioning them. But crime rates and activity patterns are always changing. Some areas might decline while others grow and revitalize. Police staffing studies help agencies to adapt to changing demographics and ensure everyone has fair and equal access to community policing services. They help law enforcement agencies figure out the best way to spread officers across a community. These evaluations assist local police in crime prevention strategies by looking at where service calls come from and how quickly officers respond. They also uncover imbalances in workload.  

In recent years, advanced spatial analyses have allowed researchers to find complex patterns of activity that are hard to see with traditional statistical methods. These sophisticated analytical techniques offer a more nuanced understanding of community safety, violent crimes, property crimes, and more. They highlight community changes, the evolution of urban areas, and shifting crime trends. 

What Makes a High-Quality Police Staffing Study? 

Not all police staffing studies deliver equal value or actionable insights. The National Policing Institute employs a concurrent mixed-methods approach combining quantitative calls for service data analysis with qualitative insights from focus groups, interviews, and ride-alongs. This comprehensive methodology incorporates GIS mapping and spatial analysis to visualize workload concentrations alongside recommendations tailored to each agency’s budget, structure, vacancies, and policy environment. 

High-quality police staffing studies address both current operational realities and future planning needs. They provide clear, actionable recommendations for police agencies supported by robust data analysis while remaining sensitive to local political, budgetary, and community contexts that influence the feasibility of implementation.  

How Police Staffing Studies Optimize Police Department Resources 

Ultimately, a comprehensive police staffing study serves as a strategic blueprint for making smarter, more informed decisions about public safety resources. The direct benefits include: 

• Right-sizing patrol deployment to match call volume and peak times 

• Understanding relief factors for precise budgeting and staffing shortages 

• Balancing workloads for enhanced officer wellness 

• Allocating sufficient time for proactive community engagement 

• Cost savings through more effective use of non-sworn staff 

Outcomes of these studies extend beyond mere operational improvements—they provide foundational support for sustaining officer performance and ensure long-term agency stability in an increasingly challenging law enforcement environment. 

How NPI Can Help Your Agency Optimize Police Staffing 

As the oldest nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization in America dedicated to enhancing policing and criminal justice, the National Policing Institute brings decades of experience to help agencies and jurisdictions answer this fundamental question: Do we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time? 

NPI’s police staffing studies offer tailored analysis for agencies of all sizes, from campus police to sheriff’s offices and large metropolitan departments. Our services include compliance support with CALEA, Department of Justice consent decrees, and local accountability mandates, alongside independent, research-driven recommendations that are practical, actionable, and budget-conscious. We also provide comprehensive implementation support, including stakeholder presentations and follow-up technical assistance to ensure successful program implementation. 

Whether your agency faces hiring challenges, community concerns, or budgetary constraints, NPI can help conduct defensible, forward-looking staffing studies that position both your agency and your community on the path toward sustainable, efficient public safety service delivery. 

Ready To Take A Data-Driven Approach To Police Staffing? 

Learn how NPI can support your agency’s police staffing optimization efforts by visiting policinginstitute.org/consulting/staffing-study.

Let’s work together to build a safer, smarter, and more resilient future for policing. Our strategic, data-driven solutions will serve both your officers and your community, driving positive outcomes for all.