By Philip Haldiman

Independent Newsmedia

The Peoria Police Department has been working toward implementing a number of recommendations from a study completed last year that detailed police operations data including findings of an extreme imbalance in police patrolling between the northern and southern parts of the city.

Matrix Consulting Group presented its findings to city council, Feb. 20, 2018. The study encompassed the entire department and reviewed a variety of metrics from staffing to operations and includes a 10-year strategic growth plan analyzing the department’s operational capabilities and efficiency in light of rapid growth and evolving community needs.

Police Chief Art Miller, who started with the department six months, said he has been considering the recommendations and implemented several of them.

“I think some of the recommendations are very valid and I’d like to put them into place so they come to fruition as far as providing better public service,” Mr. Miller said.

The study said there was a discrepancy in resources geographically throughout the city, particularly considering insufficient patrolling in the southern part of the city.

The chief has redistricted the department’s beat map to realign their patrol plan, decreasing the number of geographic beats from 18 to 14.

Mr. Miller said this will allow officers to more effectively respond to citizen needs and to more effectively respond to calls. They were also re-aligned to give officers equal workloads, he said.

He said in one instance three officers have now been assigned to an area that previously had only one.

This will allow officers to be more efficient in their responses and not need to travel long distances from one end of the beat to the other. The new structure has only been in existence for a few weeks, so the department will evaluate the effectiveness and modify the beats as needed, he said.

“It is a complete departure from the way the map was set up before,” he said. “Given some time, we are hoping to have faster response times and faster response to calls for service.”

Additionally, the department adjusted the hours of some of squads to cover the city during busy times. For example, there are days and times with higher call volumes and adjusting these hours will help more effectively provide police coverage during those times, he said.

To use the department’s resources better, Mr. Miller reorganized the detective unit, reassigning two detectives from the patrol division to the fraud unit, which now has four employees.

Mr. Miller said detectives were spending an inordinate amount of time investigating misdemeanors like shoplifting and petty theft when those cases generally went nowhere.

“As we all know fraud is a big thing in terms of internet fraud and elderly scams, so the addition of the two detectives to that fraud unit will be a huge asset to the detective unit,”  he said. “In one respect I am hoping to reduce overtime and to free up some of the initial response that our offices take in the field.”

Like many police departments across the country, Peoria is experiencing a national trend of being understaffed.

The total number of working sworn officers has fallen by about 23,000, since 2013, and the number of officers per capita is also down, from 2.42 per 1,000 residents in 1997 to 2.17 officers per 1,000 in 2016, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

At the time of the Matrix analysis, Peoria had 89 total sworn officers — 41 in the north and 48 in the south.

There were 14 vacancies, for a total authorized strength of 103 officers.

Mr. Miller said currently there are eight officer vacancies, with five lateral candidates going through the backgrounding processing now.