Perry police chief seeks more patrol officers

Police in Perry are answering 62 percent more calls today than five years ago with about the same number of patrol officers, police Chief Steve Lynn said.

Last year he told the City Council that the call volume indicates the city needs eight more patrol officers, based on a formula used by the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

He asked the council to approve four new officers last year and four this year, but instead the council agreed in 2015 to add two new positions. Two more also are included in the proposed budget this year.

That means the department will still be four short of what Lynn says is needed.

“I agree with him,” Perry Mayor Jimmy Faircloth said. “We do need more officers.”

Although the budget is still being discussed, Faircloth said it may be difficult to add more than two officers this year without a revenue increase of some kind.

However, he said he thinks the city can continue to gradually build up the police force until it has the proper number of officers.

Lynn said that although the call volume has gone up, the crime rate in Perry has actually gone down slightly. The calls are based on requests for service through 911, and those can include minor accidents, missing persons, false alarms and numerous other requests for police assistance that aren’t crimes.

“A lot of our calls are service calls, not crime calls, and that can be anything,” Lynn said.

Among serious crimes, larceny was the leader by far in Perry last year with 416 incidents reported. There were 87 burglaries, 22 assaults, 16 vehicle thefts, 13 robberies, five rapes and two cases of arson. The city has had no homicides in the past three years.

Faircloth said he can’t think of a single complaint he has heard from a resident about the police department being slow to answer calls.

“To the contrary, I hear a lot of praise about them,” he said.

But he said more officers are needed because the current officers have to work a lot of overtime in order to meet the demand. Faircloth said he is concerned about overworked officers.

Lynn said the city currently has four patrol squads. Two of the squads have six officers, and two have five officers. The analysis says the city should have five patrol officers on duty at all times, he said. The achieve that, he actually needs seven officers in each squad in order to cover for vacation, sick leave and training.

Lynn provided the City Council with figures that show the police department answered 20,361 calls in 2011 and 32,596 calls in 2015.

Lynn and Faircloth attributed the increase in call volume to growth in the city, including annexations, as well as a large amount of visitor traffic coming from the Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agricenter, Interstate 75 and elsewhere.

The council held its first meeting on the proposed budget May 9. Faircloth said he would not rule out the idea that the city might find a way to cut something else to add more officers before the final budget is approved.

City officials also can take another look later once the tax digest is completed, which will give a more specific indication of how much the city will collect in property taxes. The council had the same hope last year but ultimately did not see the revenue to add more officers after the tax digest was complete.

This story was originally published May 15, 2016 at 9:02 PM with the headline "Perry police chief seeks more patrol officers."