City of Morgan Hill Public Safety Master Plan

(11,243x1.8x30.8/60). The average jurisdiction from the CPSM comparators would have used 8,605 (11,243x1.6x28.7/60) officer/hours, or 17 percent fewer personnel resources.

The reasons behind the amount of time dedicated to an average CFS are numerous and beyond simple explanations. Officers could be using this time wisely and creating positive and valuable interactions. Faster doesn’t always mean better. In addition, as the deployment section of the report will illustrate, resources in the MHPD are not strained beyond capacity and officers can take the time necessary to provide a satisfactory encounter with callers. On the other hand, this could be an area to improve overall efficiency. For example, the MHPD assigns on average 2.3 officers to handle a traffic accident. This is much higher than expected. At certain accidents the need for additional officers is clear; however, assigning 2.3 officers on average seems high. The department should look at these data carefully, determine the contributing factors behind the use of time and resources, and make informed decisions regarding the nature, quantity, and quality of the responses to CFS. Similarly, according to Table 8-16, response time for CFS in Morgan Hill averages 17.3 minutes per call in the winter, and 21.4 minutes per call in the summer. This is higher than the norm for communities of similar size and higher than the accepted target response time of fifteen minutes per call. Response time to “high-priority” CFS, 7.6 minutes, is higher than the five-minute benchmark for this category of CFS. A key component of these high response times is lengthy dispatch time. According to the data analysis section of this report, dispatch times to routine CFS exceed 9 minutes on average, and dispatch times to high-priority CFS average 2.7 minutes. Determining the reasons behind this lengthier response time to high-priority CFS is beyond the scope of this report; however, the department must examine this very closely with an eye toward reducing the time it takes to dispatch and respond to CFS. This issue is also discussed in the Communication section of this report.

Police Operations and Data Analysis Report, Morgan Hill, California

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