{"id":20417,"date":"2022-02-25T20:58:26","date_gmt":"2022-02-26T01:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=20417"},"modified":"2022-02-25T20:58:37","modified_gmt":"2022-02-26T01:58:37","slug":"lakeland-pd-needs-to-hire-31-new-police-officers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/02\/25\/lakeland-pd-needs-to-hire-31-new-police-officers\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakeland PD needs to hire 31 new Police Officers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lakeland Police Chief Ruben Garcia said the LPD has not hired new \u201coperational\u201d officers since 2017 despite being undermanned because it had unfilled vacancies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could not ask for more on the plate\u201d until all positions were staffed, which they now are. \u201cLakeland led the state in recruiting police officers\u201d and is now fully staffed at the 254 officers it is budgeted for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Including school resource officers, LPD has 2.17 officers per 1,000 residents, Garcia said. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement recommends 2.59 officers per 1,000 residents, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Garcia said by FDLE\u2019s calculations, Lakeland has \u201ca 35 officer per-capita deficit.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By U.S. Department of Justice standards, LPD is short 26 police officers and, according to police resources consultant Timothy Freesmeyer, the city should have 29 more officers, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCosts of services have increased, as you might expect,\u201d Garcia said, noting most 911 calls require at least two units to respond with officers increasingly locked into emergency response \u201cobligated time\u201d with little \u201cunobligated time\u201d for \u201cthe good stuff we do compare to the mandatory stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe population is growing but (LPD\u2019s staffing) remains the same\u201d as it was five years ago, he said. \u201cWe see the same rooftops everybody else sees going up\u201d in the southwest and northeast Lakeland. \u201cWe certainly see those two quadrants of town as the biggest impact on manpower moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

LPD presented commissioners with three options spanning the next three years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ONLY ONE<\/strong> Garcia said he favors, the city would hire 19 officers, including 12 for patrol, one for traffic, one detective, one homeless liaison, one school resource officer, two neighborhood liaisons, one sergeant for LPD\u2019s field training program, and one lieutenant for the neighborhood liaison program in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This plan would cost an estimated $3.68 million in next year\u2019s budget and about $2.285 million a year in recurring expenses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lakeland Police Chief Ruben Garcia said the LPD has not hired new \u201coperational\u201d officers since 2017 despite being undermanned because it had unfilled vacancies. \u201cWe could not ask for more… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[2436],"class_list":["post-20417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-lakeland-pd-needs-to-hire-31-new-police-officers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20417\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}