Department is down from recent high in staffing levels
Fall 2024 could bring a new round of talks on a frequent topic in Lansdale: police hiring.
Council members heard an update on the borough police department’s staffing levels, and a hire or two that could be voted ahead soon.
“One of the things that we do every year is, we look at our staffing levels, to determine: are we sufficiently staffed? Are there issues coming up, with relation to our staffing in the future, that we’re aware of?” said police Chief Mike Trail.
In 2023 the department added four new officers, based on talks in 2022 about increasing the department’s staffing levels to keep up with the population growth of the town. Those four hires in 2023 brought the department up to a recent high of 29 officers, the chief told the public safety committee on Sept. 4, and in spring council authorized an updated candidate last for new hires — because that number could drop soon.
"You'll see three names highlighted: those are officers who we do not anticipate will be here, within the next couple of months," he said.
Starting with the authorized 2023 level of 29 officers, one officer has since left for another department, another is currently out on a long-term medical issue, a sergeant has indicated plans to retire in the near future, and an officer has indicated plans to leave Lansdale for a department closer to home, the chief said.
"If we don't replace (the departures), we're going to slip down to 27, and we're going to start that trend in the wrong direction — losing officers, when in fact we need to be maintaining" current staffing levels, the chief said.
As with prior rounds of talks on hiring, police have used several different methods to calculate their recommended levels of manpower, the chief told the committee: using a metric based on the department's incident numbers and time per incident yields a recommendation of 32 officers, a second metric based on "core service hours" that's calculated based on the types and numbers of incidents yields a number of 26 officers, and a ratio recommended by the FBI based on the borough's population, multiplied by a county average ratio, yields a recommended staffing level of 38 officers.
Lansdale police Chief Mike Trail, lieutenant Ryan Devlin and Mayor Garry Herbert pose with a certificate of accreditation from the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association in 2022. (Photo courtesy of Lansdale Police Department)"We average all of them together, it's 32 (officers). As we just discussed, we are now at 28, and I don't want to fall to 27," Trail said.
"I'm here tonight to ask to hire one, but I want to prepare for, and maybe asking, to hire two," based on finalizing more details on when the officers in question could depart, he said.
Councilman Andrew Carroll asked if the department and the town's civil service commission had developed an updated list of candidates, and Trail said they had a "strong list of qualified individuals" ready for council approval as soon as Sept. 18, but with one possible drawback.
"One of the things that's a challenge to us is that none of the people at the top of the list have attended the (police) academy, so they have to go," he said.
Changes made to the department's hiring practices in the wake of nationwide riots in 2020 now allow Lansdale to hire officer candidates before they complete the necessary police academy graduations, but doing so lengthens the time from when an officer is hired, per Trail: if a candidate enters the next county police academy class likely in October, they can begin training with the department next spring and be deployed by summer.
"We have a(n academy) seat reserved, we've just got to get the hiring done, otherwise we don't get another academy class until March," Trail said.
Public safety committee chairwoman Meg Currie Teoh said she'd lean toward making two hires now, to have both begin training before the current officers depart.
"I feel like it might make sense to go for two. If we're down one, and about to lose another, just to keep even, it's two," Teoh said.
Carroll asked if the hires would have any budget impact, and Trail said the budget impact will likely be minimal, since new hires would have lower starting salaries than those they replace.
"If we hire two, we're going to go right to 30, but we'll be back at 28 real quick," Trail said.
Mayor Garry Herbert, who has written extensively about police staffing levels in his Mayoral Musings column in recent years, said the new hires in early 2023 were meant to keep up with a growing borough population.
"We made a serious effort, when we hired four, to grow the department by one. And now we're back to right where we were," Herbert said.
And even if council approves two new hires in 2024 and they're on the streets by '25, hiring talks could begin again soon, according to the chief.
"This is going to continue for years, because in 2026 we're going to lose two, we could lose up to three" to retirements or other planned departures, Trail said.
"Over the next five to six years, we're probably going to lose in the area of six to seven police officers. So this is going to be an issue we're going to be addressing for a long time to come," he said.
Lansdale's borough council next meets at 7 p.m. on Sept. 18 and the public safety committee next meets at 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 2, both at the borough municipal building, 1 Vine Street. For more information visit www.Lansdale.org.
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