The Anchorage Police Department lost 38 officers last year -- almost double the normal number -- resulting in the lowest number of officers working the streets and cases of Alaska's largest city since July 2005. Despite having funding for 372 sworn, badge-carrying police officers, there are now only 328 on the payroll at APD. And that number is expected to dip lower before it begins to rise again. The thinning blue line has forced the department to cut back not only on the number of detectives -- experienced officers who work in areas ranging from crime against children, to traffic and homicide -- but also units like traffic and special investigations, which have each lost half their staff in recent cuts.
The department sees an average of 20 officers leave each year through retirement, transferring to other police departments, or quitting the force. The main reason for last year's high number of officers leaving the force, according to APD Chief Mark Mew and Anchorage Mayor Dan Sullivan, was an incentive offered to officers who retired before the end of 2013. In May of 2009, then-Mayor Matt Claman got contract concessions from the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association. Those concessions -- about 3 percent in benefits and salary cuts -- came with a caveat: an officer who retired from the force before Jan. 1, 2014 would get those concessions back. It was a deal worth thousands of dollars per year in retirement benefits to some veteran Anchorage police officers.
Another reason the department has not quite kept up with its attrition rate is that it only got 16 cadets into its latest academy. The municipality aims for police academies of 28. And the most recent academy -- which is still in progress -- was the first in two years. "There were no academies in 2009 because of the financial challenges facing the city," Sullivan said in November, adding that financial difficulties also prevented the municipality from holding academies in 2010 and 2012.
APD said it is working to bring its ranks back up to full strength.
"We will take what we can get, and if I can pull off an academy and a half and if we have less attrition than normal because we paid that bill last year, then maybe we turn this around," Mew said.
Getting worse before it gets better
Mew predicted Anchorage police staffing has yet to hit the basement.
"I don't know, I think our worst will be this summer," Mew said.
The department has been using overtime and shrinking its detective divisions to make up for the shortfall. It has cut -- through attrition, retirement, or reassignment -- 33 positions from its 12 detective divisions since 2010. The biggest cuts have come from the vice squad, which lost six officers, the traffic unit (seven officers) and the Special Assignments Unit (eight officers). In 2010 the Police Executive Research Forum completed its look at staffing levels at APD. That report recommended the department maintain about 375 officers on its payroll and found that the detective divisions could be downsized if needed.
"We can't have a massive detective division and a patrol force that can't keep up and respond to emergencies," Mew said.
But some people are being kept waiting due to the new staffing levels. APD no longer responds to minor traffic accidents unless the vehicles pose a danger to other drivers. Any accident that does not result in injuries, involve a crime or after which the vehicles are still operational is now left up to the involved drivers to figure out. Mew said fewer detectives in other divisions may mean fewer cases get taken and solved, but Mew said he believes that has not yet happened, and that the department is not currently in danger of being understaffed.
The local police union -- the Anchorage Police Department Employees Association -- is not so sure. APDEA believes the department's numbers are a factor in solving crimes. APDEA claimed that APD has lost 20 percent of its workforce since Sullivan took the helm at City Hall in 2009, and the usual strategy of holding one police academy per year won't get APD out of its staffing hole. The APDEA wants changes to benefit and retirement packages to better retain the officers the department already has, and to attract new ones. APDEA President Derek Hsieh said the current number of cops on the job in Anchorage is having an effect on the public.
"We are definitely going to be closing less cases with fewer detectives," Hsieh said.
Sullivan said he shares Mew's concerns about the number of officers at APD, but said it is important to take the numbers into context. According to numbers provided by APD, under Sullivan, the municipality has employed an average of 364 police officers, more than the previous administrations of Mark Begich and Claman. And crime numbers have been down in each year of Sullivan's tenure as mayor, except for 2012 -- the last year for which APD has statistics. According to the federally-compiled annual report of crime numbers for that year, Anchorage saw almost 1,200 more reported crimes than it did in 2011. But generally, over the last four years, crime has gone down.
"I am concerned that if we start dropping below the level we are at now we might start seeing some negative results," Sullivan said. "But look at the crime statistics and tell me what I am missing in our administration with a trend of downward crime, not a trend of upward crime."
Short-term solutions
Mew said he is already planning another police academy for spring of this year, with another possible later in 2014. He said an increased emphasis on recruitment and changes made to the application should provide more potential cadets for those academies. The academies are set up to handle 28 cadets at a time, for a practical reason: the training firing range has 14 slots, which means two sets of 14 cadets could easily train there at once, by rotating through the firing range in groups.
For now, Mew said the department is making up the officer deficit in several ways, including reducing the number of detectives, using overtime -- which is funded with money from unfilled police positions -- and changing the screening standards for cases. The APD is also looking to add more civilian employees, a trend that will likely grow as the department embraces new technology.
In 2014, APD will be installing video cameras in its 200 police cruisers. The addition of video will require a massive amount of work for the department -- downloading, cataloging, storing, and making thousands of hours of video ready for trial. At least one civilian video technician position is being added to the department, even as some detective jobs are lost.
"Do you really need a badge and a gun to do that work?" Mew asked.
Contact Sean Doogan at sean(at)alaskadispatch.com.
Correction: This article was updated to more accurately describe circumstances under which APD does not respond to motor vehicle accidents and to clarify Chief Mark Mew's statements about whether a reduction in the number of detectives has led to a reduction in the number of cases that are solved.