Editor’s note: Lt. Frank Clark and Sgt. Steven Webster sent the following letter to South Portland city councilors and Mayor Maxine Beecher this week.

As members and representatives of the South Portland Police Department, we feel compelled to address this letter to all members of the City Council in order to share our concerns related to the department’s current and anticipated staffing levels.

We have recently learned that the currently proposed budget would effectively eliminate two police officer positions from the police department, in the form of our school resource officers. As you know, we had concerns related to our minimal staffing level even prior to this announced reduction. Further reductions will surely impact upon our ability to maintain even the current level of police services. Our mission statement reads, “The Mission of the South Portland Police Department is to work cooperatively with all citizens to protect life and property, preserve peace, enforce laws and maintain civil rights through proper and responsive community based service.” With that in mind, over the years, we have prided ourselves on our involvement in the community and with the community’s youth.

Starting with the Officer Friendly Program, followed by DARE and DARE Alternatives, and most recently espoused by the school resource officers, the department has always maintained an active role in providing the city’s youth with important safety and health information and positive role models. A staffing reduction would drastically curtail these kinds of positive interactions, and would basically eliminate the department’s involvement in a number of community-based initiatives and programs. This alone seems to be a large step backwards, but couple this impact with our already minimal staffing and projected turnover, and there are several reasons to be concerned.

We protect the fourth largest city in the state of Maine, with a daytime population reaching over 100,000. As depicted by the enclosed statistics, the department’s workload has increased markedly, even over the past several years. Our calls for service have increased, our population has increased, the city’s traffic flow has increased, and the officers’ responsibilities have increased. Unlike other departments, those increased demands have not been reflected by any concurrent increase in the department’s staffing. In fact, in 1975, the department had 48 sworn officers, all of whom were supported by the city’s budget. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the city budget supported between 54 and 56 sworn officers. Today, we have an authorized strength of 52, and only 47 of those (or one less than in 1975, and seven or eight less than in 1990) are currently supported through the city budget.

If the current budget proposal is passed, the school resource officers will be removed from the middle schools, and our authorized strength will be reduced to 50 sworn officers. As another means of comparison, in 1975, the minimum number of officers required to be available for patrol was four officers per shift. Incredulously, today, we still have only a four-car minimum staffing level. In fact, depending on the shift, we do only maintain the minimum four-car staffing between 34 percent and 75 percent of the time.

When members of the public are asked how many officers they think are on-duty at any one time in the city, the average answer tends to be in the eight-to-20-officer range. When they hear the entire city is being policed by only four officers, more than one of whom may be tied up on a call or at the station doing paperwork, their reaction ranges from shock and surprise to frustration and anger. In other words, our current staffing basically allows us to effectively respond to only one major incident, or two priority calls. Our ability to respond quickly, effectively and/or safely to any emergency beyond that is inadequate, and we become dependent upon the availability and response of units from neighboring police agencies. During 2005, we had to request mutual aid assistance at least 189 times. As an apparent result of these increased demands, classic officer-initiated activities, such as traffic enforcement, have notably had to decrease.

We are also concerned about the future staffing of the department. We currently have 10 officers who are eligible for retirement. Upwards of 75 percent of the department will be eligible for retirement within the next eight years. Our profession’s ability to recruit and attract qualified candidates has been at an all-time low. We recently had only 26 applicants for a Police Officer job announcement, compared with more than 100 several years ago. After only the written and physical agility testing, we have only five candidates remaining in the current process. With the number of anticipated openings, the diminishing applicant pool, the reduction in the number of basic police recruit training academies per year, and the amount of time that it takes to train a new police officer for deployment, any staffing reduction seems extremely short-sighted.

In closing, we are not predicting doom and dismay. We are confident that every member of the department will continue to provide the best possible service to the citizens who live, work and visit the city. Out of necessity, we will, of course, end up being forced to prioritize our response to any calls for service. We would only ask for your and the public’s understanding of our position. You have some difficult decisions to make and we appreciate your taking our past, current and future staffing issues into consideration during your deliberations of this year’s budget.