Powell police first to feel effectsWith the city in a hiring freeze and an officer away from the department, Powell police will be stretched a little thin for the foreseeable future.Officer Matt Danzer left the department Sept. 9 to take a policing job in Bozeman, Mont., and because of the hiring freeze in effect at the city of Powell, he will not be replaced. Meanwhile, Officer Chad Glick has been on a 12-month deployment with the Wyoming National Guard since June.

That's left the department with 10 officers instead of 12.

Powell Police Chief Tim Feathers said the reduced force is just a normal part of the life cycle of the organization, but he said the longer the shorthandedness lasts, “the harder and harder it gets.”

“Right now, can we adjust? Yes,” Feathers said.

He said the reduction will mean fewer officers available for emergencies and less of an ability to cover illnesses and vacations.

It also cuts into officers' availability for training. As an example, Feathers was unable to send any officers to the Wyoming Peace Officers Association's annual meeting in Cody two weeks ago.

“I don't have the ability to pull anybody off the schedule because this week, I'm down three guys,” Feathers said earlier this month, as one officer continued a lengthy recovery from surgery.

Feathers said a lot of residents think there's no science behind the number of officers Powell has, and that the city may only need a couple officers.

But in reality, Powell's patrol staffing is guided by a complex mathematical model developed by the Center for Public Safety at Northwestern University. The Police Allocation Manual takes in a wide array of data — the number of miles in the city, the number of calls the department takes, the average length of time on those calls, the amount of unassigned officer time, etc. — and calculates a recommended number of officers for a patrol division.

Every three to five years, including this year, Feathers has plugged in Powell's numbers and “every time, it's come out the same,” he said. The model continues to say the city should have 12 patrol officers. The department has operated at that level for the last several years, split into three supervising sergeants and nine officers.

“It's a very accurate predictor of what our staffing needs are,” said Feathers of the model.

The 24/7 department can't have fewer than two officers on patrol at one time, and at other times, there's a need for more than the minimum.

Feathers said the department can handle the reduction, but “if you drag that out over an extended period of time, it starts significantly impacting the working conditions of your employees.”

With hirings and wages frozen in Powell, Mayor Scott Mangold said the city will need to keep an eye on conditions at all of its departments to make sure the jobs are still attractive to employees.

Mangold said he would be willing to break the hiring freeze for Powell police if public safety was at risk. He said he had yet to visit with Feathers, other police staffers and city employees about their recommendations of what to do.

The mayor said that if the police department has to rely on overtime to adequately respond to calls, the hiring freeze wouldn't save much money.

“If we can just maintain and keep doing what we're doing, I think we'll be OK,” Mangold said. “But if there's an issue of public safety, we'll have to look at it.”

Powell City Administrator Zane Logan said the police department was the first city agency to be impacted by the hiring freeze, as no other employees have left the city since the fiscal year began July 1.

Logan said when and if a vacancy occurs in another department, they will deal with the hiring freeze as the police department plans to do — by shuffling schedules and hours.

Between interviews, background checks, four months of field training and three and a half months of basic training at the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy, Feathers said it takes roughly a year to hire a new officer and have them ready to handle the full load of the position.

“Even if next July 1 they (the city council) tell me I can hire someone ... I'm another year down the road,” Feathers said.