Calls for help to the Salt Lake City Police Department are on the increase after five years of decline, and Police Chief Rick Dinse says he needs more officers to keep up.

Dinse and his administration told the Salt Lake City Council on Tuesday that after enjoying a decreasing workload for the past five years, Salt Lake City's front-line police officers saw their case load jump last year.

In light of the data, Dinse said it wouldn't hurt if the City Council invested more money in the police department so he could hire more patrol officers.

"As far as the number of people we need to put in patrol, I would say yes, we could do more," Dinse said.

The same goes for the detective division.

"In that same vein our detective division needs more support," he said. "The understaffing in detectives may be more critical than in the field."

The chief said he often has to leave existing police jobs vacant so he can balance the tight budget the City Council gives him.

"If it wasn't for the vacancies, quite honestly, I couldn't run the department on the amount of money that is given to me," he said.

City Council Chair Dale Lambert, who has often said the city needs more police officers, was at least one council member who agreed.

"I really do think we are short," he said. "We have a shortage of necessary patrol officers."

Two years ago, Lambert and Jill Remington Love were the only council members who stood against a $700,000 allocation for council district Olympic legacy projects, which Mayor Rocky Anderson described as boondoggles council members wanted so they could impress their constituents.

Back then, Lambert said he wouldn't spend the money on such pork when the city had greater needs like more police officers.

Whether the City Council will take action and actually allocate more money for the police department remains to be seen. In the past seven years, the council has shied away from investing in the police department. Since 1998, the city's police force actually has been decreased by 1 percent.

Still, in a year in which four of seven council members are up for re-election, the council might be more willing to spend money to hire officers.

City figures show the increased case load since 1990 can be attributed to a rise in crime that was greater than the corresponding number of police officers the police department was able to hire within its budget.

For instance, from 1990-98, calls for service rose 93 percent. However, during those same years, the city only increased its police force by 30 percent. Since '98, the city has witnessed a 13 percent decrease in case load and a 1 percent decrease in its police force.

Assistant police chief Carroll Mays said much of the 13 percent decrease can be attributed to a policy change — the city decided it wouldn't respond to burglar alarms unless those alarms were verified by an alarm company.

In a report to the council, Mays noted that in 2003 each Salt Lake City police officer handled an average of 551 cases. Last year that figure rose to 559.

While that number is below the record 630 cases each officer handled in 1998, it's a much larger case load than Salt Lake City officers experienced in the early 1990s. Back then, officers were less taxed and handled roughly 400 cases a year.

Mays said the large case load cuts into "discretionary" time officers spend looking for criminals. A good measure is for an officer to spend 40 percent of his time doing discretionary work, but in Salt Lake City he estimated his officers only spend about 20 percent of their time working in a proactive manner.

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The 2004 case-load boost conformed to a spike in the number of calls for service the police department fielded in 2004. In 2003, city cops responded to 226,464 calls for service — roughly 3,200 less than they responded to in 2004.

While 2004's 229,656 calls for service (defined as any call that produces a case number) are far less than the 260,630 calls the city witnessed in 1998, it is almost double the number of calls city police fielded in the early 1990s. In 1990, for instance, city police received only 134,722 calls for service.

Many, including Avenues resident Chris Isom, have suggested the city's current high crime rate — when compared to the early 1990s — is one reason the city has struggled to keep families from moving out of the city and heading to the suburbs.


E-mail: bsnyder@desnews.com

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