Fort Worth Police Department Strategic Plan
Fourth of July, etc.) and other details, it has been challenging for the unit to answer calls for service for traffic accidents on city highways. Until only recently, patrol officers asssumed reponsibility for answering these calls, reducing their proactive time within beats and taking them away from other patrol activities. In order to provide patrol valuable disposable time for non-traffic calls for service, self- intitiated activities, and community policing, FWPD will add additional officers to the Traffic Division to ensure 24/7 coverage in answering all highway/freeway traffic accident calls for service. The reallocation of staffing to traffic funtions on multiple shifts allows the Traffic Division to respond to accident calls, to beter educate drivers in high accident areas, reduce traffic accidents, traffic fatalities, and to conduct highway interdiction. Any additional patrol officers for the Traffic Division would come from of the overall patrol request. The exact number of officers assigned to the Traffic Division will be based on traffic accident call loads and need for proactive measures necessary to reduce traffic accidents. Additionally, increased traffic accidents affect the caseload and workload of traffic investigators. Based upon this increased caseload, it is recommended that six detectives and two sergeants are added to Traffic Investigations, and ten officers and one sergeant are added to Traffic Enforcement. FWPD is regarded as a highly sought career destination. Once employed, officers rarely separate voluntarily and the large majority serve through retirement. When the department adds a substantial number of sworn personnel in a short period of time, those personnel are all eligible to retire at the same time, which can create staffing challenges. FWPD sworn personnel are eligible to retire after completing 25 years of service, regardless of age. As of 2016, FWPD has more than 140 personnel with 25 years of experience eligible to begin the retirement process. In excess of 260 others have 20 years or more of service, therefore, more than 440 officers are eligible to retire now and within the duration of this plan . Figure 3.12 below shows the FWPD in terms of sworn officers by years of service and by rank. Planning for attrition is a top priority for the department. Additional recruit training classes are planned. Attrition
Figure 3.12. Civil Service Years of Service
How Growth Affects the Fort Worth Police Department
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