Two-thirds of the city's officers are assigned to patrol, Police Chief Ralph Godbee told Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley, and contracts prohibit the chief from demoting detectives to beat-walkers.
As of last week, the DPD had 2,622 sworn members, 1,758 of them assigned to patrol. Another 480 work in criminal investigations such as homicide, fugitive apprehension, homeland security, gang enforcement and traffic.
Another 384 are assigned to business functions, such as human resources, management services and "time capture" -- that's the more than 50 officers who process time cards that Godbee said "are still done with pencil and paper."
Yes, he said pencil and paper.
(Godbee explained that the city is six months away from completing a $600,000 project to convert the police payroll to an electronic process. That could free up those 50 officers for "criminal capture.")
About the same number of officers are assigned to dispatch. And the chief cannot move them either.
"If we had the ability, we could move them into crime functions so we could move others into patrol," he told Riley. "Detroit ... is one of the few entities in the nation that uses sworn officers to do dispatching. Those are numbers we could gain."
