Camarillo City Council
AGENDA REPORT
Date: March 13, 2024
To: Honorable Mayor and City Councilmembers
From: Greg Ramirez, City Manager
Submitted by: Eric Tennessen, Police Department Commander Subject: Approval of the Addition of a Patrol Sergeant Cover Car
BACKGROUND
The Camarillo Police Department continually evaluates staffing levels for patrol services in the City of Camarillo to determine if those levels meet the needs and expectations required for effective law enforcement services. The last time the Camarillo Police Department added a sworn position was in 2017 and prior to that, the last addition of a sworn position was in 2009.
Review of law enforcement services indicates an ongoing need to add a patrol sergeant cover car in order to provide the effective law enforcement services. A “cover car” provides supplemental coverage during the busiest time of the day to ensure an overlap in supervision during hours in which call volumes and workload are highest.
DISCUSSION
The patrol sergeant position is considered by many in law enforcement to be the most important position in a law enforcement agency. Patrol sergeants are front line supervisors for the women and men who are the public face of law enforcement. According to a 2018 report by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), sergeants directly supervise 85% of an agency’s personnel, which lends to their significant influence on law enforcement operations and culture.
A patrol sergeant’s responsibilities can be vast and complex. They guide, direct and approve deputy activities, respond to and manage critical incidents and some arrests in the field, conduct briefings and trainings, observe deputy conduct to see how our deputies perform (including reviewing body worn cameras), provide formal and informal feedback and evaluation to deputies and professional staff members, review and approve arrest reports and uses of force, write reports, monitor radio traffic and dispatch information, take, investigate and resolve complaints, ensure the constitutional rights of all residents
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and visitors to our city are protected and meet with community groups, among many other responsibilities.
There is no industry standard for determining patrol sergeant staffing levels in a law enforcement agency. However, because of the nature of the services, an appropriate balance of supervision and workload is necessary for effective policing. In determining the proper staffing levels for patrol sergeants, the report considers four major areas, including: the span of control of each sergeant, the geographic size of the patrol area, call volume intensity throughout the day, and the workload of the station and sergeants.
SPAN OF CONTROL
The span of control is the number of personnel a sergeant oversees. There is no industry standard for determining the proper ratio for an effective span of control. The ratio differs between law enforcement agencies, depending on a number of variables.
Factors used to determine appropriate spans of control include:
•The relative experience levels of subordinate staff,
•The complexity of functions being performed by staff,
•Whether or not the work environment entails a high level of risk to the public or the organization,
•The amount of available time required for supervisors to spend with subordinates, •The degree of coordination required in the work to be completed, and •The physical proximity of staff to the supervisor.
Table 1 shows the current span of control for the Camarillo Police Department’s patrol sergeants during the highest staffing period of the day, which occurs between 1100 hours and 2300 hours. The span of control includes patrol deputies and specialized unit deputies (i.e. traffic enforcement deputies) who are in the field and will require an immediate response from a patrol sergeant during major incidents like arrests, uses of force, etc.
It should be noted that the Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore and Ojai Police Departments have one patrol sergeant supervising patrol resources at any given time, while the Thousand Oaks Police Department always has two patrol sergeants supervising patrol resources at any given time.
As reflected in Table 1, Camarillo patrol sergeants span of control is 1:11 for direct reports and 1:22 with specialized units included, indicating that the span of control for Camarillo Police Department’s patrol sergeant is significantly higher than any other contract city.
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Table 1. Patrol Sergeant – Span of Control
GEOGRAPHIC SIZE OF JURISDICTION
The proximity between sergeants and their subordinates is a significant factor when it impacts the ability of a patrol sergeant to arrive to an incident of significance in a timely manner, such as when a patrol sergeant is needed at a call for service or traffic stop, including the scene of a significant crime, traffic collision or traffic stop involving an arrest or use of force involving a deputy. When a sergeant is on scene for any of these reasons, it means he or she is not available for another significant incident requiring close supervision that could happen in any other location within the geographic jurisdiction.
The geographic area patrolled by deputies from the Camarillo station is large, including the unincorporated area north of Camarillo to South Mountain, the City of Camarillo, and the unincorporated area south of Camarillo, including all of the Oxnard Plains, large portions of the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Coast Highway down to the Los Angeles County Line as shown on the following map.
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WORKLOAD
In addition to span of control and geographic considerations, it is also useful to compare the workload at the Camarillo Police Department to other contract cities in Ventura County as a means of providing context for staffing analysis.
In Camarillo, as in our other contract cities, the greatest majority of calls for service come during daylight hours. The work increases in intensity and volume at around 8:00 AM
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before beginning to taper off into the late afternoon and evening. Overnight, the volume of calls drops off significantly. Predictably, and in response to the call volume, our staffing levels follow this same pattern. We upstaff resources at 7:00 AM, 10:00 AM, 2:00 PM and again at 3:00 PM to address the increases in call volume. The calendar year 2023 total annual calls for service by hours of day are shown in Table 2.
Table 2. Calls for Services by Hour of Day
Table 2 is representative of only calls for service and does not include self-initiated activity by deputies. Although the raw numbers differ, the time of call volume intensity is very consistent among Sheriff’s contract cities.
Another way to look at the workload for patrol sergeants is to consider the overall 01/01/2023 to 12/31/2023
Hour of Day Calls for Service
0000-0059 548
0100-0159 432
0200-0259 372
0300-0359 302
0400-0459 277
0500-0559 276
0600-0659 346
0700-0759 652
0800-0859 1036
0900-0959 1151
1000-1059 1328
1100-1159 1454
1200-1259 1374
1300-1359 1305
1400-1459 1397
1500-1559 1432
1600-1659 1428
1700-1759 1358
1800-1859 1200
1900-1959 1093
2000-2059 969
2100-2159 985
2200-2259 834
2300-2359 667
Grand Total 22216
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workload produced by the station. Table 3 includes data and comparison of calls for service, arrests, citations, reports, and self-initiated activity. These workload indicators are common measures of productivity, and they capture the output of work being completed by deputies at each of station, which, in turn, creates a measure of work for sergeants. The work created for sergeants includes responding to traffic stops to observe deputies as they interact with the public, responding to calls for service, reviewing and approving reports, conducting use of force reviews, authoring performance evaluations for all of the deputies, handling citizen complaints, and directing resources during critical incidents. The aggregate of productivity allows a means of determining the total work of a station to compare across all of our contract cities.
Table 3. Sergeant Workload Comparison
In 2023 at the Camarillo station, deputies responded to more than 22,000 calls for service, made nearly 3,000 arrests, wrote over 6,000 citations, authored over 11,000 reports, and engaged in self-initiated activity more than 16,000 times. In comparing this productivity with other contract cities and recognizing that the productivity results in work for our sergeants, it is important again to note that there is just one patrol sergeant supervising our deputies in Camarillo, Moorpark, Fillmore and Ojai, while Thousand Oaks has two patrol sergeants working at all times. This results in a much higher workload for Camarillo’s patrol sergeant than for any other patrol sergeant throughout Sheriff’s contract cities.
The resulting higher workload for the lone Camarillo patrol sergeant means there is less time patrol sergeants can dedicate to critically important tasks outside of responding to calls and approving reports.
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RECOMMENDED STAFFING ADJUSTMENT
To address the clear workload imbalance and need for additional supervision, the Police Department seeks to add a patrol sergeant cover car to our patrol operations. It is called a “cover” car because it provides overlapping supervisory coverage during the busiest and highest staffed time of each day. This patrol sergeant cover car will cover 12 hours every day during the busiest time of the day. The coverage would be 7 days / week and would include overtime backfill in the event that the sergeant in the cover car has vacation or calls in sick. In order to fill this one cover car for twelve hours every day, it will require two sergeants be added to current staffing levels.
Adding the patrol sergeant cover car will result in a rebalancing of workload for all sergeants, bringing Camarillo’s patrol sergeant workload more closely in line with that of our other contract cities. Additionally, the extra sergeants reduce the span of control to levels just above that of our other contract cities.
The patrol sergeants who are assigned to this cover car will be responsible for supervising deputy sheriffs assigned to the city and to the county. The benefit of adding a patrol sergeant cover car is that the cost will not be solely assigned to the City of Camarillo. Since patrol sergeants are responsible for supervising city and county deputies, the cost of the sergeant is shared by the city and county in direct proportion to the number of deputies assigned to those respective jurisdictions.
Because of the cost sharing between the city and county, this results in total annual added cost to the city of Camarillo to be $447,782 based on this year’s contract rates.
FISCAL IMPACT
Funds for the addition of a patrol sergeant cover car that will require two additional sergeants at a total cost of $447,782 are included in the proposed FY 2024/25 General Fund, Police Administration Department Budget.
RECOMMENDATION
Approve the addition of a sergeant cover car, requiring the addition of two sergeant positions.
ATTACHMENTS
None
REFERENCE MATERIALS – AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW AT CITY HALL Addition of a Patrol Sergeant Cover Car
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