Can a strained force handle the demands of surging development?
By LEANORA MINAI
Published December 14, 2003
[Times photo: Jamie Francis]
St. Petersburg police officer Rick Kenyon patrols Brighton Bay in the Gandy area. At least 5,300 residences are proposed or under construction in the Gandy, Carillon and Gateway areas, St. Petersburg officials say.
ST. PETERSBURG - Chris Wardrum worries a planned Wal-Mart Supercenter will increase crime and overburden police patroling in his Broadwater neighborhood.
The store on 34th Street S will have 1,042 parking spaces and be open around the clock.
"When a neighborhood is subjected to this kind of an increase in exposure to outside traffic, the crime rate usually goes up," Wardrum wrote Mayor Rick Baker in April.
The project in Wardrum's neighborhood isn't the only development that could strain a police department facing staffing problems. Major development is planned or under way in each of the St. Petersburg Police Department's three patrol districts.
Tall condo towers downtown. A Kash n' Karry in Midtown. A rebirth of the Tyrone commercial area.
The workload of St. Petersburg officers already is on the rise. Calls for police service rose by 7,678 in 2002 after several years of decline. Meanwhile, the police department has fewer officers per resident than the average for similar cities in the Southeast, according to FBI data on staffing nationwide.
St. Petersburg has added just one sworn police position in the past five years.
"There is so much happening, I would recommend we begin having some discussions toward developing a strategy to prepare us for all this growth, i.e. budget, personnel, etc.," Assistant Chief Debbie Prine said in an August e-mail to top police administrators.
With 55 officers eligible to retire on or before Jan. 1, recruiters have been hiring more than the department's budgeted sworn roster of 539.
About 50 cadets are in training and an additional two dozen people are pending hire, according to the department's November staffing report.
The city has put no limit on hiring because cadets are dropping out of training. This year, 28 quit.
Department administrators met in November to discuss how to staff and assign officers in a city that is growing and attracting younger people.
"This potential for growth, as well as increasing redevelopment and more intensive land use, particularly for housing and entertainment in the downtown area, requires continual evaluation to ensure adequate police services are available," reads the police department's multiyear plan for 2004-06.
Baker thinks police staffing is the healthiest ever.
"I don't think there's an automatic assumption you can make that development means increasing law enforcement," the mayor said. "When you improve the economic issues of the city, you actually should see a reduction in crime when the day is done."
District 2
Gail Lacey lives in police District 2, an area with the fewest violent crimes but the most planned development.
For years, Lacey's waterfront house stood among tall pines off Gandy Boulevard. A developer recently razed the mobile homes next to her. St. Petersburg annexed the unincorporated land and hers as well. Now 160 mediterranean-style townhomes are rising around her 1950s house.
She fears Gandy Boulevard will grow more dangerous with additional cars from the new Venetian Bay subdivision turning on the road without a traffic light.
"When you get another 50 families in here trying to get out to work, that's going to be problematic," said Lacey, 40, an accountant in Tampa. "More accidents mean more police."
At least 5,300 residences are proposed or under construction in the Gandy, Carillon and Gateway area, city officials say.
The 11,000 workers who stream into Carillon daily will grow with the opening of a 217-room Hilton and several corporate offices.
The mayor also wants to annex Feather Sound, a subdivision with 2,690 residents across from Carillon.
State law requires cities to adopt comprehensive plans to match development with roads and sewers. The plans do not have to address police service.
Downtown, also in District 2, is expected to add thousands of residents by 2010, bringing police challenges previously unknown to the once sleepy area.
Two more condo towers are proposed for Beach Drive NE. A third tower - the city's tallest high-rise with 277 units, retail shops and a rooftop restaurant - might go up across from BayWalk.
"Our concern, frankly, is how safe are our people and how safe are our residents when you've got the same amount of cops patrolling an increased area when the potential for calls is greater?" said Sgt. Phil Quandt, a Fraternal Order of Police representative.
Police Chief Chuck Harmon is fielding questions from residents about growth and police service.
Resident David Hoover, 46, was at a meeting with Harmon in November. Hoover raised his hand and told Harmon that he noticed a 264-unit apartment complex going up on Fourth Street N.
Hoover said, "I can't see calls decreasing because of all the apartments going in there."
District 1
The new Wal-Mart Supercenter will bring 840 more vehicles to the 3400 block of 34th Street S between 4 and 6 p.m.
"With more traffic comes all the problems," said Wardrum, 44, the Broadwater resident who wrote the mayor. "I hope the city considered that when they allowed Wal-Mart to build, and I hope the taxpayers don't have to pick up the tab for repairing the roads and extra police patrol."
Two miles north of Wal-Mart, city officials are hoping business at a Kash n' Karry at 18th Avenue and 22nd Street S will help reduce problems in an area beset with drug-related crime.
"There's still a lot of drugs and everything, but we're starting to curb it a little bit," said Officer Charles Cook, who patrols the area.
Of the three police districts, District 1 has the most violent crime. But the city is trying to turn that around with economic redevelopment.
James Alan Fox, a criminology professor at Northeastern University in Boston, said some ventures could create more work for police.
"Commercial development tends to draw crime," he said. "They draw not only shoppers but also offenders who may want to prey on those shoppers, so crime rates tend to increase."
The 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter in Pinellas Park is keeping officers busy.
Through October this year, Pinellas Park police responded to 838 calls at the store on 34th Street N, including 270 for shoplifting.
James Bennett, a St. Petersburg City Council member, said Wal-Mart and other redevelopment on 34th Street S might create the need for an additional community police officer in the patrol zone that includes Wal-Mart.
The area near Kash n' Karry will get a special community police officer. Harmon said he will assign an officer to the revitalized 22nd Street S corridor.
"With the new business going up and all the new development, we want to make sure that area, which is one of the vital links to Midtown, is well-represented from the police department," Harmon said.
The Kash n' Karry will sit between two patrol areas that had 392 violent crimes, or 21.7 percent of all violent crime in District 1 last year.
Parisrice Robinson, president of 22nd Street Redevelopment Corp., said safety is key to attracting business and residences to 22nd Street S.
"We want people to not only perceive that it is safe, but that it is safe," Robinson said. "That may require a need for increased personnel or a reassessment of how safety is deployed in that area."
District 3
Randy Larrison started a neighborhood association recently when he and other homeowners grew concerned about crime in their Tyrone area neighborhood.
A nearby church was considering opening its doors to the homeless. And with a new Home Depot in Crossroads Shopping Center, Larrison noticed more reckless driving on his street.
"The squeaky wheel gets the grease," said Larrison, 43, who lives off 21st Avenue N. "You see very few officers coming down here. I see about two or three a month just drive by. We've had a rash of houses getting broken into."
Larrison's neighborhood of 250 homes is in police patrol District 3. The district has the most police service calls, the most traffic crashes and the most property crime, according to police statistics.
The district, which encompasses the city's retail hub, has shopping centers attracting anchor stores such as Home Depot, drawing 15,000 customers a week, police say. District 3 also includes four patrol areas south of Central Avenue with some of the highest violent crime.
Yet the police department assigns roughly 90 officers to patrol each district.
"There should be more officers in District 3 because there are more calls," said Officer Mark Deasaro, president of the Police Benevolent Association.
Harmon is considering re-aligning the district boundaries to give some work to another district.
Meeting demands?
The police department predicts the population and officer workload will remain flat through 2006.
But city officials say downtown's housing boom will bring 8,000 to 10,000 new residents by 2010.
Estimates in 2002 put St. Petersburg's population at 250,354. That means there's two officers for every 1,000 people.
That's lower than the 3.3 average for same-size cities in St. Petersburg's nine-state region, according to the FBI's staffing data.
"We can expect that as there's an increase in population, the demand will go up," said David N. Ammons, a public administration expert at the University of North Carolina. "How much depends on the nature of the development. We ought to respond to what we believe will be the increase in call volume."
Ammons and criminologists say cities should analyze not only population but also calls for service, the crime rate and case closures to determine what level of staffing is appropriate and whether officers should be deployed differently.
Harmon does think the police-per-resident ratio should drive hiring. He said the department will monitor service calls and the crime rate. He will meet in January with his command staff to discuss staffing and police district workload.
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Leanora Minai can be reached at 727 893-8406 or minai@sptimes.com
