City pledges to add police
Goal is to hire 500 more officers over next 5 years
The head of the Houston police union announced Wednesday that city leaders had pledged to grow the Houston Police Department ranks by 500 officers over the next five years, far fewer than the city’s police chief said he needs.
”It’s no secret the Houston Police Department has been doing more with less, for far too long,” HPOU President Joseph Gamaldi said Wednesday afternoon at a crowded news conference at union headquarters.
The influx of officers would still be a fraction of the 2,000 new officers Chief Art Acevedo has said he believes the department needs to deal with the city’s growth, but comes as Houston has struggled for years to meaningfully increase the staffing in the department.
Gamaldi’s initiative, which the union is calling the “Drive for 500,” came after union officials visited all of the City Council members, as well as Mayor Sylvester Turner, and asked them to pledge their support to increase the department that has nearly 5,200 officers on the job.
“This provides a reasonable, sustainable path forward, to grow this department in a responsible way,” Gamaldi said.
At the news event, Gamaldi, Acevedo, and Turner, along with a number of City Council members, agreed Houston needs more officers but provided few specifics on how they would raise city funds to actually fulfill their promise. Money in focus
“There is no question that we do not have enough police officers to cover and patrol and protect all the people of this city,” Turner said. “The question becomes, how do we pay for them? And that becomes a question for every Houstonian.”
Currently, the HPD operates on a yearly budget of $827 million, and it costs the department around $3 million to run each class of recruits through its in-house academy.
The call for more officers comes as the city management last year had to close a $130 million budget shortfall.
The staffing proposal follows a concerted campaign last year to reform the city’s pension system, which officials warned was underfunded and threatened the city’s longterm financial health.
Meanwhile, Acevedo and Gamaldi have stepped up calls for an large infusion of new officers into the department, saying it is dangerously understaffed, particularly compared to other large cities around the country.
On average, 250 officers retire or resign every year, Gamaldi said. His plan would involve running six academy classes annually, and after normal attrition, the new officers would represent a net gain of approximately 100 officers yearly to the department’s ranks over the five year period.
Running six academy classes a year is not unheard of, Gamaldi said.
“We truly need the resources, and I think Houstonians want the resources,” Acevedo said. “We’re going to need their help.” Revenue cap debate
After successfully addressing the city’s burgeoning pension obligations, Turner and Acevedo have begun to lobby to remove the voterimposed cap on property tax revenues, calling the city’s finances “artificially cash strapped.”
Other city leaders said that while they supported increasing the number of officers within the department, they would not support possible efforts to lift the revenue cap.
District E Councilman Dave Martin — among those who oppose lifting the revenue cap — said money for the influx of officers would have to come from streamlining city services and making departments more costeffective.
“We just have to create some efficiencies in departments,” he said. “That’s how you do it, not by removing the revenue cap.”
At-large Councilman Mike Knox, a former HPD officer, likewise said he supported hiring more officers but was skeptical of how it would be paid for, particularly any move to lift the city’s revenue cap.
“Until the citizens of this city bring forth a petition that they want to see revenue cap removed, I’m not going to support it,” he said. Citywide conversation
HPD’s nearly 5,200 officers is fewer than the department had in 1997.
At the same time, Houston crime trended downward, with murders falling from 351 to about 270 last year, although sex assaults and aggravated assaults have risen recently.
HPD’s response times have lengthened on lower-priority calls, leading Acevedo recently to quip the department was forced to make lemonade from lemon peels.
Data from the FBI’s Uniform crime report show Houston has one of the lowest ratios of officers-to-residents of the nation’s 10 largest municipal police departments.
Los Angeles, a city of 4 million residents, has more than 9,000 officers, or a ratio of about 2.46 officers per 1,000 residents. Philadelphia, with more than 1.5 million residents, has a force of more than 6,300 officers, or 4.03 officers per 1,000 residents. Houston, by contrast, has a ratio of 2.2 officers per 1,000 residents.
Only Las Vegas has a lower ratio.
“This is a conversation that must be citywide, and all of us must participate in it,” Turner said. “As mayor of city of Houston, I will abide by whatever decision is made by the people of the city of Houston. But I’m always going to operate within our means. Whatever the available revenue is, is what we’re going to end up getting.”