While debate in St. Paul has focused on the mayor’s proposal to reduce the police department’s authorized strength by five officers to 630 officers, the reality is there are only 570 officers currently available to work, Police Chief Todd Axtell told the City Council on Wednesday.

That’s because the police department is at its peak staffing when new officers hit the streets at the start of each year, but the numbers decrease throughout the year as officers retire. Plus, there are officers out on military, medical or other leave.

The City Council is looking into whether the police department could start the year with more officers on board, knowing the ranks will drop throughout the year as other officers depart, Council President Amy Brendmoen said Wednesday.

“It’s less about the number of the authorized strength as it is getting closer to a higher, steady number across the year, and especially in the times when we historically know the force is the busiest,” she said. “Because the way they’re staffing right now, they have the least cops in August, which is not good.”

The police department spent $1.9 million in overtime last year, partly because it was operating below its authorized strength. The council is seeing whether the department could accomplish a new staffing plan with funds it would have used for overtime, according to Brendmoen.

Could the police department start the year with more than 630 officers?

“We have retirees and we have people that leave for different reasons, so going above so that we plateau out at the place where we want to be is certainly a possibility,” Mayor Melvin Carter said Wednesday.

The continuing discussion about the number of officers in St. Paul comes in the midst of recent gun violence — there were three homicides in an eight-hour span on Sept. 9 and 10, and a police officer fatally shot a man who confronted him with a knife on Sunday, according to law enforcement.

Axtell told City Council members during Wednesday’s budget discussion, “I understand that you have difficult decisions to make regarding the 2020 budget. … I also know that cutting police officers is absolutely not in the best interest of the city of St. Paul.”

While community members don’t usually attend budget meetings, the council chambers were full of people Wednesday. Many there want to see fewer officers.

“We showed up today to support a budget that moves St. Paul in a new direction,” said Laura Jones, a member of Root and Restore St. Paul and a Hamline-Midway resident. “In order to promote safety, we need to invest in community-based programs and interventions that heal harm and promote wellness. We know that our city, like our nation, has over-relied on policing and it’s not delivering the safety we want and it harms communities.”

Carl Roith, on the other hand, believes there should be more officers and he talked to Carter about it in the hallway afterward.

“I think they need to be beefed up with all the crime we have,” said Roith, who lives in Frogtown. “We can’t keep going on like this with all these shootings. Something’s got to be done or it’s just going to get worse and worse.”

CHIEF: ‘LIMITED NUMBER OF OFFICERS’

Axtell told the council that St. Paul officers are busier than ever. Calls for service from community members are up, and so are 911 calls. There have been 118 people shot in St. Paul this year, 18 of whom have died.

“We have a limited number of officers available to work the streets at any given time,” Axtell said. “Just like any other … city department, officers retire, they go on vacation, they get sick, they’re deployed to the military, they have children. … They’re all normal life events, but they also create staffing challenges.”

Although the department’s authorized strength is 635 officers this year, the high point was in January when there were 626 officers. Because last year’s budget was approved in December, Axtell said he wasn’t able to add officers to the once-a-year academy, which began in fall 2018.

The department currently has 608 officers on the payroll, with 570 available to work the streets because of the life events that Axtell detailed.

“It doesn’t really sound like a sworn strength problem because, if we were up to our full sworn strength out on the streets, that would be an additional 65 police officers,” Brendmoen said. “It’s more of a staffing or a management or a HR problem. … Our focus should be on adequate staffing and making sure that we have our minimums covered, so that people don’t have to work overtime.”

Axtell responded that it’s not a management problem, but “a resource issue we have to address.”

“If we were able at some point to commit to making sure that we have an average of 630 or 635 officers … rather than the 570 I just discussed, that would truly make sure that we were able to respond to our 911 calls and crime victims in our city in a timely and respectful manner,” Axtell said.

FIRE DEPARTMENT ADDRESSING SAME ISSUE

The St. Paul Fire Department is embarking on a pilot program to address the same issue.

The department has identified the need to hire 3 to 5 percent above its authorized strength — which takes into account retirements and other leaves — so it will have the right number of firefighters when the new class graduates from the next academy, said Deputy Fire Chief Roy Mokosso.

Brendmoen said the City Council will be digging into police department staffing and their budget over the next week to see if a similar staffing model could work for them.

“I think there’s a way that we can get our authorized strength where it’s supposed to be and keep the budget where it is,” she said after the council meeting.

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The budget includes a $4.5 million increase for the police department, which is primarily for salary increases to officers the city agreed to last year.

The council will set the levy limit on Sept. 25 and adopt next year’s budget on Dec. 11.