Page 23 - 2018 Annual Report
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Chief of Police
Communications staffing
With just three Parking Control Officers
(PCO’s) and two Parking Control Supervisors increase drops 911 hold times
to cover all 316 square miles of Kansas City,
KCPD was having a rough time keeping up with As staffing went up in the Communications
downtown parking enforcement. Unit, 911 hold times fell.
“For the last several years, citations After peaking in July 2017 at 39 seconds, 911
have gone down precipitously,” callers were put on hold for less and less time as the
department tried to correct the Communications
City Councilman Scott Wagner said Unit staffing deficit. By the end of 2018, average
at a Feb. 7 Finance and Governance hold time seconds were down to the teens.
Residents complained about the hold times,
Committee Meeting. “We just and dispatchers also worked thousands of hours of
needed to do something different mandatory over-time to cover the vacancies, which
to help relieve some of the parking led to resignations, which perpetuated the problem.
Twenty-three people left the Communications Unit
issues downtown.” in 2017.
A big help came in May when the City budgeted
What the City Council did was allocate
for 15 additional positions in the Unit. The
$145,000 so KCPD could hire 10
department spent the remainder of 2018 trying to
additional PCO’s who were dedicated to
fill the newly increased 106 budgeted positions.
enforcing downtown parking.
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