As the population of students continues to grow, the number of off-campus residents rises and the Longwood University Police Department (LUPD) is already feeling the impact. With the significant rise of students in Lancer Park this past fall, the issue of manpower allocation and response time for calls to service have become an increasing issue, and Chief of LUPD Bob Beach is already working to find a solution to this.
The increase in response time is not due to the amount of distance Lancer Park is from campus, but due to the availability of the officers, Beach reported.
Beach anticipated the issues that are happening now over a year ago as discussions of the construction for Lancer Park North and South began.
The two residence dorms opened this past fall with 452 additional student spaces, according to the Longwood University website.
During the spring 2013 semester, there were a total of 23 calls for service from Lancer Park. During the fall 2013 semester, there were a total of 128 calls for service from Lancer Park, according to Beach.
The time it takes for a police officer to respond to a call has increased, and the increase has not only affected the students in Lancer Park, but on campus as well.
Beach reported that prior to the increase of students in Lancer Park this past semester, the average response time was around three minutes for on- campus calls and around four to five minutes for off-campus calls. Now, the response time may vary from six to eight minutes.
Beach added that there was a situation this past weekend that the LUPD could not attend to because "everyone was tied up." The call then had to be routed to the Farmville Police Department.
Anticipating the issues of response time and manpower allocation a year ago, Beach sent a proposal to the Budget Committee of Longwood University with a long-term option. This option would involve a change where the officers would be placed under 12-hour shifts, which would include a day shift and an evening shift.
Currently, the officers work three eight-hour shifts, which include a day shift, an evening shift and a midnight shift.
The benefit of having 12-hour shifts "puts more people on the street at any given time," Beach stated, adding that this model
actually "mimic[s]" what other police departments around the nation have done, including the Farmville Police Department.
This new model could potentially benefit the officers of the LUPD, allowing them to work two days on shift and two days off shift and enjoy a biweekly three day weekend.
For this to happen, Beach stated that there needs to be more supervision or changes in the supervision model that is currently in place in the LUPD.
The LUPD currently uses the "Senior Officer Model for Leadership and Supervision." The "shortfall" of this model, according to Beach, is that not every shift of every day is covered by a supervisor.
Beach stated that this shortfall has needed to be fixed for a long time. He explained, "This reorganization will help with that process."
There are currently 15 officers in the LUPD. Beach hopes for the addition of one deputy chief of operations, one deputy chief of administration to "even out the responsibilities for supervision and authorities" and one additional sergeant.
"12 hour shifts are not something you can just do on a whim. We have to adjust those shifts and the manpower to meet everything," Beach said.
The cost for Beach's proposal for these changes is still being determined, as well as where the funds would be allocated from.
For his proposal, Beach said he has "honed it down to ... manageable bites" from the initial cost of reorganization of around $600,000 to the current estimate of under $100,000 budget increase
Beach said, "I have the utmost respect and confidence that the administration of this university puts its priority as the safety and security of this campus and the people that are on it."
The process for approving the proposal, its budget and where the funds would be allocated from are still so early in discussion that Vice President for Administration and Finance Kenneth Copeland stated in an email, "There's nothing at all close to finalized yet," further noting that even publishing anything on this topic as "premature."
Copeland stated, "We are always looking into ways we can make the best use of financial and human resources ... as of right now, though, there's nothing definitive to report."
