News Room

October 5, 2005

Public Oversight Hearing on Police Service Area (PSA) Boundaries and the "District of Columbia Community Protection Act of 2005," Bill 16-241

In April 2005, approximately one year after the new PSA boundaries were implemented, the MPD’s Office of Organizational Development completed a detailed analysis and evaluation of the PSA realignment. The full text of that evaluation report is posted on our website. The evaluation found that the realignment is generally meeting our goals, especially in the critical areas of crime fighting, response time and support for community policing. I am pleased to report to you today that crime in the District of Columbia is down – and down quite significantly – since the PSA boundaries were realigned. I am also pleased to report that Policing for Prevention is strong – and getting stronger since the boundary changes of last year.

Every PSA has received at least the minimum staffing level that we promised at the outset of the realignment, and most districts are at or above their targeted staffing. Most importantly, the PSAs with the greatest needs in terms of crime fighting have received the most officers. In other words, we are doing a much better job of aligning resources with crime-fighting needs. In fact, we have assigned almost 90 more police officers to the PSAs than our target of 1,787, which represents 5 percent more than our original analysis recommended. However, because some of these officers are unavailable for duty in the PSAs, the number of officers and supervisors actually working in the PSAs has fallen below the target. Addressing this challenge is something I will discuss a little later in my testimony.

One of the primary goals of the PSA realignment was to provide district commanders with the resources and flexibility to handle the full range of patrol responsibilities in the districts and PSAs: answering calls for service, engaging the community in community policing and problem solving, and responding to hot spots and other community crime priorities. The evidence suggests that the PSA realignment is helping us meet this goal.

For example, our analysis shows that response times have improved under the PSA realignment. During fiscal year 2005, we consistently exceeded our performance target of 8.2 minutes from the time of dispatch to the first officer arriving on the scene for Priority One calls.  In April 2004, our average response time was 8.2 minutes for the fiscal year-to-date. In April 2005, it was down to 7.9 minutes, and in August of this year, it was approximately 7.8 minutes. These numbers indicate that early concerns about the larger size of the PSAs hurting response times have not materialized.