DEPARTMENT: Police Department
DEPARTMENT HEAD: William P. McManus
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: City Wide
SUBJECT: Results of UTSA Review of Police Calls for Service
SUMMARY:
A briefing on the results of the analysis of police calls for service performed by UTSA researchers.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
As part of the review of Police Services Review Project plan provided by the City Manager on December 11, 2020 to the Mayor and City Council, the City partnered with the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to perform an analysis of 911 calls.
The goal of the Police Services Review Project is to distinguish between calls that require a traditional police response from those calls that may be better handled by another City department or combination of police and other service provider. Part of this plan will focus on understanding the community expectations of police services and develop response alternative recommendations to ensure police officers are placed in encounters that need a law enforcement response.
The analysis performed by UTSA focuses on requests received by the City's 911 system that frequently result in or require police response; these are commonly referred to as calls for service. The work done by UTSA will help inform recommendations to the Public Safety Committee and ultimately City Council on types or categories of calls that potentially could be handled by non-sworn police personnel or which might be amenable to a co-response between police and other City agencies.
The UTSA research team is comprised of Dr. Michael Smith and Dr. Rob Tillyer, both professors of criminology and criminal justice in the College for Health, Community, and Policy at UTSA.
The UTSA Research Team looked at approximately 34 months of calls for service data (January 2018 through October 2020) provided by the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD). These data include both 911 and non-emergency calls made by the public to the SAPD.
The UTSA research team ...
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