New Miami-Dade police rookies don’t mean more patrols

On a recent Friday night, there were nine police officers patrolling the Hammocks district. Nine police officers in their marked cars, covering the area between Southwest 8th and 200th streets and the Turnpike and Krome Avenue.

Nine.

The addition of 140 new police officers to our Miami-Dade County Police force is certainly a good thing to begin to alleviate the shortage we have of cops on the street. Mayor Carlos Gimenez may be right when he says that it’s the largest graduating class in MDPD history.

But that only makes it worse when you realize it is only a band aid.

Not just because most of those officers will need to ride with a field training supervisor for at least four months — so it’s not really more police cars on the street right away as Mayor Carlos Gimenez implies when he says that 132 of those officers will be added to patrol. They’ll be doubled up with existing patrols for four months.

Read related story: Miami-Dade Police cuts by Carlos Gimenez cause concern

No, it’s because by the time these rookies finish their first year of probation, we’ll have lost another 120 officers or so. Which is the number of “separations” that the police department has every year. Fifty-eight officers are scheduled to retire through the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, according to the Dade County PBA. That means their retirement in 2017 is mandatory. And the county typically loses another 50 or 60 officers every year  through attrition (to other agencies or careers).

So it’s a net gain of only 20. At best.

Gimenez will say yeah, but we hired 100 officers in January. To which Ladra says, yeah, but we lost 100 officers so far this year (66 in the DROP), according to numbers provided by the police department. So that means it’s a net gain of zero.

It’s basic math, which the mayor has shown to be, eh, not so good at. So, let’s do the addition and subtraction for him, shall we? At least 100 officers have left so far this fiscal year, plus the 119 we lost in 2015 is 219. Plus, oh, let’s split the baby and put next year’s separations at 110. That makes for a total of 329 officers gone in the past three years.  Add the 140 rookies who graduated Wednesday to another class of about 100 that graduated in January and that’s 240 new officers. Subtract 240 from 329 and we still have a net loss of 89 cops in three years.

I sure feel safer already. Don’t you?

This is how we have gotten to a shortfall of close to 200 officers between the budgeted positions and the filled positions. But if you go by the budgeted positions in 2011, before Gimenez was elected, we are short about 390 officers. And that is with the graduating class that Carlos Gimenez used Wednesday as a photo op six weeks before the election. He also used the opportunity to issue a campaign email saying that crime was down statistically.

“As your Mayor, I know the fight against crime is one that every community struggles with everyday,” said the man Ladra christened Cry Wolf Gimenez when he threatened to fire 400 officers in 2014, just two years ago. Then it was 228. No, 110. No, 70. And when it went to zero, he blamed the police director for inflaming the community needlessly.

Read related story: Carlos Gimenez scolds police director: ‘Layoffs may not come’

We also know that crime statistics can be manipulated by the way incident reports are written and filed. How much you wanna bet we have a whole bunch more “information reports” this year than we did last year or in 2010 even. And, anyway, numbers don’t comfort the parents of Jada Page or King Carter or the family of Miami firefighter Chadrick Davis, shot dead last week. Not when the plain truth is that their deaths might have been avoided – if only we had the proper police coverage in the community.

But we don’t even try to have the proper coverage.

Based on the county budget and the police department goals prepared by Gimenez this year,  three out of five killers are practically guaranteed to get away with murder. That’s because the goal for solving homicide cases for the Miami-Dade Police Department is only 40%. That’s hardly a deterrent. In fact, it’s almost encouragement to pick up a gun because, well, why not? The goal for clearance of sex crime cases is just a little better at 41%.  But for robberies? Well, we’re aiming to solve the crime and nab the bad guy only 28% of the time.

These are our goals? Really? That’s the best we can do?

And Gimenez’s solution, instead of hiring more officers and restoring the specialized units he dismantled in 2013, is to create a squad of living room cops. He wants to take two dozen of the officers we do have on the street and put them in the homes of at risk kids we then further reward with extra empowerment and access to more services and programs. Really?

Can’t help but wonder how many police officers are patrolling the district tonight. And I sure hope it’s more than nine.