March 28, 2025 • 21 mins
In this edition of the Cape CopCast "Chief's Chat," Chief Sizemore breaks down the science behind prioritizing police response and staffing in this transparent, informative discussion about department operations.
Using a simple visual metaphor of "tennis balls in buckets," the Chief explains how the department allocates officers across the city's four geographical quadrants. Each quadrant (or bucket) contains four zones, and each zone has its own officers (tennis balls). When priority one emergencies occur—active crimes, injury crashes, or immediate threats to safety—these officers must respond immediately, leaving non-emergency calls to wait longer. It's not that your non-emergency call isn't important; it's that someone else's life may literally depend on that immediate response.
The good news? The department's "Project 35" has mapped out staffing needs for the next decade with unanimous support from city leadership. This science-based approach to scaling police services has received backing from city management, finance teams, and elected officials, ensuring that as Cape Coral grows, police staffing will grow proportionally.
The episode concludes with the announcement of Captain Matt Campion as the department's new Interim Deputy Chief. Fresh from graduating the prestigious FBI National Academy at Quantico, Campion brings refined leadership skills to an organization of over 400 employees, highlighting the department's commitment to succession planning and professional development. Subscribe to hear more insider perspectives on how your police department operates and evolves with your community!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Cop
cast Chiefs chat edition.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm one of your hosts , lisa Greenberg, and I'm
Officer Mercedes Simons.
Together we make up the publicaffairs office.
This is probably going to be mylast Chiefs chat for a while.
Yeah, if you can't tell, I'veprobably grown a little bit over
the last couple of Chiefs chatall the podcast episodes.
So it'll be Lisa Chief and, whoknows, maybe a special guest
here and there.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, maybe we'll add in some guests or something.
It'll be fun.
It's been a few weeks sincewe've done a Chiefs Chat podcast
.
We've had a busy few weeks hereat the department.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We have.
There's been a lot going on andwe didn't do any show prep,
just so you guys know.
So they have no idea what I'mgoing to talk about.
But earlier in the week I had ameeting with our finance
department and I wanted to kindof let everybody know where
we're at in the budget processand what does that mean to you
(00:55):
at home.
So how this connected with meis, I had a friend of mine that
lives in the community thatneeded some legal advice and
ended up needing our services.
So they called me and said hey,this is what happened in our
life.
You know, I think I might needa police report.
I said, yeah, no problem, justcall the non-emergency number.
These are the key phrases andkey things that you want to talk
(01:15):
to the officer about.
When they get there and thiswas a Saturday afternoon I said
just be mindful, it's Saturdayand the afternoon turns into the
evening, turns into the night,and it's Saturday night.
Around here it can be prettybusy.
So you may you may have to wait, because what they told me was
not a occurring right now.
You know, vital situation inthe immediate past occurred.
(01:39):
So they ended up calling me acouple hours later and said hey,
I got to pick somebody up atthe airport.
Should I wait?
You know what it's now after 7on Saturday night and, with the
situation that you have, it'simportant to you but it's not
(02:01):
running, gutting, crashing,burning.
So, why don't you go to theairport and we'll try again
tomorrow and call in the morning?
Sunday morning is a lotdifferent than Saturday
afternoon, saturday evening, andthat's not an uncommon thing to
hear and it's not ideal forpeople to have to wait, but it
(02:22):
is a reality.
You know, we bounce between theeighth and seventh largest city
, depending on what website youlook at, in the third most
populated state in the country.
We're busy, right.
I use that analogy all the time.
If it's out there, it's in here.
So a Saturday is rocking androlling metrics and our staffing
(02:48):
plan and our building basedupon priority one calls, meaning
how many cops do we need to beable to respond to a priority
one emergency in a set amount oftime, and we get our onboard
people to be able to meet thatmetric.
That's an easy, conversationalway to do budgeting, explain
budgeting, do it withpolicymakers and with finance
people to be able to outfit youragency.
(03:11):
But fortunately for all of usthat live in Cape Coral, we are
predominantly not a priority onecall town Right, meaning if you
need the police.
We have plenty of priority onecalls, but the majority of them
are not.
So what that means is if youare experiencing a priority one
(03:33):
call that's an active inprogress crime.
Somebody's getting attacked,there's a crash with injuries,
there's something on fire,something really that you know
in your mind would be a priorityone call.
Somebody's breaking into yourhome.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Active emergency essentially.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Then we're going to get there.
They're always going to benumber one.
We triage calls for servicewhen they come into our
communication center.
So if you had a non-emergencycall and you had been waiting
and you're moving up the queue,we don't go by first in, first
out.
So if somebody calls with abreak in sorry you got to wait
no, that's going to go to thetop and you're going to wait.
(04:12):
That triaging makes ourpriority.
Twos, threes and fours have towait.
So we have that metric of weneed this many cops to get here
in this amount of time for apriority one.
We don't have that metric fortwos, threes and fours because
it's way too complicated, notthe best science.
Now what does that mean for theaverage person?
When you call the policebecause something's suspicious
(04:35):
or I want to report something orsomething happened to me at
work or something happenedoutside, but it's not happening
right now, is you could wait?
I don't like that.
You don.
Now is you could wait?
I don't like that.
You don't like that.
The people don't like that.
So what do you do?
You use the same formula thatyou have I need more cops to be
able to respond to your priorityones.
(04:55):
Well, when all of your priorityones have been saturated and
taken care of, you now haveavailable units for your twos,
threes and fours and convers,the response times will decrease
.
I mean, you'll get a copquicker for your type of call.
So that hit home for me when Iwas talking to a friend of mine
who was experiencing it and Iget emails from time to time
(05:17):
that I called the police onSaturday at 830, and it took two
and a half hours for theofficer to get there.
They were great when they gotthere but nobody got hurt.
But geez, two and a half hours,how is that right?
Well, at that time, just thispast Saturday night, we had a
traffic fatality, we had anothernear fatality, all in the same
precinct.
That's a saturation of yourworkforce.
(05:39):
Therefore, when anotherpriority call comes out and you
clear somebody to go to that andyou clear somebody to go to
that, somebody's waiting with anon-priority call longer and
longer and longer and we dosometimes take somebody from
another district or precinct togo respond.
(05:59):
But now that precinct getsexposed and you can get stuck
out here and then there'sanother call.
I'm close to that, I'll backthat one up and then you're
longer exposed and you'reexacerbating the problem in
another part of the city and wecall it getting upside down.
So that's not the preferred wayto do it.
What you need to do isadequately staff where you're at
.
So I thought of a visual thatwould explain to people how
(06:22):
we're situated in a pretty quickmental diagram and then what
we're trying to do and thesupport that we have from city
management, finance and theelected officials to meet that
shared vision, right?
So picture a five-gallon pail,right?
Everybody can kind of picturethat in their head and then you
(06:43):
take a cardboard divider and putit into it.
So it's an empty five gallonpail with a cardboard divider
that divides it into fours.
Okay, so one of those buckets isa precinct.
We have four of them.
So there's four buckets withdividers in it.
One is up here, southeast,southwest, northwest, northeast,
(07:05):
and in each one of thoseprecincts or buckets it's
divided into fours.
There's four response zones.
That's how we're laid out Verysymmetrical, very easy to
comprehend.
One looks like the other.
There's not a.
Southeast is busier, so there'sa multitude of zones and then
we spread them out big over here.
(07:25):
We used to do that, we'veoutgrown that.
So, it's very simple, veryscalable and you don't have to
change it again.
So we mirror We've talked aboutthis before on the podcast, but
we mirror the geographicalquadrants of the city.
So you've got your four buckets.
Take a tennis ball, put it inone of those.
That's a cop.
(07:46):
So a tennis ball in all four ofthose zones, in all four of
those precincts.
That is our minimum staffing.
There's a cop in every singlezone, in all four precincts.
Minimum is certainly notoptimum right and we have more
than that.
We have more than one per, butyou can't go below one per.
(08:10):
That is every section.
Every piece of real estate inthe city is protected and
patrolled and covered by apolice officer.
If they get tied up on a call,then there is no available
tennis ball in that section.
So busier parts of the city orbusier buckets or sub zones, we
put two tennis balls and thegoal and a lot of them have
(08:34):
multiple tennis balls in therethe goal is to have multiple in
every single one of them.
So, right now.
Where we're at today is thereis a minimum of one tennis ball
in every divided bucket.
The busier zones, the busierparts of the city, certain areas
of the Southeast, southwest,even the Northeast, have more
(08:57):
than one in each bucket.
And as we grow, or a or an areaof the city, so let's Southeast
is southeast is pretty grown,so let's go northwest New
apartment complexes, newshopping centers, a lot more
people that's growing, so thatbucket has one tennis ball in
each one as it grows.
(09:17):
You don't get another bucket,you don't get another divider.
You put another ball in eachzone and that's how you're
scalable.
So you don't have to redesignyour geographical boundaries
because they're not changing.
We're not annexing large swathsof land and we're not going to
put more dividers in the bucket.
(09:38):
It's four and four, nice andeasy up here for me, and then
what you want to do is add more.
So eventually, as we grow and aswe scale, certain sub zones
within each bucket might be verybusy and they could have a lot
of tennis balls in there.
But the geographical boundariesdon't change.
They serve as their own backupofficers.
(10:00):
Two can go to a priority, onecall and you still have an
available tennis ball to respondto your non-priority calls.
So hopefully that kind of showswhere we are and where we're
going.
So in our project 35, we havescaled ahead 10 years.
What do we project to be therequired amount of tennis balls
(10:23):
in every one of these?
And we are now building towardsthat.
We have cleared the hurdle ofdesigning that plan.
We have pitched it officially.
I spoke about that plan.
I didn't use the buckets andthe balls, I did more
business-like, but it waswell-received, it was understood
and it's not really going wildor out on a limb If you take all
(10:47):
of the available informationand you process it.
That's the most sensical way todo it.
Our policymakers and electedofficials believe in it.
Our finance departmentunderstands that.
They believe in it.
They're scientific in theirbrain.
They don't have a motion to it.
They don't have to like it ordislike it.
They fund it or don't fund it,and their desire or decision to
(11:11):
fund it or not fund it comesfrom the city manager who works
with me and our team, and thecity manager and his staff work
with the elected officials.
So what do you need is whatcomes down.
What do we need to be safe?
That's the directive or themarching orders I'm given.
We need you to keep us safe.
I tell you what I need to keepyou safe.
(11:32):
As long as it's not someharebrained scheme, they believe
in it.
That vision gets shared to citymanagement.
We work that out and then citymanagement directs finance to
fund it.
That's kind of the flow of howwe do it.
So we are deep into thatprocess now.
So it's been developed.
I have presented it officiallyat a budget workshop.
(11:53):
That's the first foray intothis.
Is what I need.
It was a unanimous head nod.
Yes, absolutely, if you likewhat we're doing, if you like
the way the food tastes today asour restaurant gets bigger.
We need this to be able tocontinue to deliver that.
And then we start the meetingswith finance, and I met with
them and our plan so far isintact, so that my friend and
(12:22):
your friends and friends wehaven't met yet that are
priority twos and threes,thankfully won't have to wait
and go.
What in the world?
Why did it take so long?
There's still going to beoutliers like that, there's
still going to be times likethat, but we'll have more people
to respond to our priority onesand our key metric of response
(12:43):
time will diminish.
Priority ones and our keymetric of response time will
diminish.
And then, by flooding that,that oversaturation, to be able
to do that, you have extrapeople that can diminish your
response time to your quality oflife and less life threatening
calls for service, cause we area thankfully, a priority to and
below town that still has ourshare of ones.
(13:05):
Yeah, so if I thoroughlyconfused you, let me know.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
No, it makes perfect sense and it's good to hear that
there's backing for that,because I know it is frustrating
.
Every call is important to us,of course, but obviously we're
going to have to respond to theactive car crash that has people
with injuries, are going tohave to respond to a domestic
violence situation that'sactively ongoing.
Those types of situationsobviously take priority to.
(13:31):
Oh, I just noticed that someonebroke into my car last night
and it's 2 pm in the afternoon.
You know, nothing's going tochange between now and an hour
from now, if that's how long ittakes us to get there.
So it makes complete sense andI think it'll be good because,
like you said, as we add moretennis balls, that wait time
goes down.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Right, and to that scenario that you pointed out.
You know, somebody broke intomy car last night.
You shouldn't have to wait.
We don't want you to wait.
And the question is, well, whatare you doing about it?
That's what we're doing aboutit.
We're scientifically designingand building and scaling up.
One point of interest here isif all we had to do is staff the
(14:11):
street, we could do that inprobably one and a half budget
years.
It would be easy to be able todo that.
You know, this fiscal yearstarts in October.
We'd be almost caught up, andthen the next one we'd be
completely caught up.
But you only see that whathappens when you have an
increase in calls for service,an increase in crimes, an
(14:35):
increase in other social demands, like schools, having officers
in schools, the value of that?
Having more crimes means moredetectives to investigate.
Criminals get moresophisticated.
When you have a lot offinancial crimes, you still have
property crimes and,unfortunately, as population
grows and gets more dense, youhave crimes against persons and
(14:56):
sexual crimes and crimes againstchildren and all of these
things that.
If you're not experiencing that, thank God you're not, but when
you do, you want to know mypolice department's competent
that if my loved one God forbidhas fallen victim to a violent
crime or a homicide or anythinglike that, you need to know that
(15:19):
we have the staffing, thetechnology and the people to do
it.
So much like the road or thestreet is growing, so is the
need for those other roles.
Well, they are staffed frompeople on the street who are
gaining experience and becomingseasoned police officers.
That's where they get pluckedfrom and go.
(15:40):
So we take a couple of stepsforward and then a couple of
steps back, because we graduate10 out of an academy, get them
trained in-house and deploy 10.
You don't net 10 on the streetbecause there's traffic officers
that are vacant and we've gotto stay on top of that.
(16:00):
There's property crimes unitsthat are, that are not fully
staffed.
So you take a percentage andput them in there, and a
percentage and put them in there.
So out of 10, you maybe you netsix out of a class, and those
priorities fluctuate.
So if there's a, an unfundedmandate that comes down from the
government that you have tostart doing this, that's going
(16:23):
to be the priority.
So, 10 graduating, maybe fourgo to that, and then traffic and
investigations wait to the nextgroup.
So you're.
As the population grows, wehave to continue to to hire, but
the demands and other parts ofthe of the organization continue
.
So you, you, you net less thanwhat you think.
(16:45):
So that's the multiple gearsspinning within a big year.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Right, it's not as simple as just.
Oh, let's add 10 officers tothe road.
There's a process, like yousaid, multiple gears spinning at
once but it's nice to remindpeople that we are staying on
top of it, that the plans are inplace and we are going to get
to a place where, most of thetime, they're not waiting.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think it's important for people to realize
like, yes, you are a priority tous.
Yes, like we don't want you towait.
But sometimes you take thosetennis balls and you might have
one person in one zone and onein another and suddenly there's
this bad domestic violence issuethat goes out.
You need two to go to that.
So now you have two zones thatyou might have had calls that
were priority two or three, andnow they're both holding and
(17:30):
sometimes that's okay becausethey're they're other priorities
.
That's why we call it priority.
One is because it becomes asafety issue.
So I think it's just great tobring that back to the
importance of remembering it's'snot a priority to us, but in a
way, it's good that it's notsomething that needs to be
handled right now.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
People should be glad that they're a priority too,
for sure.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, the goal is to have each one of these
subdivided buckets,independently staffed and
independent to be able to handself-sustaining right.
That's the ultimate goal.
Where you don't want to pullfrom other parts, that's going
to happen, that's just thenature of it.
But the more you can minimizethat and make each one of them
self-sufficient, the responsetimes within each one of those
(18:16):
divided areas will exponentiallyget better.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
For sure.
I know we like to end on apositive note, so I thought we
would give a little shout out.
We did publicly name ourinterim deputy chief this week.
Captain Matt Campion is now ourinterim deputy chief after
deputy chief Phil Van Lanshootretired, and I know that this is
obviously very exciting for ourdepartment to continue to move
forward.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
It's excellent and Matt was, within a week, a
recent graduate of theprestigious FBI National Academy
in Quantico, virginia.
Matt was nominated to go.
We have a very formalizedsuccession plan in the building.
Leadership.
Training starts very early andwe put people on pathways to
(18:59):
different, appropriate careertenured training and he is
entering the executive level andhe was identified as somebody
worthy of that and ready to dothat.
So Matt had the base, had thetalent, had the ability, and
then we were so fortunate tosend him to Quantico.
(19:20):
It's world-renowned and itteaches you a lot of the.
It polishes off a lot of therough edges for somebody who's
already talented in things likehow to lead large, contemporary,
dynamic organizations like ours.
We're over 400-plus people andgrowing every day and doing
multiple things.
It's a busy place.
(19:41):
And growing every day and doingmultiple things.
It's a busy place.
And to lead in that fashionwhere you don't see your
subordinates face-to-face everyday, like a small business, you
rely on other people to do itand that takes an educated
leader.
So he learned skills inemotional intelligence on how to
do that.
How do you lead a diverse groupof people with a diverse set of
(20:02):
motivations and what makes themtick?
Learn how to do that, learnedpsychology, learned advanced
criminal justice techniques andjust unbelievable.
We're so thrilled to have himgraduate from there, represent
us, do so well and representCape Coral as a whole and the
(20:22):
Cape Coral Police Department,and come back and I can already
see what was a talent is nowrefined and for us to put that
into action.
It's going to benefit everybodyin the building and everybody
in the community.
So couldn't be more proud Forsure.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, I think that's great, and on top of that, it's
like a level of physical fitnessthat's very challenging to
maintain, and he did that too,and I think that just speaks to
overall.
Being a well-rounded lawenforcement officer is is
maintaining all of that,including physical fitness,
which is awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So he's a lead by example guy hard worker for sure
, so big congrats to him.
All right, chief.
Anything else, that's a fullplate.
That is a full plate.
We are pushing 20 minutes here,so awesome.
Well, thank you so much forjoining us today and we'll catch
you next time.
Stay safe.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Cop
cast Chiefs chat edition.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
I'm one of your hosts , lisa Greenberg, and I'm
Officer Mercedes Simons.
Together we make up the publicaffairs office.
This is probably going to be mylast Chiefs chat for a while.
Yeah, if you can't tell, I'veprobably grown a little bit over
the last couple of Chiefs chatall the podcast episodes.
So it'll be Lisa Chief and, whoknows, maybe a special guest
here and there.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Yeah, maybe we'll add in some guests or something.
It'll be fun.
It's been a few weeks sincewe've done a Chiefs Chat podcast
.
We've had a busy few weeks hereat the department.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
We have.
There's been a lot going on andwe didn't do any show prep,
just so you guys know.
So they have no idea what I'mgoing to talk about.
But earlier in the week I had ameeting with our finance
department and I wanted to kindof let everybody know where
we're at in the budget processand what does that mean to you
(00:55):
at home.
So how this connected with meis, I had a friend of mine that
lives in the community thatneeded some legal advice and
ended up needing our services.
So they called me and said hey,this is what happened in our
life.
You know, I think I might needa police report.
I said, yeah, no problem, justcall the non-emergency number.
These are the key phrases andkey things that you want to talk
(01:15):
to the officer about.
When they get there and thiswas a Saturday afternoon I said
just be mindful, it's Saturdayand the afternoon turns into the
evening, turns into the night,and it's Saturday night.
Around here it can be prettybusy.
So you may you may have to wait, because what they told me was
not a occurring right now.
You know, vital situation inthe immediate past occurred.
(01:39):
So they ended up calling me acouple hours later and said hey,
I got to pick somebody up atthe airport.
Should I wait?
You know what it's now after 7on Saturday night and, with the
situation that you have, it'simportant to you but it's not
(02:01):
running, gutting, crashing,burning.
So, why don't you go to theairport and we'll try again
tomorrow and call in the morning?
Sunday morning is a lotdifferent than Saturday
afternoon, saturday evening, andthat's not an uncommon thing to
hear and it's not ideal forpeople to have to wait, but it
(02:22):
is a reality.
You know, we bounce between theeighth and seventh largest city
, depending on what website youlook at, in the third most
populated state in the country.
We're busy, right.
I use that analogy all the time.
If it's out there, it's in here.
So a Saturday is rocking androlling metrics and our staffing
(02:48):
plan and our building basedupon priority one calls, meaning
how many cops do we need to beable to respond to a priority
one emergency in a set amount oftime, and we get our onboard
people to be able to meet thatmetric.
That's an easy, conversationalway to do budgeting, explain
budgeting, do it withpolicymakers and with finance
people to be able to outfit youragency.
(03:11):
But fortunately for all of usthat live in Cape Coral, we are
predominantly not a priority onecall town Right, meaning if you
need the police.
We have plenty of priority onecalls, but the majority of them
are not.
So what that means is if youare experiencing a priority one
(03:33):
call that's an active inprogress crime.
Somebody's getting attacked,there's a crash with injuries,
there's something on fire,something really that you know
in your mind would be a priorityone call.
Somebody's breaking into yourhome.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Active emergency essentially.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Then we're going to get there.
They're always going to benumber one.
We triage calls for servicewhen they come into our
communication center.
So if you had a non-emergencycall and you had been waiting
and you're moving up the queue,we don't go by first in, first
out.
So if somebody calls with abreak in sorry you got to wait
no, that's going to go to thetop and you're going to wait.
(04:12):
That triaging makes ourpriority.
Twos, threes and fours have towait.
So we have that metric of weneed this many cops to get here
in this amount of time for apriority one.
We don't have that metric fortwos, threes and fours because
it's way too complicated, notthe best science.
Now what does that mean for theaverage person?
When you call the policebecause something's suspicious
(04:35):
or I want to report something orsomething happened to me at
work or something happenedoutside, but it's not happening
right now, is you could wait?
I don't like that.
You don.
Now is you could wait?
I don't like that.
You don't like that.
The people don't like that.
So what do you do?
You use the same formula thatyou have I need more cops to be
able to respond to your priorityones.
(04:55):
Well, when all of your priorityones have been saturated and
taken care of, you now haveavailable units for your twos,
threes and fours and convers,the response times will decrease
.
I mean, you'll get a copquicker for your type of call.
So that hit home for me when Iwas talking to a friend of mine
who was experiencing it and Iget emails from time to time
(05:17):
that I called the police onSaturday at 830, and it took two
and a half hours for theofficer to get there.
They were great when they gotthere but nobody got hurt.
But geez, two and a half hours,how is that right?
Well, at that time, just thispast Saturday night, we had a
traffic fatality, we had anothernear fatality, all in the same
precinct.
That's a saturation of yourworkforce.
(05:39):
Therefore, when anotherpriority call comes out and you
clear somebody to go to that andyou clear somebody to go to
that, somebody's waiting with anon-priority call longer and
longer and longer and we dosometimes take somebody from
another district or precinct togo respond.
(05:59):
But now that precinct getsexposed and you can get stuck
out here and then there'sanother call.
I'm close to that, I'll backthat one up and then you're
longer exposed and you'reexacerbating the problem in
another part of the city and wecall it getting upside down.
So that's not the preferred wayto do it.
What you need to do isadequately staff where you're at
.
So I thought of a visual thatwould explain to people how
(06:22):
we're situated in a pretty quickmental diagram and then what
we're trying to do and thesupport that we have from city
management, finance and theelected officials to meet that
shared vision, right?
So picture a five-gallon pail,right?
Everybody can kind of picturethat in their head and then you
(06:43):
take a cardboard divider and putit into it.
So it's an empty five gallonpail with a cardboard divider
that divides it into fours.
Okay, so one of those buckets isa precinct.
We have four of them.
So there's four buckets withdividers in it.
One is up here, southeast,southwest, northwest, northeast,
(07:05):
and in each one of thoseprecincts or buckets it's
divided into fours.
There's four response zones.
That's how we're laid out Verysymmetrical, very easy to
comprehend.
One looks like the other.
There's not a.
Southeast is busier, so there'sa multitude of zones and then
we spread them out big over here.
(07:25):
We used to do that, we'veoutgrown that.
So, it's very simple, veryscalable and you don't have to
change it again.
So we mirror We've talked aboutthis before on the podcast, but
we mirror the geographicalquadrants of the city.
So you've got your four buckets.
Take a tennis ball, put it inone of those.
That's a cop.
(07:46):
So a tennis ball in all four ofthose zones, in all four of
those precincts.
That is our minimum staffing.
There's a cop in every singlezone, in all four precincts.
Minimum is certainly notoptimum right and we have more
than that.
We have more than one per, butyou can't go below one per.
(08:10):
That is every section.
Every piece of real estate inthe city is protected and
patrolled and covered by apolice officer.
If they get tied up on a call,then there is no available
tennis ball in that section.
So busier parts of the city orbusier buckets or sub zones, we
put two tennis balls and thegoal and a lot of them have
(08:34):
multiple tennis balls in therethe goal is to have multiple in
every single one of them.
So, right now.
Where we're at today is thereis a minimum of one tennis ball
in every divided bucket.
The busier zones, the busierparts of the city, certain areas
of the Southeast, southwest,even the Northeast, have more
(08:57):
than one in each bucket.
And as we grow, or a or an areaof the city, so let's Southeast
is southeast is pretty grown,so let's go northwest New
apartment complexes, newshopping centers, a lot more
people that's growing, so thatbucket has one tennis ball in
each one as it grows.
(09:17):
You don't get another bucket,you don't get another divider.
You put another ball in eachzone and that's how you're
scalable.
So you don't have to redesignyour geographical boundaries
because they're not changing.
We're not annexing large swathsof land and we're not going to
put more dividers in the bucket.
(09:38):
It's four and four, nice andeasy up here for me, and then
what you want to do is add more.
So eventually, as we grow and aswe scale, certain sub zones
within each bucket might be verybusy and they could have a lot
of tennis balls in there.
But the geographical boundariesdon't change.
They serve as their own backupofficers.
(10:00):
Two can go to a priority, onecall and you still have an
available tennis ball to respondto your non-priority calls.
So hopefully that kind of showswhere we are and where we're
going.
So in our project 35, we havescaled ahead 10 years.
What do we project to be therequired amount of tennis balls
(10:23):
in every one of these?
And we are now building towardsthat.
We have cleared the hurdle ofdesigning that plan.
We have pitched it officially.
I spoke about that plan.
I didn't use the buckets andthe balls, I did more
business-like, but it waswell-received, it was understood
and it's not really going wildor out on a limb If you take all
(10:47):
of the available informationand you process it.
That's the most sensical way todo it.
Our policymakers and electedofficials believe in it.
Our finance departmentunderstands that.
They believe in it.
They're scientific in theirbrain.
They don't have a motion to it.
They don't have to like it ordislike it.
They fund it or don't fund it,and their desire or decision to
(11:11):
fund it or not fund it comesfrom the city manager who works
with me and our team, and thecity manager and his staff work
with the elected officials.
So what do you need is whatcomes down.
What do we need to be safe?
That's the directive or themarching orders I'm given.
We need you to keep us safe.
I tell you what I need to keepyou safe.
(11:32):
As long as it's not someharebrained scheme, they believe
in it.
That vision gets shared to citymanagement.
We work that out and then citymanagement directs finance to
fund it.
That's kind of the flow of howwe do it.
So we are deep into thatprocess now.
So it's been developed.
I have presented it officiallyat a budget workshop.
(11:53):
That's the first foray intothis.
Is what I need.
It was a unanimous head nod.
Yes, absolutely, if you likewhat we're doing, if you like
the way the food tastes today asour restaurant gets bigger.
We need this to be able tocontinue to deliver that.
And then we start the meetingswith finance, and I met with
them and our plan so far isintact, so that my friend and
(12:22):
your friends and friends wehaven't met yet that are
priority twos and threes,thankfully won't have to wait
and go.
What in the world?
Why did it take so long?
There's still going to beoutliers like that, there's
still going to be times likethat, but we'll have more people
to respond to our priority onesand our key metric of response
(12:43):
time will diminish.
Priority ones and our keymetric of response time will
diminish.
And then, by flooding that,that oversaturation, to be able
to do that, you have extrapeople that can diminish your
response time to your quality oflife and less life threatening
calls for service, cause we area thankfully, a priority to and
below town that still has ourshare of ones.
(13:05):
Yeah, so if I thoroughlyconfused you, let me know.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
No, it makes perfect sense and it's good to hear that
there's backing for that,because I know it is frustrating
.
Every call is important to us,of course, but obviously we're
going to have to respond to theactive car crash that has people
with injuries, are going tohave to respond to a domestic
violence situation that'sactively ongoing.
Those types of situationsobviously take priority to.
(13:31):
Oh, I just noticed that someonebroke into my car last night
and it's 2 pm in the afternoon.
You know, nothing's going tochange between now and an hour
from now, if that's how long ittakes us to get there.
So it makes complete sense andI think it'll be good because,
like you said, as we add moretennis balls, that wait time
goes down.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Right, and to that scenario that you pointed out.
You know, somebody broke intomy car last night.
You shouldn't have to wait.
We don't want you to wait.
And the question is, well, whatare you doing about it?
That's what we're doing aboutit.
We're scientifically designingand building and scaling up.
One point of interest here isif all we had to do is staff the
(14:11):
street, we could do that inprobably one and a half budget
years.
It would be easy to be able todo that.
You know, this fiscal yearstarts in October.
We'd be almost caught up, andthen the next one we'd be
completely caught up.
But you only see that whathappens when you have an
increase in calls for service,an increase in crimes, an
(14:35):
increase in other social demands, like schools, having officers
in schools, the value of that?
Having more crimes means moredetectives to investigate.
Criminals get moresophisticated.
When you have a lot offinancial crimes, you still have
property crimes and,unfortunately, as population
grows and gets more dense, youhave crimes against persons and
(14:56):
sexual crimes and crimes againstchildren and all of these
things that.
If you're not experiencing that, thank God you're not, but when
you do, you want to know mypolice department's competent
that if my loved one God forbidhas fallen victim to a violent
crime or a homicide or anythinglike that, you need to know that
(15:19):
we have the staffing, thetechnology and the people to do
it.
So much like the road or thestreet is growing, so is the
need for those other roles.
Well, they are staffed frompeople on the street who are
gaining experience and becomingseasoned police officers.
That's where they get pluckedfrom and go.
(15:40):
So we take a couple of stepsforward and then a couple of
steps back, because we graduate10 out of an academy, get them
trained in-house and deploy 10.
You don't net 10 on the streetbecause there's traffic officers
that are vacant and we've gotto stay on top of that.
(16:00):
There's property crimes unitsthat are, that are not fully
staffed.
So you take a percentage andput them in there, and a
percentage and put them in there.
So out of 10, you maybe you netsix out of a class, and those
priorities fluctuate.
So if there's a, an unfundedmandate that comes down from the
government that you have tostart doing this, that's going
(16:23):
to be the priority.
So, 10 graduating, maybe fourgo to that, and then traffic and
investigations wait to the nextgroup.
So you're.
As the population grows, wehave to continue to to hire, but
the demands and other parts ofthe of the organization continue
.
So you, you, you net less thanwhat you think.
(16:45):
So that's the multiple gearsspinning within a big year.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Right, it's not as simple as just.
Oh, let's add 10 officers tothe road.
There's a process, like yousaid, multiple gears spinning at
once but it's nice to remindpeople that we are staying on
top of it, that the plans are inplace and we are going to get
to a place where, most of thetime, they're not waiting.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think it's important for people to realize
like, yes, you are a priority tous.
Yes, like we don't want you towait.
But sometimes you take thosetennis balls and you might have
one person in one zone and onein another and suddenly there's
this bad domestic violence issuethat goes out.
You need two to go to that.
So now you have two zones thatyou might have had calls that
were priority two or three, andnow they're both holding and
(17:30):
sometimes that's okay becausethey're they're other priorities
.
That's why we call it priority.
One is because it becomes asafety issue.
So I think it's just great tobring that back to the
importance of remembering it's'snot a priority to us, but in a
way, it's good that it's notsomething that needs to be
handled right now.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
People should be glad that they're a priority too,
for sure.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, the goal is to have each one of these
subdivided buckets,independently staffed and
independent to be able to handself-sustaining right.
That's the ultimate goal.
Where you don't want to pullfrom other parts, that's going
to happen, that's just thenature of it.
But the more you can minimizethat and make each one of them
self-sufficient, the responsetimes within each one of those
(18:16):
divided areas will exponentiallyget better.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
For sure.
I know we like to end on apositive note, so I thought we
would give a little shout out.
We did publicly name ourinterim deputy chief this week.
Captain Matt Campion is now ourinterim deputy chief after
deputy chief Phil Van Lanshootretired, and I know that this is
obviously very exciting for ourdepartment to continue to move
forward.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
It's excellent and Matt was, within a week, a
recent graduate of theprestigious FBI National Academy
in Quantico, virginia.
Matt was nominated to go.
We have a very formalizedsuccession plan in the building.
Leadership.
Training starts very early andwe put people on pathways to
(18:59):
different, appropriate careertenured training and he is
entering the executive level andhe was identified as somebody
worthy of that and ready to dothat.
So Matt had the base, had thetalent, had the ability, and
then we were so fortunate tosend him to Quantico.
(19:20):
It's world-renowned and itteaches you a lot of the.
It polishes off a lot of therough edges for somebody who's
already talented in things likehow to lead large, contemporary,
dynamic organizations like ours.
We're over 400-plus people andgrowing every day and doing
multiple things.
It's a busy place.
(19:41):
And growing every day and doingmultiple things.
It's a busy place.
And to lead in that fashionwhere you don't see your
subordinates face-to-face everyday, like a small business, you
rely on other people to do itand that takes an educated
leader.
So he learned skills inemotional intelligence on how to
do that.
How do you lead a diverse groupof people with a diverse set of
(20:02):
motivations and what makes themtick?
Learn how to do that, learnedpsychology, learned advanced
criminal justice techniques andjust unbelievable.
We're so thrilled to have himgraduate from there, represent
us, do so well and representCape Coral as a whole and the
(20:22):
Cape Coral Police Department,and come back and I can already
see what was a talent is nowrefined and for us to put that
into action.
It's going to benefit everybodyin the building and everybody
in the community.
So couldn't be more proud Forsure.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, I think that's great, and on top of that, it's
like a level of physical fitnessthat's very challenging to
maintain, and he did that too,and I think that just speaks to
overall.
Being a well-rounded lawenforcement officer is is
maintaining all of that,including physical fitness,
which is awesome.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
So he's a lead by example guy hard worker for sure
, so big congrats to him.
All right, chief.
Anything else, that's a fullplate.
That is a full plate.
We are pushing 20 minutes here,so awesome.
Well, thank you so much forjoining us today and we'll catch
you next time.
Stay safe.
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