Introduction
The City of Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States and the core of the State of Arizona, both in terms of the State’s government and the population. The overall City of Phoenix fiscal year operating budget for 2017-2018 is 4.5 billion dollars, approximately about half of the State of Arizona’s 9.6 billion dollar budget (COP,AZ)The Phoenix Police Department is the largest department in the City of Phoenix and one of the larger government entities throughout Arizona. The Phoenix Police Department has a larger operating budget and more employees the State’s law enforcement agency, The Department of Public Safety. The Department of Public Safety has an approved budget for the 2018 fiscal year of 284.2 million dollars, …show more content…
As such, the Police Department struggles to meet service demands when economic down turns cause the loss of these cyclical tax revenues. The Police Department is particularly sensitive to rapid decreases in revenues due to committing approximately 90 percent of its expenditures budget toward employee payroll and benefits. The Phoenix Police Department cannot easily find and replace employees once tax revenues improve owing to the fact that recruiting, hiring, and a six to eight months process for training officer candidate to the point that they become solo capable, makes the procurement of additional manpower and slow and arduous process. Additionally, there is less incentives to go in to law enforcements since current economic environments have left past pension programs fiscally unmanageable and too costly to offer to new employees. Current public opinion does not hold law enforcement professionals in the same high regard as it previously had, and, there have been a lot of highly publicized incidents involving purported abuse of minority groups by police departments from around the country. These issues have combined to make it harder to entice highly qualified individuals to participate in public service, at lower pay than may be possible in a private business
The City of Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the United States and the core of the State of Arizona, both in terms of the State’s government and the population. The overall City of Phoenix fiscal year operating budget for 2017-2018 is 4.5 billion dollars, approximately about half of the State of Arizona’s 9.6 billion dollar budget (COP,AZ)The Phoenix Police Department is the largest department in the City of Phoenix and one of the larger government entities throughout Arizona. The Phoenix Police Department has a larger operating budget and more employees the State’s law enforcement agency, The Department of Public Safety. The Department of Public Safety has an approved budget for the 2018 fiscal year of 284.2 million dollars, …show more content…
As such, the Police Department struggles to meet service demands when economic down turns cause the loss of these cyclical tax revenues. The Police Department is particularly sensitive to rapid decreases in revenues due to committing approximately 90 percent of its expenditures budget toward employee payroll and benefits. The Phoenix Police Department cannot easily find and replace employees once tax revenues improve owing to the fact that recruiting, hiring, and a six to eight months process for training officer candidate to the point that they become solo capable, makes the procurement of additional manpower and slow and arduous process. Additionally, there is less incentives to go in to law enforcements since current economic environments have left past pension programs fiscally unmanageable and too costly to offer to new employees. Current public opinion does not hold law enforcement professionals in the same high regard as it previously had, and, there have been a lot of highly publicized incidents involving purported abuse of minority groups by police departments from around the country. These issues have combined to make it harder to entice highly qualified individuals to participate in public service, at lower pay than may be possible in a private business