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Across the country, some police departments are grappling with the compounding effects of persistent staffing shortages. Vacant positions mean fewer officers on the street, heavier workloads for those who remain, and growing overtime bills that strain already tight budgets. The result is a cycle of fatigue, burnout, and attrition that makes it even harder to hold the line on crime while meeting community expectations.
The numbers confirm what police leaders have been warning for years. In the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s (IACP) 2024 workforce survey, more than 70 percent of agencies said recruiting is harder today than it was five years ago, and departments are operating, on average, at just 91 percent of their authorized staffing. A Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) study released in April 2024 found overall sworn staffing still 4.9 percent below pre-pandemic levels, with larger agencies hit hardest. Even agencies seeing small gains in hiring are still struggling to fill vacancies fast enough to ease the pressure on patrol.
In this environment, agencies need solutions that help them operate as efficiently and effectively as possible with the resources they have—while protecting their officers from the operational burnout that drives turnover. ResourceRouter™ delivers that capability, using data and intelligence-driven patrol management to maximize officer impact, fill in gaps, and create a more sustainable workload.
Data-Driven Patrol Management
ResourceRouter ingests crime reports, ShotSpotter® gunfire alerts (where available), and risk-terrain factors, then automatically generates directed-patrol areas, noted as boxes on the map for each shift, in each patrol area. ResourceRouter’s timer tracks the patrol unit’s time within the location. It provides agency-guided activity selections, aiming for 10–15 minutes of purposeful presence in the right spot to deter crime for hours. This method maximizes officer impact, following the Koper Curve Principle.
Data-driven patrol management systems can remove guesswork and highlight an officer’s proactive impact, which can help boost job satisfaction and career longevity. When agencies can point to specific tools that provide data-driven crime deterrence, streamline communication, and enhance officer safety, they present a compelling case that the job is not only about hard work, but about working smarter.
- Increase Efficiency: By aligning proactive patrols with the highest risk locations per patrol area, agencies focus resources without over-saturation.
- Maximize Resources: Focused deterrence can reduce 911 call volume over time, freeing officers from constant reactive churn, while working to deter crime.
- Patrol Transparency: On-demand analytics and dashboards provide agencies with minutes spent in communities, answering the question of what patrol officers do when they’re not answering 9-1-1 calls. Easy to view data that’s powerful and shareable with command staff, supervisors, elected officials, and the community.
Use Case Spotlight: East Chicago, Indiana
Chief Jose Rivera of the East Chicago Police Department faced a 45 percent vacancy rate, yet homicides fell by 50 percent in the first year after deploying ResourceRouter. Another benefit of ResourceRouter was the almost 80 percent drop in calls for service in key directed patrol areas within the first month, and the agency discovered it could achieve the same level of coverage with fewer officers using ResourceRouter’s patrol management.
Patrolling the community was a top concern with the reduced staffing. After deploying ResourceRouter, the officers followed the map to the strategically directed patrol areas. Chief Rivera credits ResourceRouter for placing officers in areas with higher crime, ultimately saving officer time and reducing calls for service.
ResourceRouter has been the biggest bang for its buck. It has been probably for me a game-changer, but not just that it has saved me from the shortage that I have. Again, I’m 45% short on officers, but our crime rate is continuously dropping.
Jose Rivera
Chief of Police, East Chicago Police Department, IN
Some of ResourceRouter’s staff benefits that East Chicago and Chief Rivera highlighted include:
- Proof of impact: On-demand dashboards showed the mayor and council members exactly where officers were, how long they stayed, and how crime decreased, silencing budget skeptics and boosting community confidence.
- Retention and salary increases: Rivera noted that with the inclusion of technology like ResourceRouter, he felt he didn’t need to ask for as many additional patrol staff as originally planned. Instead, he is asking the mayor and council to use some of those funds to raise officer salaries.
- Tech-forward culture: Framing the software as an easy, interactive solution, Rivera noted that it tells the officers where to go and for how long to be there, which is reducing crime.
Technology as a Complement to Recruitment and Retention Strategies
Hiring in law enforcement will fluctuate with retirements, lateral movements, and the usual ebb and flow of staffing. Use cases like East Chicago show agencies don’t have to wait for perfect staffing to deliver safer neighborhoods and healthier workloads. By using platforms like ResourceRouter to deploy patrol officers to the right places at the right time, and for the right amount of time, agencies can cut overtime, demonstrate impact, and offer patrol officers a tech-enabled environment.
In a time when respondents to the IACP survey reported that recruitment and retention were particularly challenging within the first five years of hire, largely due to officers leaving for higher salaries at other agencies, tools like ResourceRouter are critical for keeping communities protected and retaining officers. By combining targeted patrol strategies with measurable outcomes, ResourceRouter not only addresses immediate operational needs but also strengthens the agency’s value proposition to current and prospective officers. Using data and intelligence-driven technology to the fullest allows patrol officers to see that their efforts are purposeful and helps lighten their workload by lowering crime. And, command staff gain the data they need to advocate for better pay, equipment, and training—factors that directly influence retention.
