SLPD addresses officer to resident ratio

In a town of about 38,000 people, there are just 41 police officers responsible for protecting the City of San Luis.

“The ratio is one officer for every 964 people,” said Chief Richard Jessup . “The optimal would be about 1.7 officers per thousand all the way up to 2.2 officers per thousand.”

Chief of Police Richard Jessup said on average in the State of Arizona, cities have one officer per every four hundred to seven hundred people.

However, he said in his department the ratio is nearly doubled for his officers with nearly 1,000 residents per cop.

Chief Jessup explained it would be ideal to have 20 more officers in the field, but that the funding for that isn’t there. He added funding for this would come from taxes.
The Chief also said their current officer deficit comes with challenges that the department tackles creatively.

He offered the example of the traffic from school being back in session, and when migrant workers return to Yuma County.

” Well on any given shift you’ve got a sergeant with maybe four guys that’s assigned to that squad and five, if we’re doing really good take two of those guys out of the mix and traffic control leaves three guys to cover the rest of the city for any other calls for service that may come up. So now it becomes a major problem all those guys are going or a majority of those guys are going. Now you’ve got one or two guys that doing traffic control and go from there, ” said Chief Jessup .

But he says it doesn’t pose a challenge when keeping the city safe overall. In fact, San Luis has been named one of the safest cities in Arizona.