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DPS eyes 13 more officers
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Posted on Nov 12 2006
The Department of Public Safety needs at least 13 more police officers to address the manpower shortage problem, according to DPS commissioner Rebecca Warfield.
Warfield said the department has 127 police officers, which are not enough to create a whole shift.
“Right now we have three shifts. Shifts should be eight hours [but are being stretched to] 12 hours. To be able to fix that problem. we would need at least another 13 police officers,” she disclosed.
To address the manpower shortage, the commissioner said they are planning a police academy to start on Jan. 15, 2007.
The 127 officers are a “pitiful amount of people” to be serving an island as large as Saipan, Warfield pointed out.
“That’s why we need the cooperation of people in the community to help us identify hotspots in places that we need to be so that we can maximize what resources we do have,” she said.
Warfield said what they are doing right now is complete the reports before the end of the shifts.
“We can contact victims who have felony complaints within 36 hours. What we are trying to do is cut down our response time to everything,” she said.
“We are saying we need things, we need resources, we have to show you, we have to show the administration, that we are doing the best we can with what we have,” she added.
