There was a recent post about “State Police Respond To Auto Accident on Trout Lane” that got my interest. I know we are all part of this microwave society of instant gratification - push the button and the popcorn is done in three minutes - but there was some disappointment that it took the Pa State Police (PSP) over an hour to respond. We will never know why, but I figured the numbers could shed some light.
Let me qualify my post by saying that I am not an officer of any sort, but I do have friends and family that are in the profession. Between asking them questions and doing my own research courtesy of PSP information on the net, I have come up with the following:
Troop H of the PSP serves 6 counties - Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Perry, York
There are 386 Enlisted and Civillian Personnel in Troop H
They serve a population of 1,111,430 and cover 3,824 square miles
I was unable to find out the breakdown per county (Patriot Act perhaps?)
I took the liberty of assuming this was a perfect world for the sake of math.
Since I was unable to find out the number of civilians to enlisted, I assumed 100% were enlisted again for the sake of math.
If there are 386 members of Troop H in 6 counties then it means there are 64 Troop H members per county
Considering the PSP is a 24/7 operation with likely 3 shifts it means there are 21 Troop H members on duty per shift per county (I again took the liberty for math’s sake of assuming that they do not get a day off, call in sick, take a vacation or have family emergencies. They all work 7 days a week)
So here we are with 21 officers on duty each shift in York County. Per the 2000 PA State Police Census, 68% of the force are assigned to respond to calls. That means that out of the 21 officers on duty each shift, 14 actually respond to calls. Now I am not a police manager, but I would think that not all 14 are out on patrol all the time. I would hold some back at the barracks for various reasons...primarily to cover calls where an officer is already responding or for emergencies. (Thats just me, I could be wrong and all 14 are pounding the pavement so to speak)
Consider York Co has 416k people and and 904 square miles per the 2006 US Census and assume that all 14 officers are on patrol - thats one officer per 29,700 people and has a beat of 65 square miles.
To put a square mile in perspective, its 640 Acres. If your yard is .25 acres, then the area that the officer covers is 166,400 times the size of your yard! Imagine how long that would take to mow 
Back to the topic. Now I have no idea how long it takes to make a traffic stop of respond to an accident, but I am sure these things take time. Also assume that the PSP has a way to prioritize calls, the most serious getting first response. Is it possible that the officer assigned to 83 south of York was on a call, so the next responder had to come from the barracks (assuming they hold a reserve of responders) The York Co Barracks is in York. If the officer was sitting in his car at York and hit the gas the second the call came in about a traffic accident in Stewartstown, how long would it take to get there? Assume there is no traffic and the weather is perfect. 30 Minutes perhaps?
Assuming that responding to a call takes time, not just to get there, but to see the response through, return to the barracks and complete the followup, or take someone into custody and transfer them to the appropriate authority - how many officers are busy at any one time? Per the PSP, Troop H responded to at least 73575 calls in 2004. Assuming again the numbers are similar to 2006/7 that means that at the least that York Co PSP are responding to 11 calls per shift. (Who knows what type of calls require more than 1 responder or how long they take) I am not sure of the requirements for road knowledge for the officers, but I am sure that not every officer knows the quickest / best way to get everywhere at anytime.
I took a lot of liberties and made a lot of assumptions with this ‘fuzzy analysis’ - figuring this was a perfect world and everything was equal, but we all know its not. I don’t think that my decuctions are too far from the actual numbers - but I just cant prove it. Its easy to shoot holes in any assumption for the positive or negative depending on the point you want to make, but when its all said and done, the bottom line is there are not that many PSP around to respond in the manner we all would like to see. The perfect scenario is that the officer is running a speed trap at the rest/truck stop on 83N and would get to Stewartstown in 10-15 minutes. The less than perfect is that the next available officer is on the other side of the county.
Thoughts?
Referenced websites:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/lemas00.pdf
http://www.psp.state.pa.us/trooph/site/default.asp
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/42/42133.html
http://www.psp.state.pa.us/psp/lib/psp/PSP_Annual_Report_2004.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_State_Police
Private references will remain private
