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Saint Paul police chief tells council staffing gap drives overtime spike; hiring and retention seen as primary fixes
Summary
Chief Henry said the Saint Paul Police Department is operating below its authorized sworn strength (619) and is roughly 75 officers short; he told the Budget Committee that the shortage — not special events or grants — is the main driver of overtime overages and explained how overtime becomes more costly than hiring once vacancies cross a threshold.
Chief Henry told the Budget Committee the Saint Paul Police Department is "a very lean police department" with an authorized sworn strength of 619 and that about half of the department's deployable workforce works in patrol. He explained the department divides the city into three districts with overlapping 10‑hour shifts to match call patterns and maintain a minimum staffing floor on each shift.
"The national average for cities our size is 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents," Henry said while setting context for Saint Paul's staffing level; he said the department's ratio is much lower and that the city is currently roughly 13% below authorized strength. He told council that the department has hired and run multiple academies but recent classes have been small (commonly 12–17 trainees) and that recruiting pipelines nationally have weakened.
On overtime, Henry was specific: scheduled 10‑hour shifts are paid at straight time and officers are paid overtime only for hours beyond their scheduled assignment. He said the single largest driver of this year's overtime overages is vacancy-related labor shortfalls — "we are short about 75 employees" — rather than grant-funded or contractual overtime, which he said are typically offset by revenue or billed to third parties. "We have more overtime opportunities than we have takers," he said, describing mandatory overtime executed several times this year when volunteer overtime did not cover critical minimums.
Henry and councilmembers discussed mitigation strategies: recruiting (including state-supported scholarships and lateral hires), retention measures (exploring health-insurance continuity after retirement), expanding training capacity (additional academies), and redistributing non‑patrol staff back to patrol to reduce overtime demand. He also asked the council to consider longer-term retention incentives rather than one-time bonuses.
Next steps: Chief Henry and staff agreed to provide detailed overtime allocation records, academy cost and class-size projections, and a vacancy breakdown between patrol and non‑patrol roles for council review; council members requested the OFS payroll/overtime breakdown before the Dec. 4 final budget vote.
