Police Staff Levels Sometimes Below Minimum at Night

Source Says Southlake Police Staff is Not Consistent

By Charles D. Young and Jean Weaver

The Southlake Journal

Southlake DPS police staffing has fallen below minimum departmental standards to as low as three police officers on duty some nights, sources say.

“There’s one sergeant, one corporal and one [patrol] officer on duty for the entire city,” said one source within the Police Department who remains unnamed because of fear of retaliation.

Capt. Russell Daniels, who is second in command after Police Chief Wade Goolsby and in charge of the pertinent paperwork, did not deny allegations that the department has recently operated below minimum staffing levels.

“Can we? Yeah. Have we? Yeah,” Daniels said in a phone interview last week. “But we haven’t operated at a level below what we need to provide the service. I don’t want to discuss how many per shift [per week]. I don’t want people to know the exact numbers. Normally, we don’t operate at that level [below minimum staffing]. I’m not going to say we haven’t.”

“In the past three months, once or twice a week we’ve had to call people in to cover for minimum staffing,” one police source told the Journal.

“We bring in overtime,” Daniel said. “At times things happen. You adapt, and 99.9 percent of the time when we call in for overtime, we get it.”

“At no time that I know of have we operated at a level that is unsafe,” Daniels stated. “I assume that every night the level of personnel is adequate to cover the needs of the city. But the sergeant makes the call: The first-line supervisor determines the need.”

Officer Roderick Page said that minimum staffing is being met with the on-call list.

“We’re working right now with a pool that’s almost dry,” Page said.

When asked how many people work the night shift, city spokeswoman Pilar Schank described the schedules: “The city of Southlake runs two night shift schedules: nights one and nights two. Currently, nights one has seven officers assigned, and nights two, six officers are assigned.”

Each U.S. city with a police department sets their own minimal staffing levels, determined by criteria that include population, call load, crime rate and other factors.

Sources within the Department of Public Safety tell the Journal that in part, the reason the department’s ranks are thin now is directly related to the work environment at the department.

“People don’t want to come to work. Morale is very low and most are afraid for their jobs,” the source said.

Last week, as reported in this paper in the Jan. 18 edition, Lt. Mike Kenny was dismissed by the city. Kenny had reported an action by the chief for which the chief later received a verbal reprimand from the city. Sources in area law enforcement told the Journal that Kenny passed four rigorous polygraph tests that indicated he was telling the truth. The city, the source said, “fired him anyway.”

The turmoil in the work environment, sources said, is the result of “some pretty poor decision making” within the department and city administration.

Mayor Andy Wambsganss said he hasn’t received any indication from the administration that there are low staffing levels during the night or a shortage of officers. It’s an issue the council could consider during next year’s budget.

“Those are recommendations that would have to come from the professionals. We rely on them,” Wambsganss said, referring to Goolsby and Assistant City Manager/DPS Director Jim Blagg.