Workload-Based Staffing Allocation and Resource Optimization: Emerging Practices and Research that can Help Address Your Staffing Needs

Chief of Police Ronal Serpas, Ph.D. (Ret.) is a Professor of Practice in the Loyola University New Orleans Criminology and Justice Department. He joined the Loyola faculty in 2014 following a 34-year career in policing.

Chief Serpas served as the Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department (2010-2014), Chief of the Nashville Metro Police Department (2004-2010), and Chief of the Washington State Patrol (2001-2004).

In October 2017, he was designated the fifth Honorary President of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). His service to the IACP also includes roles as an elected Vice President, founding Co-Chair of the Research Advisory Committee, and Chair of the Community-Oriented Policing Committee.

Chief Serpas is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Policing Institute (formerly the National Police Foundation), a nonpartisan and independent nonprofit organization pursuing excellence in policing through science and innovation.

Chief Serpas implemented the Community-Oriented Policing philosophy, Justice, and Legitimacy principles and introduced innovative and successful crime-fighting strategies.

Seth Williams is the Director of PFM Group Consulting's Law Enforcement and Public Safety practice and the Deputy Director of the firm's Center for Justice & Safety Finance.

Seth leads law enforcement-specific workload-based staffing, organizational and operational, and financial analyses engagements, bringing over 20 years of experience in the field. His work has helped law enforcement agencies identify targeted staffing levels, increase efficiency and outcomes, align expenditures, and redesign organizational structures.

Recently, Seth led staffing studies of the University of Los Angeles California (UCLA) Police Department, the Montgomery County (MD) Police Department, the Phoenix Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C., the Oakland Police Department, the City of Fairfax Police Department, and a staffing, organizational, operational, equity, and fiscal review of the Alexandria Police Department. He also led similar engagements in Providence and Harris County.

Mr. Williams earned a B.A. in Political Science from Muhlenberg College and an M.P.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeremy M. Wilson, Ph.D., is a Professor of the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. He has founded and led five law enforcement centers and programs, including, most recently, the Police Staffing Observatory, which is an international consortium of over three-dozen police staffing experts that seek to support the community of practice. With nearly three decades of experience as a scholar, educator, advisor, and consultant, Dr. Wilson has led over $14M of research and has written over 175 publications, including A Performance-Based Approach to Police Staffing and Allocation as well as Police Recruitment and Retention for the New Millenium: The State of Knowledge, both of which serve as field standards. With support from the US Department of Justice, he is currently leading multiple national platforms of research and outreach on police staffing and evidence-based workforce planning. For his contributions to police research and practice, he was named a Distinguished Scholar by the American Society of Criminology Division on Policing, and the Police Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences honored him with the O.W. Wilson Award.

Assistant Chief Francke is a 29-year veteran of the Montgomery County Department of Police. He currently serves as Chief of Patrol for the department that serves a community of nearly 1.1 million residents. During the course of his career, related to the presentation, he has served as a District Detective, a Robbery Detective, and a Homicide and Sex Detective. After promotion he has served as Executive Officer to the Patrol Chief and Director of Major Crimes. 

As a Robbery Detective, AC Francke was exposed to workload analysis when asked to complete logs for an internal study. That effort by the department was not successful. As the Executive Officer to the Patrol Chief, he learned about data driven workload analysis and its value. He has worked to understand the study and its implications. He has implemented data driven analysis of patrol for the department. As Assistant Chief of Management Services Bureau, he brought in PFM to conduct a workload analysis of the Investigative Services Bureau. That project is near completion, along with a Patrol Staffing Analysis that he is conducting. The combined efforts will help the department rebuild after a profound staffing crisis.