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Police Operations and Data Analysis Report, Morgan Hill, California
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Section 3. Field Operations Division
Patrol
The Morgan Hill Police Department provides the community with a full range of police services,
including responding to emergencies and calls for service (CFS), performing directed activities, and
solving problems. The department is service-oriented, and thus provides a high level of service to
the community. Essentially, every call for service from the public gets a police response and every
criminal case gets investigated. The department embraces this approach and considers every
request for service from the public important and deserving of a police response.
Demand
It was reported to the CPSM team that no call is considered too minor to warrant a response and no
case is too small to warrant an investigation. The result of this policing philosophy is the delivery of
comprehensive policing services to the Morgan Hill community. The department has the hallmark
of a small-town approach to policing, in which people are not just citizens but members of a
community. Service is personalized, the police are part of the fabric of the community, and
expectations for police service are high. This approach is not without costs, however. Considerable
resources are needed to maintain the small-town approach. The patrol division must be staffed
with enough officers to respond to these calls.
When examining options for the department’s direction, the city and the department face the
choices of a) continue to provide police patrols as they do now, or b) take steps to restructure how
to respond to demand, still promote order and safety, but free up additional time for officers to
engage in proactive patrol. That is, the department must decide whether to sustain its
comprehensive level of police service or take the steps necessary to manage public demand.
Essentially, this is a political decision regarding the quantity of police services offered to the
Morgan Hill community. But quality doesn’t need to suffer. The recommendations offered regarding
operations, if implemented, will enable the Morgan Hill Police Department to continue its full-
service model of policing yet run the agency more efficiently.
Table 3-1 presents information on the main categories of calls for service the department handled
during the period January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2015. In total, department officers were
dispatched to or self-initiated 20,659 calls during that twelve-month period, or approximately 57
calls per day.