The Lynn Police: Are they "short-staffed"?

Upon reading about the woman being harassed by gang members near the Ingalls school and the recent bust of MS-13 gang members in Lynn by Immigration officials and the police, I pondered a question that has been on my mind since moving to this fair city. Are the police sufficiently staffed to maintain law and order in a city of about 88,000 residents in 2006? (81,000, according to State Department of Housing and Community Development, but no year is attached to that number)

A quick visit to the Lynn police website provides one answer. There are 189 sworn officers of which 112 are assigned to patrol. Let's assume that the website is kept up to date and the numbers are correct. That's 2.14 police per 1,000 residents or 2.3 if you believe the State DHCD.

For comparison, Massachusetts police employment data for Lynn between 1988-2000 indicates that the ratio per 1,000 hovered between 1.7 in 1993 and 2.4 in 1998. In contrast, Boston averaged about 3.6 police per thousand residents in these years. (These stats can be found at http://db.state.ma.us/msp/select.asp. In 2005 the ratio for Boston was 3.69, according to the BPD's Annual Report.

We might also ask whether or not the 112 officers assigned to patrol are depolyed properly. Are there enough cops on the beat to respond to more serious situations in a timely manner? I don't know the answer to that question. (Although I do expect that it's not a sufficient number, especially when July 4 rolls around and we all get a small taste of what it might be like in Baghdad on a good day.) One of the reasons I pay taxes is for police protection, and I expect that the people in charge know what they're doing and have good reasons for doing it.

Unofficially, I've heard that at any one time there is at least 1 patrol car with 1 or 2 officers on duty per ward. (I've also heard that due to budget cuts, 2 patrol cars have been taken off the streets.) This doesn't seem like enough for an urban are that harbors MS-13 gang members and has the level of criminal activity that Lynn seems to have.

Boston pop. 2005: 559,000
Sworn police officers: 2067
ratio 3.69/1000