Ideas on the number of police officers needed to perform traffic patrol functions vary. An exhaustive literature search was carried out, and it was found that there are no nationally accepted models. Work started on development of a model to determine staffing and deployment levels. It was decided that this should be based on officer time expenditure; an officer's time is divided between patrol and non-patrol time. The procedures developed represent a model of police staffing. The steps in the worksheets are based on mathematical and logical relationships between workload, patrol performance, characteristics of patrol area and total number of officers required. The model is prescriptive and can also give answers regarding future increases in workload. Model failures can occur due to inherent limitations and unrealistic expectations.
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