36 new officers, including five detectives, plus seven police support staff would protect West Hill

In this entry on Tuesday, I wrote about the debate regarding whether council should go to ballot with annexing West Hill.

Many people have been wondering how the policing would change on West Hill if it were annexed to Renton.

Today, I spoke with Renton Police Chief Kevin Milosevich to get the numbers directly from the source.

And the law enforcement proposal is impressive. Renton would dedicate 36 police officers, including 5 detectives, to patrol and investigate crimes on West Hill. West Hill would be covered by an all-new police “West Sector”; Renton police currently divide the city into a North Sector and a South Sector.

The new West Sector would have one new Patrol Commander, four new patrol sergeants, 24 new patrol officers, and two motorcycle officers– all dedicated to patrolling the West Hill. In addition, there would be a new detective supervisor and four new detectives dedicated to crime resolution on West Hill. When scheduled around the clock, this works out to a typical presence of seven officers. This will surge up to nine officers during the hours the motorcycle officers are patrolling. The numbers on patrol will occasionally dip below seven during times of significant illness or vacation, but would never drop below a minumum of five commisioned armed officers at any hour of the day or night.

This compares to our understanding that King County typically staffs West Hill with two deputies, which drops to one if one is needed for transport or back-up elsewhere.

In summary, it appears Renton would provide approximately three or four times as much police presence on West Hill as King County currently provides, with greater dedication of detective support.

In addition, Chief Milosevich tells me that the Renton plan would also provide seven non-commissioned police personnel dedicated to West Hill crime resolution, prosecution, and prevention, and animal control. New evidence technicians, records specialists, a training export, a community crime prevention/block watch coordinator, and a new animal control officer would fill these needs.

Finally, Developmental Services would be providing a new code enforcement officer for West Hill, specifically to enforce clean-up of derelict buildings and other code-violation nuisances. King County just has a few of these inspectors covering the whole county, so this would be a major increase in attention to code enforcement. And for those owners who need permits to repair their derelict buildings, Renton has the staffing and procedures to process these much quicker than King County.