Response time improves with city beat system

A minute can mean a lifetime to someone being held at gunpoint, suffering a heart attack or missing a child, he said. And the average response time of four minutes and 40 seconds the department has sustained over six months marks a 38 percent decrease in response time.

Gaithersburg Police Chief John King called the improvements ‘‘an indication that we’re moving in the right direction” in how the department deploys its officers.

Implementing a police beat plan was King’s primary mandate upon being hired, he said. And in September he instituted the two-beat plan, which divides the city along Interstate 270.

Familiarity with beat officers can help increase reporting in an area and improve relationships between residents and police, King said.

But, manning the new beat plan has cut into a volunteer program for the short-staffed police department, which aims to increase officers – and beats over time, said Sgt. Randy Rude, who oversees Police Reaching Out to Students, or PROS.

The volunteer program, which has police officers spend five lessons with fifth-grade students each spring, replaced the county’s discontinued DARE program, which taught Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Gaithersburg, Brown Station, Rachel Carson, Rosemont, Diamond and Summit Hall Elementary Schools, as well as St. Martin’s Elementary School, for now are without either program.

Beat coverage and other police duties without authorized strength makes staffing the after-school volunteer program difficult, Rude said, and the program has been halted for two years. The Gaithersburg Police Department is down six officers, with 46 working officers out of an authorized strength of 52. Staffing the beat plan uses most of the department’s officers, Bonvillain said.

The department must fill its six empty slots before resuming the PROS program and adding a desired third beat, which will not happen until fiscal 2010, King said. Another consideration in the decisions is avoiding overtime.