Police Department
The Roswell Police Department vows to protect life and property, preserve the peace, and strives to prevent crime, fear, and disorder in the City of Roswell in partnership with all of those who live, work, and travel through our city.
Who we are
The Police Department provides a range of quality police services to the community 24 hours a day. This includes answering citizens’ calls for service; providing preventative patrol and other crime prevention programs; the enforcement of Federal, State, and local laws; and conducting investigations into known criminal activity and arresting violators of the law. The Police Department is also responsible for the operation of an emergency dispatch center.
The Roswell Police Department is a progressive organization and continues to explore new methods to meet the needs of the community.
Opportunities
The Police Department’s greatest asset is our human capital. Recruiting, developing and maintaining employees in the Uniform Patrol Division has been identified as a key opportunity. To that end we will continue to plan to provide quality recruiting, job training, and career development opportunities. Our Fiscal Year 2022 goal is to continue to maintain a consistent low crime and victimization rate while providing the highest level of service to our citizens, to provide the highest overall workforce satisfaction, and continue to build and maintain community trust and collaboration
Challenges
Our challenges are similar to other departments across the country. Recruiting and retention continue to be difficult, though we have made significant progress in this area. As the criminal element advances in technological tools so must we. Older technology must be replaced with newer and more relevant assets. We must also keep up with increased demands for community engagement and transparency.
What we have Accomplished
- Completed monthly open range training, patrol rifle qualifications, shotgun qualifications, and basic patrol rifle school in addition to the State required qualifications for all sworn employees. Department wide completed 22,061 hours of training.
- Responded to 50,617 calls for service, wrote 11,566 incident reports, 2,948 accident reports, 6,132 traffic citations, and 4,312 traffic warnings.
- We adapted our emergency response to protect the public and our officers as much as possible and added additional PPE to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
- Opened a functional fitness facility and successfully on boarded over 1/3 of the department to further increase physical fitness, confidence, and teamwork department wide.
- Implemented a new city ordinance to help address the nationwide street racing issue occurring throughout the metro Atlanta area.
- Successfully purchased and trained a new K9 which has been placed into active service to support key policing efforts.
- Added a dedicated K9 Supervisor position to the highly specialized unit.
- Increased the number of police applicants by approximately 50% due to the successful implementation of PoliceApp.
- Hired 33 new employees calendar year 2020 (16 of those through the first half of Fiscal year 2021).
- Added a dedicated Internal Affairs Investigator position.
- Received funding for Pistol Mounted Optics.
- Replaced expiring Narcan, in order to ensure that officers have this life-saving medication at their disposal in overdose situations.
- Replaced tourniquets, in order to ensure that Officers have this life-saving equipment at their disposal.
- Replaced current Tasers with new Taser 7’s.
- Ranked second in the State for the number of forensic files examined and proactive sexual predator investigations handled by detectives working Internet Crimes Against Children.
- Dismantled a nationwide mail theft ring that led to the discovery of hundreds of victims and nearly 400 felony charges filed.
- Replacement of current Axon Body Camera 2 with Axon Body Camera 3.
- Added a Live Scan machine providing digital fingerprinting for permits.
- Re-aligned vehicle key control.
- Raised over $24K in Property Room weapon court orders.
- Processed over 1600 Open Records Requests.
- Transitioned Records to digital files.
- Implemented online appointments for citizen needs.
- Implementation of Drone Forensic mapping technology for both criminal and traffic investigations to provide greater investigative analysis and more detailed data.
What we expect to Accomplish
- Continue to grow the CSI unit and capabilities through the use of a forensic 3D imaging scanner, allowing our CSI personnel to become more self-sufficient on homicide scenes and other high profile cases.
- Continue to grow our Investigative Analysis Unit through the use of cutting edge public records technology.
- Fill vacant positions in specialized investigative units in CID, to allow for more proactive Internet Crimes Against Children investigations.
- Continue to grow our information gathering/sharing initiatives to enhance the safety of our citizens.
- Continue recruiting efforts to hire the most qualified candidates who want to become a Roswell Police Officer.
- Increase the number of electric bikes to enhance the response capabilities of the Bicycle unit and continue to keep the unit operational.
- Grow the automated school speed enforcement program in order to improve school safety.
- Replacement of aging ALPR technologies to maintain the investigative resource and improve the capabilities of old technology.
- Purchase appropriate Crowd Control equipment and implement training to enhance the department’s ability to address issues of civil unrest.
- Increase the number of ballistic shields on each shift to allow for mobile ballistic protection to enhance the abilities of patrol to address rapidly evolving situations.
- Replacement of the SWAT team’s long distance weapons platforms.
- Fill all existing Police vacancies (12) and then request that the 9 defunded positions be re-funded so that they can also be filled. This will require the use of PoliceApp.com and will increase the number of Polygraph examiners required to screen applicants.
- Increase staffing from one PIO to a Media Team.
- Continue evaluating and updating the fleet for safer, newer, better, and cost effective equipment.
- Fill existing Administrative Specialist vacancies.
- Continue active, safe, and robust Community Outreach.
- Continue partnership with the Special Olympics.
- Increase Citizens Police Academy (CPA) to twice per year.
Police Department Expenditures by Type
Police Expenditures by Fund
Here is a summary of the Police Department in table form, illustrating direct costs and indirect costs. Click on the graph to explore greater detail.
Police Personnel History
Personnel Changes
FY 2018: Reduced staff by (18) positions with the decommissioning of the Detention Center
FY 2019: Add (2) Support Services Sergeant positions; add (1) Traffic Enforcement Lieutenant; add (1) OPS Lieutenant; add (1) Deputy Director for the E911 Center. During FY
2019, (9) Police Officer I were unfunded.
FY 2020: Add (2) Communications Supervisor Positions for E-911
FY 2021: Add (1) K9 Sergeant and add (1) Internal Affairs Investigator
Services Provided by Police Department
For a full list of services click here.
Performance Measure Information
For a full list of Performance Measures as they relate to the City Goals by Department click here.