Since 2017, the Tulsa Police Department has hired 70 officers with public safety tax funding, while the Tulsa Fire Department has hired 65 firefighters.
Overall, TPD’s number of sworn officers has increased from 741 to 795 during that period. Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish said that will help the department get away from running officers from call to call with little time to visibly patrol in the community.
"This upcoming shift change, they’ve added some officers that will be in a directed patrol–type capacity at each of the uniformed divisions to give those division commanders a little more flexibility on how to deal with problem areas and problem houses," Dalgleish said.
Vision Tulsa's public safety tax is meant to fund 160 additional cops. While 70 have been hired, six of those have dropped out of academies or left for other reasons.
Another 21 are set to begin the academy next month. Officer Ryan Perkins said TPD policies are generating interest in working there, whether it’s requiring a bachelor’s degree or something as simple as allowing visible arm tattoos so cops aren’t wearing long sleeves in the summer.
"Anything that modernizes us is something we should be looking at … to better appeal to a Millennial and now this Gen Z/iGen/Pluralist … generation that’s coming up right behind them that is really the heart of who we’re looking at in our younger group," Perkins said.
Tulsa Fire Department has 65 additional positions funded through the public safety tax, so the department is done hiring with that funding. Chief Ray Driskell said 30 of those firefighters are currently in the academy.
"When this class comes out Nov. 1, we’ll see a lot more influx of people of four to a truck and even five to a truck in some cases so that we can try to man up those stations that are on the outlying parts of the city or single-company stations," Driskell said.
Four firefighters per truck is the national standard, and the fire department told city councilors in 2015 it had only three per truck, which slows down response times and has them short-handed once on scene.
