Digging into the cost and look of a ‘fully staffed’ Columbia Police Department

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

While Columbia’s police chief believes she needs 51 new sworn officers to become “fully staffed,” she knows it will be a multi-year process to get there. 

Chief Jill Schlude has asked for 51 new sworn positions in the city’s fiscal year 2026 budget. In an interview with ABC 17 News, the chief said she and her command staff came up with the number as an ideal for a police force serving a city growing in both population and physical size.

Fifty-one new positions would bring the Columbia Police Department to an authorized force of 245. That would bring CPD closer to the average force in similar-sized cities, according to the nationwide Benchmark Cities survey put together by the Overland Park Police Department in Kansas. 

“We looked at in each area, what we need in each area to get the job done that we’re being asked to do,” Schlude said. “And what are capacities that we either had in the past or feel like we need to grow or expand.”

CPD has 88.7% (172-of-194) of its current sworn positions filled. Current openings exist in:

• Patrol - 7 (of 91 jobs)
• Traffic Unit - 4 (of 7)
• Street Crimes Unit - 3 (of 7)
• Park Rangers - 3 (of 4)
• Criminal Investigations Division - 2 (of 19)
• Airport Public Safety Officers - 2 (of 13)
• Professional Standards - 1 (of 7)

Schlude said all new hires first work on Patrol, which responds to 911 calls. Patrol consists of a “Red” team and “Blue” team, which work alternating days from each other. Each team shift is 12 hours long, beginning at 6 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. CPD’s current patrol roster shows about 16 officers on each 12-hour shift, but police leaders say that requires no one to be off work. 

Fourteen officers will soon complete their field training with CPD and join the patrol ranks. Schlude said she thinks CPD has the capacity to train 17 new officers every year to get up to the 51 officers she says the department needs.

Schlude said the needs of the patrol unit have kept her and command staff from making promotions and assignments to specialty units, like CID or Traffic. 

“Really, a big part of this internally when we talk about retention, is giving people a path where they want to go in this career,” Schlude said. “So when we don’t have enough people, and you want to become a detective, you want to become a sergeant, we don’t have those opportunities to move up into those spots, because we have to do patrol first, we have to answer 911 calls first.”

But once patrol is staffed, Schlude said one of the next staffing priorities would be a dedicated detective unit for vehicle crimes. She said thefts from cars and thefts of cars are growing in Columbia, and some are not being handed off from patrol officers taking the report to detectives for follow-ups.

Schlude and Sgt. Matt Nichols, president of the Columbia Police Officers Association, both said more detectives in the Special Victims Unit would be useful. The unit handles sex crimes and crimes involving children, but will also help refresh cold cases through DNA testing. 

“So that we can take a look at cold case homicides, and sometimes active homicides that we need more manpower so that we can thoroughly investigate,” Nichols said.

Schlude said the staffing uptick could also give them enough people to finally reestablish the Downtown Unit, a patrol division to focus squarely on the Central Columbia neighborhood. The unit fell apart in 2018 due to staffing shortages, and CPD leaders have offered overtime assignments to cover the area on busy weekends.

The cost

CPD’s budget request estimates the 51 new hires would cost $6.1 million in salary and benefits. Schlude said her command team’s analysis of the cost of things such as equipment and vehicles pushes that closer to $8 million. 

The city is already warning about slowing sales tax receipts this year, a major source of funding for public safety. Columbia’s two quarter-cent sales taxes -- one for the Parks department, the other for its Capital Improvement Projects -- are expected to bring in $8 million in fiscal year 2025, according to numbers from the city. Finance director Matthew Lue said that -- with the help of state legislators -- the city could approve a 1% sales tax specific to public safety, which would bring in $31 million.

Nichols said regardless of how the city pays for it, council members should develop a plan to keep the department’s growth up with that of the city.

“Just because we add 51 (officers), that’s not the end of time,” Nichols said. “We need to have a mechanism to continue to add because we’ll continue to grow.”

And the department is grappling with where to put new officers if it does grow. Schlude said the current Downtown headquarters -- a 92-year-old building once used as Water and Light’s base of operations converted into a police station -- is not suitable for use.

The city has spent millions, she said, on various repairs and capital projects on the building in the past several years. The north side Molly Thomas Bowden Policing Center, which opened in 2021, remains unfinished due to rising costs. Schlude said a vehicle bay for SWAT cars, a K-9 kennel and most of the second floor of the building have been left unfinished. 

Schlude said she has considered moving CPD’s headquarters to the old IBM building on Lemone Industrial Boulevard in south Columbia. The city’s real estate deal with Veterans United fell through in late 2024, leaving the city-owned building vacant. Architectural designs and construction estimates obtained by ABC 17 News show it may cost $24.9 million to construct and outfit the building as a police station, with another $11 million for alternate projects on the site like an auxiliary building.

“There really are a lot of compelling things about moving into that building,” Schlude said. “I think we can get what we need as a department and we could save the city a lot of money. So I think those are two great, compelling reasons to look really hard at it.”