The Cape Coral Police Department is understaffed. Here’s a plan to fix it.

The Cape Coral police chief says his department is understaffed and needs to hire more people for its police force and communications center.

Cape Coral police have 289 authorized positions, nine short of what old staffing metrics called for. But the city’s population is growing by leaps and bounds, and Chief Anthony Sizemore believes that nine more officers won’t cut it going forward.

With Cape Coral being Southwest Florida’s largest city and growing, this is hardly a surprise, but the police department is struggling to keep up.

“When you call the police for need, and it should take 30 minutes from start to finish, it ends up taking two hours. You don’t want to get into that position where people start to throw up their hands and lose faith,” Sizemore said.

To make sure his department is adequately staffed to handle more calls for help, Sizemore wants to hire more officers. If you’re wondering how many, early estimates say 60 officers.

CCPD staffing issues actually began in the city’s dispatch center, affecting the response time from when they receive a call to when the police arrive at your door. What makes matters worse is when Lee County 911 gets inundated with calls and some of those bounce over to Cape Coral.

“When you add staffing shortages and mandates, overtime and holdovers when you should be going home, it creates a compounding effect of stress. And some people leave the workforce because of that,” Sizemore said.

CCPD is actively recruiting dispatchers and officers to alleviate some of the stress.

“If we can get more people in that unit and get them trained, it would definitely be a pressure release to where people will have that work-life balance and be better performers when they’re here,” said Sizemore.

Sizemore tells WINK News he came up with the figure of 60 more officers based on response time. He worries that it will become more difficult to handle every emergency quickly without more officers and dispatchers.