Guest Commentary | Planning today to protect Cape Coral tomorrow
Last week, I had the privilege of speaking at the City of Cape Coral’s first budget workshop for the development of the Fiscal Year 2027 budget. My role was to present the long-term needs of the Cape Coral Police Department and explain how we plan responsibly for a city that continues to grow at a remarkable pace.
I want to clarify an important point that may have been misunderstood by some who attended or later followed the discussion. During my presentation, I referenced the need for additional patrol staffing. Some took that to mean our department is currently understaffed or below authorized strength. That is not the case.
The Cape Coral Police Department is currently staffed to its authorized level of sworn officers. Recruitment is robust, retention is strong, and our culture continues to attract high-quality candidates locally, statewide, and nationally.
In short: we are not short-staffed. We are essentially fully staffed for today’s city, but we must grow responsibly to meet current demands and prepare for the future.
What I described at the workshop was a specific, data-driven reality within our Patrol Bureau, the most visible and publicly recognizable bureau of the department.
Patrol officers respond to 911 calls, handle emergencies in real time, and provide immediate service to our residents. Even when fully staffed and properly deployed, current patrol levels are not sufficient to consistently meet community expectations for emergency response times.
That need is quantified as the equivalent of 57 additional patrol officers. This figure comes from an independent workload analysis using the ICMA Center for Public Safety Management staffing model, which evaluates population, calls for service, and desired response times. It is important to note that this is not a count of 57 vacancies; it is a professional estimate of how many additional officers would be required to meet modeled demand and performance targets.
This is not a hypothetical concern, it is a current operational need, driven by population growth and increasing calls for service. My goal is simple: to ensure that response times remain strong and do not increase as our city continues to grow.
Some may ask why officers from other assignments cannot simply be reassigned to patrol. The answer is that those bureaus are already operating at capacity. Crimes must be investigated, traffic safety must be enforced, and specialized units provide essential services citywide. Pulling officers from these areas would create deficiencies elsewhere and weaken the system.
The solution is growth, not reshuffling. In public safety, the popular idea of “doing more with less” does not work-you inevitably do less with less. Adequate staffing is essential to maintaining service levels, officer safety, and timely responses.
The Cape Coral Police Department uses a scientific, data-driven approach to strategic planning, formalized in our published Project 35. Project 35 models population trends, call-volume growth, response-time expectations, and community needs to define what the department must look like in the future. From that goal, we reverse-engineer year by year to ensure staffing, technology, facilities, and equipment remain aligned with both current and long-term expectations.
This work is conducted by a full-time Planning, Research, and Analytics team whose mission is to analyze data, forecast trends, and ensure decisions are accurate and defensible. These methods are nationally recognized and aligned with best practices from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).
Cape Coral’s growth is not slowing. Calls for service continue to rise, and professional growth models indicate this trend will persist. Failing to address staffing needs proactively can create a cascading effect, making future corrections more difficult and more costly.
Cape Coral is one of the safest cities in Florida, and that is not by accident. It is the result of intentional planning, adequate staffing, industry-leading training, professional leadership, deliberate succession planning for tomorrow’s leaders, and strong partnerships with our community. Successful organizations do not wait for conditions to deteriorate; they plan ahead to preserve what is working.
My professional duty as your Chief of Police is to ensure we are best positioned to deliver first-class public safety — today, in the short and medium term, and well into the future. Through thoughtful planning, responsible growth, and continued partnership with our community, we can ensure that safety remains a way of life in Cape Coral for generations to come.
— Anthony Sizemore, chief of police, Cape Coral Police Department