SPD chief shares measures to evaluate progress toward council priorities

Springfield Police Chief Paul Williams outlined how his department is working to meet City Council’s public safety priority at a council workshop Monday, from efforts to reduce quality of life violations to work aimed at building community listening and trust.

Council’s public safety transformation priority – the second of the five priorities the body set for the year – seeks to “reimagine public safety to improve community trust, reduce offenses impacting quality of life and enhance operational efficiency through enforcement, resource optimization and strategic partnerships.”

The remaining council priorities center on operational excellence, economic vitality, housing strategy and developmental processes.

Williams broke the priority down into its component parts to set up metrics that can be used to gauge the department’s progress moving forward.

He identified four municipal citations under the quality of life umbrella: trespassing, motorcycles, pedestrian safety and noise disturbance. Trespassing, with 1,193 citations in 2025, outpaces all others combined, with motorcycles the next highest at 277.

Calls for service that Williams classified as quality of life issues were general disturbances, with 8,989 calls in 2025; trespassing, 1,739; noise disturbance, 1,195; loud party, 181; and nuisance, 5.

For trust-building, Williams said officers attended 255 neighborhood association meetings in 2025 with 60 additional community events. Other initiatives are the monthly Coffee with the Chief series, which rotates through the four council zones each month, and the Chief’s Citizen Advocacy Group, made up of community members.

In the operational excellence category, Williams outlined current baseline response times for different sorts of calls.

• Priority 1 calls, when a crime is in progress: goal, 6 minutes; 2025 average, 6 minutes, 27 seconds

• Priority 2 calls, when a crime has occurred by the suspect is gone: goal, 10 minutes; 2025 average, 9 minutes, 11 seconds

• Priority 3 calls, serious crimes that need to be reported: goal, 15 minutes; 2025 average, 14 minutes, 55 seconds

Williams said that he’s not sure if the department has ever met the six-minute goal for Priority 1 calls, but he called it an admirable goal that he does not intend to raise.

At the start of his remarks, Williams said the department shared council’s goals.

“I will say that all of that is already what we do on a daily basis, but having it spelled out certainly helps us with deployment issues and budget requests and everything else moving forward,” he said.

He outlined how he and his leadership attempted to align aspects of the priority with ways to measure progress on them.

“Quality of life violations have been a topic of conversation with this council, with the public; it’s absolutely top of mind for us,” he said.

Member calls for reflection
After Williams’ presentation, Councilmember Brandon Jenson took issue with Williams’ opening statements on the priority, and he offered a paraphrase.

“I don’t know if you meant it this way or not, but you had said thank you for writing this priority, but it’s what we already do,” Jenson said. “I don’t believe you meant that disrespectfully, but I would encourage you to consider your mindset and reflect; would council have written that as a priority if we believed that our current operations were aligned with what the community is demanding of us?”

Jenson said Williams’ comment suggests he believes what is already being done is sufficient.

“What that priority is saying is what we are currently doing is not sufficient,” Jenson said.

Jenson traced specific 2026-2029 goals around traffic enforcement and found that they nearly matched the goals of 2023-2025 and 2020-2022.

“If we’re continuing to set the same goals for the last six years, and you have a council telling you that what is being done is not meeting the need, that requires some reflection,” Jenson said.

Williams said he did not mean disrespect, and he agrees that progress to date on certain goals is insufficient. He also said that he appreciates council verbalizing the priority.

“We haven’t attained what I think is a spot where we can dismiss that goal and go, ‘We’re done,’” he said. “We should always be seeking to improve on that.”

Williams also commented on the concept of quality of life.

“You might not think so, but officers, it’s not top of mind, what they want to do,” he said. “Having you write that allows me to reinforce what I’ve been saying, which is that’s what our citizens want and that’s what you ought to be doing.”

Those activities include trespassing, motorcycle and traffic enforcement, he said.

“And in addition to that, we’re going to keep bad guys off the street, take guns off the street, arrest homicide suspects, prevent violent crime,” Williams said.

He added that the department is already doing a good job in those areas, with a five-year decline in crime across the city – a factor that allows more free time to make traffic stops and to do proactive enforcement.

“I can lead with that and go, ‘Look, we’re servants to the community, and council’s the voice of the community, so here’s what they want us to focus on,’” he said.

He added that officers may need to temper their personal drive to “find guys with warrants and take violent criminals off the street,” noting that in the meantime, they need to be stopping cars and dealing with matters that impact people on a daily basis.

Councilmember Derek Lee said he agreed with Jenson’s comments, and he added that he would like to see more movement on the department’s staffing shortage.

“I just feel like we’ve been doing the same things for the brief time we’ve been on here – it’s almost three years now – but I for one am very disappointed that our numbers have not moved any more than they have with the total number of officers,” he said.

Williams said the department should have been back to 20-25 vacancies by now, but selectivity in the hiring process has prevented the department from reaching its employment target.

During his presentation, he outlined some of the changes in requirements for officers. Now, college or military experience is preferred, not required, for employment, and work experience can count as a qualification.

The department has loosened its tattoo and beard requirements and offered travel money and relocation assistance, but it has maintained other requirements including physical and psychological measures. Williams said other departments are doing a lot less but hiring more people. He cited the 2023 fatal beating of Tyre Nichols in Memphis, an incident he said resulted directly from the lowering of standards.

“That’s not going to happen on my watch,” he said.