Mount Vernon police chief: levy funds six new officers but department will remain well below national staffing levels

Chief Dan Christman said the Mount Vernon Police Department is understaffed and that a voter-approved levy will add six sworn positions, but the city will still fall short of national staffing averages.

"What it means for us, very simple terms, is we get 6 new police positions ... We get 1 officer per year for the next 6 years," Christman said. He cautioned that even after those hires Mount Vernon would reach only about 1.35 officers per 1,000 residents, up from the department’s current roughly 1.2 per 1,000.

The chief placed the shortfall in context, saying the modern U.S. average has moved toward roughly 2.5 officers per 1,000 people while historically some measures used 1.5 per 1,000. He added that Washington state ranks near the bottom for staffing levels when accounting for the District of Columbia: "we're 51," he said.

Christman gave department head-count figures and vacancy context: the agency has about 46 commissioned officers including recent hires, and at the time of the interview reported three vacancies plus one newly funded position. He said recruitment is under way for the 2026 hire and that other vacancies are likely to be filled within the first quarter of the year.

He outlined the timeline from recruitment to an officer operating solo: roughly two to three months to hire, one to six months to secure an academy seat, about four months at the academy, and an average of 4.5 months of field training — meaning it typically takes about a year for a new hire to be a solo patrol officer.

On deployment priorities, Christman said the department will first restore patrol staffing to reduce officer burnout. He identified the traffic unit, proactive policing team and school resource officers as near-term priorities: he expects a three-person traffic unit with a trained collision investigator, aims to reinstate a proactive unit to address problem locations and drug interdiction, and intends to assign an SRO to middle schools while maintaining a presence at the high school.

"Number one, get patrol completely staffed so that there aren't big holes there," Christman said, noting staffing gaps had previously forced specialty assignments to be vacated to backfill patrol shifts.

Christman and the host also discussed support positions the department has added — social workers and a nurse assigned in non-sworn roles — and that those hires do not replace the need for sworn officers.

Next steps: recruitment for the first levy-funded officer was open at the time of the interview, and subsequent recruitments are planned annually through 2031. Christman said hiring alone will not immediately change response capacity because of training and academy seat availability.