Cape Coral adding more police officers with new budget

Writer: Drew Hill
Published: Updated:
Cape pd building
Credit: WINK News

Southwest Florida’s largest city has approved its budget and has decided to add more than a dozen new police officers. The City of Cape Coral says these officers are needed.

Based on the number of cars on the road and the spike in homes being built there, Cape Coral is growing quickly.

Master Corporal Phil Mullen is the Public Affairs Officer for the Cape Coral Police Department. “It’s important to keep up with the growth,” said Mullen.

Keeping up with the growth is exactly what Cape PD is trying to do. And, they are going to start doing that by hiring more officers.

“We need that to keep up with the population growth, calls for service and make sure that we’re responding to everything that we can,” Mullen said.

The City of Cape Coral’s new budget provides more than $2.7 million which will help with hiring 11 additional police officers. It could add four more with a pending grant.

Cape Coral Police say the goal of adding more officers is to improve response time. Carolyn Davidson lives in Cape Coral and says the faster, the better.

“When you talk to the police if you have to call them out it’s a 10-minute drive, basically. I mean, a lot can happen in 10 minutes,” said Davidson.

These new additions are also there to help solve another problem in Cape Coral – traffic. With more people on the road, more crashes are likely to happen.

On Friday, Cape PD launched a program to protect the safety of pedestrians after seeing 134 crashes within the last year involving pedestrians or bicycles.

“Probably our biggest complaint is traffic. Traffic is always getting busier,” Mullen said.

Tammi Edge lives in Cape Coral. “I actually think that’s great. Where we live there’s a lot of accidents so that would be nice,” said Edge.

“I think it’s very good in their long-range planning and strategic planning, being ahead of the game,” Davidson said.

They’re attempting to stay ahead of the game and ahead of the growth.

Cape Coral PD says it hopes to have its new officers out on the streets by December.

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