Ensuring the public safety is the most important role of a city government, and having a good police force is one of the key tools for fulfilling that role.

A city ought to have a police force that is large enough to project a presence that will not only catch criminals, but deter them from causing trouble in the first place.

There is no doubt that the Fort Dodge Police Department is full of well-trained, dedicated and caring officers. The problem is that there simply isn’t enough of them.

The City Council now has a chance to do something about that. A well-thought out plan that would gradually increase the department from 40 officers to 48 has been presented. We call on the council to implement this plan and do so quickly.

A look at the numbers reveals the need for additional officers.

Each patrol shift has seven officers assigned to it, but because of sick leave, vacations and other reasons there are often less than seven officers working the street. In fact, during the days there are sometimes as few as four officers on duty. Think about that for a second: four officers to cover a city of about 16 square miles and about 25,000 people. One bad traffic accident on Fifth Avenue South could occupy an entire shift of officers for who knows how long.

The situation on the night shifts, when some really vicious crimes take place, isn’t much better. Sometimes there are as few as five officers on duty.

With only four or five officers on duty, the cops just run from one call for service to another. No one has much of a chance to do any really pro-active policing that would put pressure on the criminal elements.

And the city has had to spend thousands of dollars on overtime pay just to keep the mimimum of four or five officers on duty.

Police Chief Roger Porter told the City Council that expanding to 48 officers would enable the department to do the pro-active type of policing that will put the heat on the bad guys.

He credits Assistant Police Chief Cory Husske and captains Doanld McLaren and Dennis Quinn with crafting the plan that would beef up the department over three fiscal years. It calls for adding three officers in the fiscal year that will begin July 1.

It calls for adding two more officers in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and adding another three in the 2025-2026 fiscal year.

With regard to this plan, we have two words for the council: do it.

And we would add, if possible do it faster than the three-year timetable laid out in the proposal.