Boulder police report 12 sworn vacancies ahead of Sept. 24 council briefing
A city packet also reports 30 sworn positions not on full duty and a more than fourfold rise in fraudulent-identification filings in Municipal Court.
Boulder police reported 12 vacant sworn-officer positions and 30 sworn positions not on full duty ahead of a Sept. 24 City Council study session on public safety, according to the council’s study-session packet. The packet lists 190 authorized sworn positions and 178 current sworn positions.
The department also reported six vacant dispatcher positions among 30 authorized positions, leaving 24 current dispatchers, and one vacancy among 13 authorized records positions. Training takes about 12 months for sworn officers, nine to 12 months for dispatchers and six months for records employees, the packet says.
The packet reports that police calls or dispatch incidents declined 3% from January through August 2025 to the same period in 2026, while proactive activity increased 7%. The department describes proactive activity as including foot patrols and pedestrian contacts. Compared with a three-year average, 2026 patrols were up 17%, pedestrian contacts were up 32% and traffic stops were up 27%.
Boulder Municipal Court reported 53 fraudulent-identification charges during the 2024-25 academic year and 224 during the 2025-26 academic year. The court created a special docket that meets twice a month to handle the additional cases, with goals of improving efficiency and reducing congestion on the Tuesday morning criminal docket.
The packet does not provide raw counts or calculation methods for the activity comparisons, and it does not quantify effects on overtime, response times or services. The Sept. 24 study session is scheduled for discussion; the packet is not a record of council action or a vote.