OKC Council Approves Adding 18 Police Officers To Force - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

Oklahoma City Council officially green lights a plan to add 18 new police officers to the force.

"It's not getting any better, so it's a nice, pleasant relief to add more additional officers," said Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty, who thinks the department still needs to add 200 officers to be on par with other cities OKC's size.

Right now, OCPD has 1,058 sworn officers and a population of just under 600,000 people. By Comparison, Kansas City has less people than OKC but more than 1,300 police officers, according to Chief Citty.

9/25/2012 Related Story: OKC Council Considers Plan To Hire More Police Officers

Chief Citty tells News 9 the additional patrol officers won't be trained to hit the street for about one year.

The patrol positions are paid for by a budget surplus from the last fiscal budget.