ABSTRACT
The City of Portsmouth is a small, independent, deepwater port city in the southeastern part of Virginia. It is located in the geographic center of a metropolitan area known as Tidewater or Hampton Roads, which also consists of the much larger cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Hampton, and Newport News. The city is 33.2 square miles and has a population of 96,000. The Portsmouth Police Department (PPD) is authorized to have 263 paid officers and is currently at 238. Additionally, there are 108 civilian employees employed by the PPD (https://www.portsmouthva.gov/history).
