Tryna Verbeck believes her husband would not have gotten shot had there been more officers on the streets.'I'm not your worst nightmare,' wife of injured officer speaks out“You see it with our lack of officers on the streets,” she said. “You see it. We used to have officers. You'd see cop cars all the time. You don't anymore."Mario Verbeck was shot in the chest two months ago when a man armed with a rifle opened fire — injuring four officers. he is still recovering. Body camera released in shooting that injured 4 APD officers"I do everything for him. I gladly do it,” Tryna Verbeck said. “I have to tie his shoes. You know, I feed him. I have to dress him."Tryna said before the shooting her husband frequently told her there were not enough officers patrolling his beat and he often didn’t have backup.City payroll records show there are 899 Albuquerque police officers. Target 7 compared that to FBI data and found out of the ten largest cities in the southwest Albuquerque ranks toward the bottom per capita in the number of officers on the force. “It is a number that is the fact that we can't change if we're third from the bottom in per capita,” Police Chief Harold Medina said in an interview with Target 7. The data shows APD has one officer to protect 622 people. That is slightly better than Colorado Springs and Tucson. But much lower than Salt Lake City that has one officer to protect 387 people."Well, it's hard to put a number on it,” said former Albuquerque Public Safety Director Nick Bakas. “Obviously, you need enough police officers to respond to the calls for service.”Medina acknowledged he needed more officers to take those calls.“Without a doubt, I, we do need more officers in the field,” Medina said.Target 7 obtained data from the police officer’s union. It shows where front-line officers are assigned. If you call 911 and need help, these would be the officers who would show up. Bakas used to be in charge of the Southeast Area Command. There are 71 front-line officers to answer your calls for help in that area located south of Interstate 40, east of Interstate 25 and west of Eubank."Seventy-one officers,” Bakas said. “ Back in my time, I had over 120 assigned to the Southeast Area Command."So how many police officers do we need?"In a perfect world, I'd like to have 1,300 officers,” Medina saidAPD has not met goal of 1,100 officers for 2021But, the city has budgeted for 1,200 — that's 300 more than what the police department has"I believe that we need to have between 14 to 1500 officers in the city of Albuquerque Police Department,” said Shaun Willoughby, president of the Albuquerque Police Officers’ Association.Willoughby has maintained more officers are not patrolling the streets because they are instead investigating allegations of police misconduct. He said it's because of the seven-year-old settlement agreement with the Department of Justice that mandates stricter discipline and more investigations on whenever an officer uses force on someone."But one thing's for certain, is that your cops don't feel safe. Your cops feel overwhelmed with not only work, but their accountability measures,” Willougby said. “They don't feel like they can do anything right, and they're leaving to greener pastures because there are greener pastures."Medina acknowledged at times that has been the case.“Yes, we have had a number of people who resigned and went to other agencies because they were frustrated with the processes that were being developed,” the chief said. “It's a difficult time in law enforcement and our settlement agreement puts another layer that Albuquerque has to deal with that others don't. And for some of our officers, there is a fear and there's an everyday fear.”In 2015, the city had to do a staffing study that was mandated by the DOJ settlement agreement. It recommends the city have 1,000 officers and about 500 of them should be taking calls for service full-time.But a report from the police union shows there are actually 369 nine front-line officers. That's nearly 250 less than the recommendation.Medina says that number can be deceiving because he has created more bike patrols and teams that deal with crime trends and those officers at times also respond to your calls for help."By creating these long-term relationships with the community through these units, we come to long-term solutions,” Medina said. “And, eventually, we'll start seeing reductions.”The city has been trying to reach that 1,200 officer number for the past four years. They have hired about 100 a year but just as many have been leavingSo what's the solution?Medina says by having civilians do certain jobs that officers have traditionally done, creating more positions for young people considering careers in law enforcement, and by getting more people hired than just 100 per year“We just need some time,” Medina said. “I know that time is something that people don't want to give up on the settlement agreement, that they don't want to give up on a crime. There's a lot of areas we're asking for. Time is not something people want to hear, but it's a reality.”Time might have run out for Mario Verbck’s law enforcement career. Tryna Verbeck doesn’t want her husband to be counted in those manpower numbers again."I really don't want him to put the uniform on again,” she said. “I don't. I don't want him to.”Police officials have acknowledged there were only five officers working in the Foothills patrol area when officer Verbeck was shot there. There are more than 122,000 people that live there. That’s about one officer per 24,000. “Just the police presence alone on our streets is a deterrent for crime,” Tryna Verbeck said.