Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham is tired of hearing he should be doing more to stem the bloodshed in Richmond.

He hears that refrain every time there’s another killing — and there have been 52 already this year, up nearly 27 percent from a year ago when 41 people were reported slain.

“I just don’t have any more resources to throw into this fight,” he told the Free Press last week.

Chief Durham has a point. While he is authorized to have 750 sworn officers, he actually has far fewer available.

During an interview Oct. 24, Chief Durham said he had 685 officers on the department’s duty roll — 65 fewer than authorized and the fewest since 2004, when the Richmond force, according to Virginia State Police data, deployed 678 officers.

However, 22 of the officers are unavailable. Some are on military leave or are recovering from injuries or long-term illness. Others are on administrative leave or serving suspensions. The chief would not say how many are in each category.

He knows the officers and detectives are feeling the stress of a force he believes is too small to serve the city’s expanding population and deal with the spike in violent crime.

He sees it in the retirements and resignations that come to his desk each month.

“On average, I’m losing three veteran officers a month,” Chief Durham said. He can do little to replace them given the tight city budget.

He is not alone. Most city departments are short-staffed, but as he put it, no others are involved “in keeping people from getting shot.”

He said the police department should get some relief in January when 18 recruits now at the Police Training Academy are expected to graduate and join the force.

If they all get through and there is no further attrition, he would have 703 officers. That would match the size of the department’s force in 2013, but still well below the 732 officers the department reported on the rolls in 2015, according to state data.

Chief Durham said his problem is hiring more recruits. He said he was provided $1.2 million in the city budget that began July 1 to cover training costs for one recruiting class — the 18 recruits currently in the academy.

But “that is not enough given our personnel challenges,” he said.

The chief presented a plan to Mayor Dwight C. Jones in August that called for the city to fund three training classes in the next 12 months to add 70 more officers to the force. The projected cost: $5.6 million.

Of that, $3.6 million was to provide for two classes, one of 20 trainees to start in late 2016 and one of 25 trainees to start in the spring 2017, potentially adding 45 new officers.

He noted that it takes seven months to get a trainee ready for duty.

While the mayor endorsed Chief Durham’s plan in a Sept. 26 letter to Richmond City Council, he has not rushed to get the proposal before the council and has put it off until after the Nov. 8 election, ensuring it would not become an issue for the mayoral or City Council candidates.

Chief Durham said he has been told that Mayor Jones plans to introduce the legislation at the next City Council meeting on Monday, Nov. 14.

However, the chief has no assurances that the lame-duck council will approve the proposal or that it will be a priority for the City Council members who will take office in January.

Every time he has tried to talk about the situation the department is facing, he said the response has been complaints that he is not doing enough or skepticism about the need for more officers.

City Councilwoman Reva Trammell, 8th District, chair of the Public Safety Committee, has publicly slammed Chief Durham at several council and committee meetings for failing to do more with his current resources to stop the homicides.

City Councilman Charles R. Samuels, 2nd District, also has been skeptical of the chief’s plea for more resources to hire new recruits. At a July Public Safety Committee meeting, Mr. Samuels questioned the need for more officers “if crime is falling in the city.”

Neither council member responded to a Free Press request for comment.

Meanwhile, public safety and the current spike in crime, Chief Durham noted, have barely gotten a mention from those campaigning for office.

Instead, the candidates largely have promised to beef up spending on public schools in response to the major concern from likely voters.

Chief Durham is a popular figure because of his extensive outreach to the community, and most of the mayoral candidates have said they would want him to stay under a new administration.

But the chief remains mum about whether he would seek to continue in the next administration, though there has been no indication he would want to quit.

But given his alarm over the decline in the number of police officers on the force, that decision could depend on how much support he gets for the plan to hire additional recruits.