On her way to winning the Pittsfield mayor’s office last year, Linda Tyer called for more police officers in the city. Almost a year later, has that happened?

During last year’s mayoral campaign, crime is a key issue in Berkshire County’s largest community. And then-City Clerk Linda Tyer was clear about what she planned to do, if elected.

“I believe that one strategy for addressing crime and gangs and guns, is to have more police on our streets,” Tyer said at the time.

In that same candidates debate, her opponent, now-former Mayor Dan Bianchi, said while he was looking to hire a few more officers, he favored education and youth mentoring as ways to combat crime.

“We can’t arrest our way out of a societal issue,” Bianchi said.

Tyer went on to beat Bianchi last November. Fast-forwarding to today, Tyer has lived up to her word to add officers, according to figures from the mayor’s office. Taking into account new hires and officers who left, Pittsfield has seen a net gain of nine police officers since Tyer took over in January.

“I’m just pleased that we’ve been able to finally push past the stagnant level of staffing that we’ve had for the last 15 or 20 years,” Tyer said in an interview two weeks ago. “We’re making some real investments here.”

Ninety-one officers are currently on the books in Pittsfield, and there’s room in the current budget to add eight more, which the mayor said is in the works.

During the campaign, Tyer said a city the size of Pittsfield should have about 120 officers, and said her goal over four to five years was to get “nearer” that number.

Now, ten months since taking office, she sounded far less sure about that.

“It’s too much to expect, honestly, that we’re going to quickly move up to 120,” Tyer said. “If we’re ever able to do that, that would be a great accomplishment, but that isn’t…at this point we’re just trying to find a stabilizing number — without having too much of an impact on our budget, and what this means to taxpayers.”

We reached out to the head of the Pittsfield police union for comment on this this story, but didn’t hear back.