Spending Tax $$$ Wisely – Community Service Officers
The Post Bulletin had an article last Monday, August 13, 2007 about a proposal Police Chief Peterson was going to make (and did) to the city council regarding a civilian response team that would respond to non-emergency calls. The idea is to free certified police officers from these non-emergency calls to make better use of their time and skills for the more serious crime prevention, traffic enforcement, and the more serious calls that require a fully trained police enforcement officer.
I think this makes a lot of sense. So much sense that you have to wonder why we hadn’t done this before. It’s relatively new here in the US but is a plan that the chief studied and has taken the best parts of from a plan in place in London. (This is called research.)
Of course the article and the proposal has raised a lot of questions. Good questions from the council as well as some of you. We don’t yet have a job description but it’s coming. Ditto for more detail. But the gist of the plan is that with the every growing population there have been a rising number of calls for service which impact our ability to respond to the more serious calls so why don’t we hire and train staff to handle these calls and let the fully trained officers respond to the calls that require their training?.
The growing number of calls are fortunately not of the serious crime nature but they impact the PD’s ability to respond to the serious calls or to do important crime prevention activities like show lots of visibility in potential crime areas, businesses etc … be around more on the street for traffic enforcement … respond even faster to emergency calls.
The CSO’s would be trained to respond to time consuming report writing calls after a break in, vandalism, and so on. They would be the ones to take pictures, fill out accident reports or record a crime scene. You don’t need a badge and a gun to do these things. They’d wear distinctive uniforms and be highly visible. They could do great PR kind of things on the downtown area like give directions, keep the peace in Peace Plaza or the new 1st Street Mall. They would have radios and be in contact with the regular police officer in case of need.
We haven’t adopted it yet but are considering it for next year’s budget. Having 4 full time and 12 part time officer for less that $900,000 is a lot smarter, I think, than hiring 16 additional officers for $1.5 million --- and then using them for these same mundane tasks..
You’ll see more as we develop the plan in the paper, on the city’s home page, from me, and from the PD so stay tuned.
Bob Nowicki
I think this makes a lot of sense. So much sense that you have to wonder why we hadn’t done this before. It’s relatively new here in the US but is a plan that the chief studied and has taken the best parts of from a plan in place in London. (This is called research.)
Of course the article and the proposal has raised a lot of questions. Good questions from the council as well as some of you. We don’t yet have a job description but it’s coming. Ditto for more detail. But the gist of the plan is that with the every growing population there have been a rising number of calls for service which impact our ability to respond to the more serious calls so why don’t we hire and train staff to handle these calls and let the fully trained officers respond to the calls that require their training?.
The growing number of calls are fortunately not of the serious crime nature but they impact the PD’s ability to respond to the serious calls or to do important crime prevention activities like show lots of visibility in potential crime areas, businesses etc … be around more on the street for traffic enforcement … respond even faster to emergency calls.
The CSO’s would be trained to respond to time consuming report writing calls after a break in, vandalism, and so on. They would be the ones to take pictures, fill out accident reports or record a crime scene. You don’t need a badge and a gun to do these things. They’d wear distinctive uniforms and be highly visible. They could do great PR kind of things on the downtown area like give directions, keep the peace in Peace Plaza or the new 1st Street Mall. They would have radios and be in contact with the regular police officer in case of need.
We haven’t adopted it yet but are considering it for next year’s budget. Having 4 full time and 12 part time officer for less that $900,000 is a lot smarter, I think, than hiring 16 additional officers for $1.5 million --- and then using them for these same mundane tasks..
You’ll see more as we develop the plan in the paper, on the city’s home page, from me, and from the PD so stay tuned.
Bob Nowicki
posted by Bob Nowicki | 4:01 PM
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