More Schenectady police officers may see street duty

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Police will patrol more and respond to crimes faster under a major realignment from new Chief Mark Chaires to be announced Wednesday.

Both City Councilman Gary McCarthy and police union President Robert Hamilton are supporting the effort, which may move supervisors and officers with desk jobs back onto the streets.

The goal is to improve coverage and reduce response times without expanding the force, said McCarthy, chairman of the public safety committee and a major player in the realignment.

The first few details on the new plan are expected to be discussed at Wednesday’s City Council budget review session, which will focus on public safety. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

But much of the plan will take shape slowly over a matter of months as the new chief decides which officers to reassign to patrol. The internal decision about which jobs can be done with fewer people does not have to be made public during the budget review session because it will not change the overall police budget. Officers will continue to draw their current salaries even if they are reassigned to patrol.

Hamilton and McCarthy said they had agreed to the realignment in principle but would let Chaires decide how to implement it.

As McCarthy described it, the realignment has three basic goals: increasing the number of police on the street without hiring more officers; deploying those officers more effectively; and reducing response times.

McCarthy had planned to forcibly reorganize the department while reviewing the 2009 police budget if he could get the rest of the council to support him. He had suggested that the council could simply increase the number of officers in the patrol division and drastically reduce the number elsewhere.

BENNETT’S CONCERNS

But Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett expressed deep concerns. He said he feared the councilman would move detectives to patrol, hurting the department’s ability to solve crimes. Schenectady already solves a much smaller percentage of its serious crimes than other cities of similar size, according to national statistics, and Bennett said the city can’t afford to cut back on detectives.

McCarthy — who never said which divisions would be cut to provide more patrol officers — argued that crimes could be solved more easily if police arrived in time to collect critical evidence or arrest the perpetrators.

But after meeting with Bennett and Chaires, McCarthy said he agreed to let the new chief handle the reorganization himself.

“I think we’re on the same page. I’m not going to force allocations in the budget. I’m going to give him a chance,” McCarthy said. “It’ll be within his prerogative to move people around.”

Hamilton said he, too, will support Chaires in the reorganization.

“We’ll hopefully establish units within the police department to improve our effectiveness in combating crime,” Hamilton said. “I’m looking forward to working with [Chaires] on that. We’ve got to work together.”

In the past, police and city leaders have complained that Hamilton would block even the smallest policy changes, seeking to negotiate anything that wasn’t already in the contract.

Hamilton says city management causes most slowdowns in negotiations.

Either way, policy changes generally do not happen quickly. For example, it took more than a year to require police to wear seat belts after an unbelted officer died in a high-speed crash while hurrying to a serious accident.

UNION ON BOARD

But this time, neither side appears to be bickering. Hamilton emphasized repeatedly that he will support Chaires in his reorganization plan.

“We have similar goals overall,” he said.

Bennett and Mayor Brian U. Stratton could not be reached Monday night, but McCarthy said they were in support as well.

“Everybody may not be 100 percent happy with it,” McCarthy said. “But we’re all going to give Chaires a chance. I believe we’re all going to get what we want. I think there will be substantial improvement.”

He said his measuring stick would be the speed at which police can respond to emergency calls.

The last response times made public by the department, back in 2006, showed that it took police 91⁄2 minutes, on average, to get to the most serious crimes: acts of violence in which people are in imminent danger.

For nonviolent complaints — including car accidents without injuries and drug dealers selling their wares peaceably outside residences and businesses — the average response time was 45 minutes.

McCarthy predicted response rates would improve dramatically under the new plan.

But if they don’t, he warned that the council could still step in and force the reorganization that he wanted.

“That budget is only good for two weeks,” McCarthy said, referring to the amount of time between council voting sessions. “The budget can be amended anytime there’s a majority vote of the council.”

But he said he won’t move to change the budget significantly this week.

“The [current proposed budget] gives Chaires enough flexibility to implement some of the procedural changes he wants to do,” McCarthy said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”