As you may have heard or read, a communitywide discussion has begun about the costs of maintaining your local police force.
I feel it prudent at this time to provide some history and comment on the
80-year-old Webster Police Department.
The department was created in 1928 in response to a problem within the village
of Webster – numerous business burglaries and chicken thefts. The first police
officer, Homer Pulver, applied to police the village for a nominal fee and was
promptly turned down.
Homer eventually agreed to work six months without pay and eventually solved
17 of the 28 reported village burglaries along with several of the chicken
thefts. Homer also kept tabs on illegal alcohol transports. Homer was assisted
at the time by two State Police officers who arrived on horseback from Batavia
and were lodged at the Stagecoach Inn. The troopers stabled their horses in
the rear of the inn.
Shortly after his success in crime fighting, Homer was hired at $50 per month
to provide police service to the village. The village police department
expanded to cover the town of Webster in 1939.
While it has been awhile since we have experienced a chicken theft in Webster,
we do experience burglaries both residentially and commercially throughout our
community. We additionally suffer from a multitude of other reported crimes,
which run the gamut from larcenies, forgeries and frauds to assault, menacing,
rape and an occasional murder.
The Webster community has experienced unprecedented growth for the past 10
years. The police department size, however, has remained constant. The police
department is staffed with 31 sworn officers, the same number of officers who
proudly displayed the Webster badge in 1984.
Over 18,000 police departments exist throughout the United States and the
number continues to grow. The national trend to create new police departments
has accelerated in recent years, which seems to parallel suburban and exurban
sprawl.
The International Association of Police Chiefs provides data that supports
growing numbers of smaller communities nationwide are selecting to be policed
by smaller, localized agencies. The trend seems to indicate that citizens are
demanding more control of their police guardians than they get from the larger
countywide departments that provide police service.
If there is an abandoned car on Main Street, people want to be able to call
the chief himself and make sure something gets done about it. The growth in
smaller regional police departments revolves around these type of
quality-of-life issues.
One statistic I continue to find fascinating is that 87 percent of the
nation’s police departments are staffed with 26 or fewer police officers. That
statistic is quite revealing.
Most municipalities choose to be policed by smaller police agencies that tend to provide the attentive, directed and personal customer service that citizens demand.
I believe that policing is one of the most important services local
governments provides to its residents. That said, it is one of the most
expensive, costing an estimated $36 billion a year nationwide. With city, town
and village budgets strained, along with other available funding sources
severely limited, it has become imperative for local police forces to use what
resources we have to the best advantage.
The Webster Police Department continues to have its resources strained by the
impact of residential and commercial growth and the associated demands for
service. We, along with police departments nationwide, have also had
increasing demands placed on us by homeland security responsibilities.
In my capacity, for the last four years as chair of the Monroe County Law
Enforcement Council, I continue to work with the sheriff and police chiefs
from around the county in efforts to consolidate services. We use a countywide
police records management system, radio communication system, mobile computer
terminal system and police and fire training facility. We continue to team
together in order to achieve the best prices on major purchases such as
vehicles. We have worked diligently to adopt countywide law enforcement
practices and protocols to provide the best policing services to our citizens.
We continue to share in many specialized police units in order to hold the
line on costs.
It is relatively rare across the nation to see all law enforcement agencies
working together in harmony, not only to hold the line on expenses, but to
provide unparalleled criminal justice enforcement efforts for the greater good
of the community at large. The Monroe County law enforcement community is
proud to lead the state and nation with such a unique mutually inclusive law
enforcement model.
I realize the importance of focusing on fiscal responsibility as we work to
meet the increasing demands and will use best practices in order to limit the
impact of police services on the taxpayer. No one can argue that it is not
expensive to provide enhanced police services to a community. Police officer
salaries and associated benefits are established by both state law and a
comparative analysis of similar police forces in the same geographic area of
the state.
The state Civil Service Commission and Division of Criminal Justice Services
set numerous criteria that must be met for selection, hiring, initial
training, certifications and ongoing training requirements for police
officers. All of those factors add to the cost of providing the professional
level of service that is provided to the community and demanded by our
residents.
Unfortunately, we can no longer find officers who will work for the $50 per
month that Homer Pulver worked for in 1928. We must pay the prevailing wage
package in order to attract and keep highly qualified and professional
officers. The average Webster home assessed at $160,500 pays $23.24 per month
for local police protection.
That said, I will continue to work with the Webster Town Board in our efforts
to provide the most cost-effective police service that we can in an attempt to
keep your taxes at a stable rate.
The Webster Police Department will continue providing citizens with the best
policing services available with the important small-town emphasis on courtesy
and service as we strive to protect your community.
Gerald Pickering is chief of the Webster Police Department.
Note: The Town of Webster continues to have the lowest tax rate of any municipality in the County of Monroe that maintains their own police department.