Worcester PD To Add Fewer Officers Than Announced
Friday, June 22, 2012
Two of the “new recruits” are actually members of the 2008 recruit class who were laid off in 2009 due to budget cuts. On June 18, City Manager Michael O’Brien officially reinstated Officer Michael Cappabianca Jr. and Officer James Ciru. According to City Manager spokesperson Christina Andreoli, it is a requirement of the civil service process, when initiating a new class, to first offer “call backs” to any officers laid off in the past 10 years. That means the actual number in the new class of recruits is down to 23.
“We’re at record low numbers right now,” said Brian Halloran, President of the NEPBA Local 911 Patrolman’s Union. “We’re down somewhere around 322 patrolmen and that puts us back around 324, but contractually we said we weren’t going below 330.”
Upcoming Retirements
The police department is expected to lose 8-9 officers to mandatory retirements between now and August 2013. Andreoli said those retirements were factored in when determining the number of recruits for the new class.
“As grateful as we are to have this class of 25, the reality of business is that those 25 are basically going to be eaten up by the natural attrition rate. We’re going to be in the same spot as we are now, in 2014,” Halloran said.
And Andreoli doesn’t deny it.
Safety Concerns
Despite being understaffed, Halloran said that the number of crime reports seems to be trending down. But that could always change.
“We’ve had a fantastic handle as a department on maintaining the criminal population, but you never want to end up behind eight ball where they are gaining momentum because we don’t have the staffing numbers to saturate problem areas,” Halloran said.
He points out that the number of detectives and officers in the gang unit are down, because the department needs people on patrol and to man the service division.
Morale Suffers
Of course, the lower numbers mean that more officers are working overtime to cover for days and vacation time. And job mobility is basically out of the question. For a lot of officers, that’s discouraging.
“It’s never good for morale and the job becomes less enticing because you know there’s no availability to try a different field in the police world,” Halloran said.
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