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Perez and DeStefano
Jorge Perez said the city should offer more details on a long-range policing plan before rushing to hire more cops. Mayor John DeStefano’s response: Good point.
Perez, president of the Board of Aldermen, was speaking in response to DeStefano’s announcement last week that he plans to seek aldermanic approval to hire 40 to 45 new cops as soon as possible rather than wait until the next fiscal year.
That announcement coincided with the news that the city has transferred 21 cops from other units to return to neighborhood patrols so that permanent walking beats can start up in every policing district. (Read about that here.) The changes were two of many underway as a new chief embarks on restoring community policing to New Haven.
Besides adding the walking beats, the chief, Dean Esserman, has announced a new policy on reviewing use of tasers, asked his assistant chiefs to retire so he can choose his own top team, and examined how to beef up the department’s cold-case unit, among other changes.
“I’m happy to see the administration is paying attention to community policing after they almost singlehandedly killed it,” Perez said in an interview.
“[But] they raised taxes on the pretext we’re going to hire more cops. Then he [the mayor] laid off cops. Then he hired more cops. Less than a year later he wants to hire more cops.”
Perez said he’s not necessarily against hiring more cops, he just wants some answers before saying yes to an emergency request to do so. if it was possible to shift 21 cops from other police units to patrol, he said — perhaps it’s possible to switch more?
In addition, he said, he wants to know how big a budget gap the city faces this fiscal year. And he wants to see a “sustainability” plan for hiring more cops, “so a year from now we won’t be laying off cops again.”
In a conversation Monday afternoon, DeStefano called Perez’s questions “fair.”
“Jorge’s comments about numbers and having a sustainable authorized strength that relates to a consensus around a crime-fighting strategy” make sense, DeStefano said.
He’s working on those answers. He said he plans to present the cop-hiring plan to the aldermen — maybe as soon as next week — as part of a larger discussion of:
• The police department’s goals.
• Metrics by which those goals will be measured.
• The strategy for accomplishing those goals.
• The various roles the police department, the community and “our law enforcement partners” will play in realizing that strategy.
DeStefano also plans to present the plan in the context of an update of this fiscal year’s budget. He said staff is crunching numbers on over-expnditures, under-expenditures, unanticipated costs, and unanticipated revenues so far this year.
One deadline for having that information is next Monday’s annual mayoral State of the City address. DeStefano said the discussion with aldermen about the cop plan won’t occur before Monday.
In announcing the cop-hiring plan last week, DeStefano said he wasn’t looking to spend new money. Rather he wanted to transfer as yet-unidentified money from other accounts to pay for the hires. Also, he didn’t say he was looking to add to the department’s approved number of cops. Only 424 of the department’s 484 approved positions are currently filled.