Needed: Lieutenants

New Haven’s top cops are hurrying to fill vacant lieutenant slots, to get overtime costs back under control and higher-ranking supervisors out in neighborhoods.

At last week’s Board of Police Commissioners meeting, Interim Chief Anthony Campbell pointed to the latest retirement — of Fair Haven District Manager Anthony Maio, who is being replaced by current Westville District Manager Sgt. Renee Dominguez — as an example of the police department’s lack of available command personnel.

Ideally, district managers would be lieutenants, not sergeants. But there aren’t currently enough lieutenants to go around. In fact, only two of the 10 districts are staffed by lieutenants.

The rest of the district manager positions are staffed by sergeants, some of whom are pulling double duty. Sgt. John Wolcheski, for instance, is now in charge of Whalley/Edgewood/Beaver Hills and for at least the next two months, Westville.

The issue of the depleted lieutenants ranks also came up at last Wednesday’s Westville/West Hills Management Team meeting at Mauro Sheridan School. Neighbors had an opportunity at the meeting to fete and say farewell to Dominguez and welcome Wolcheski. They also got to hear from Assistant Chief Tony Reyes, who assured them that Wolcheski would continue to provide the same level of service that the neighbors are used to. He said they will likely be getting a lieutenant in the spring and why that was important.

“The reason it is important to have someone at the rank of lieutenant is because — and Renee and John will agree — when it comes to managing a district, in our police department, in our structure, rank is very important to get things done because officers respond to rank,” Reyes said, referring to the department’s paramilitary structure. ​“That’s just the way our structure is.”

He complimented Dominguez and Wolcheski, calling them both strong supervisors who have been able to overcome the issue of being ​“sergeant supervisors.” But going forward, he said, supervisory positions like district managers will be held by lieutenants.

Staffing Up

An evening earlier at 1 Union Ave., Campbell told police commissioners that he’s taking active steps to fill in lieutenant gaps over next six months. By this summer, Campbell said, he hopes to have 16 new command personnel, stanching hefty overtime costs incurred by stretching current lieutenants and sergeants thin.

Campbell plans to kick-start the process after the police sergeant promotions exam on Jan. 30, he reported to the commissioners.

“We’re really looking forward to this because we have been hemorrhaging a lot of cash in the ranks of sergeant/lieutenant,” Campbell said.

On a weekly basis, the department currently spends somewhere between $25,000 to $45,000 on overtime for patrol supervisors. Part of that budget drain is due to the three sergeants it takes every day to man the prisoner lock-up on 1 Union Avenue. (That’s a cost New Haven was forced to pick up last June after Connecticut’s own budget crisis led the state Judicial Department to stop staffing the lock-up.)

Of the department’s 10 district managers, eight are sergeants (like Sgt. Dominguez) — as opposed to lieutenants. That leads to something of a domino effect, where sergeants who would normally be working in patrol on the street are instead filling district manager slots, so the department has to pay overtime for patrol. ​“Everything is connected,” Campbell said.

As of now, the department has only 47 of its budgeted 54 sergeant positions filled, as well as nine lieutenant vacancies. And those numbers might increase with retirements.

Campbell said he anticipates that in the next couple of months, the department will be able to present selections to fill seven vacant sergeant spots from a list of officers who passed the exam, as certified by the Civil Service Commission. That will be shortly followed by a lieutenant promotions exam in March, after which nine sergeants will be promoted to lieutenant (and nine more officers bumped up to sergeant).

Filling the upper ranks won’t just solve a budget problem, he said. It will also provide much needed oversight for a department Campbell defines as ​“extraordinarily young” in both age and experience. He points to rapid turnover in the last 3 to 5 years, as new hires replaced a slew of retirements.

Department-wide, 452 of the 494 budgeted positions are currently filled, thanks to recent new classes of academy graduates. Campbell can now pull from the basket for supervisory roles. The goal, Campbell said, is to have one supervisor per every 10 officers.

“Young officers need guidance, mentorship, structure,” he said. And these new lieutenants and sergeants will do just that, Campbell added: insure against liability while providing stability to the police force.