nothin Hold-Downs Hold On For Another Month | New Haven Independent

Hold-Downs Hold On For Another Month

With a deadline extended, bars and restaurants have a few more weeks to pick the extra-duty cops who guard their businesses. Meanwhile, the police union’s president warned the city faces losing up to $1 million in revenue and a potential lawsuit if it proceeds with a reform plan.

Paul Bass File Photo

Following a longstanding policy, downtown clubs and other businesses have for years been able to select a hold-down” officer who will oversee extra-duty security details at their doors. The hold-down officer becomes the go-to person for a club, and decides which other officers will work there.

That practice was set to end on Feb. 1, following arbitration between the police union and the city. But the deadline has now been pushed back to March 1.

The union and the city need more time to work out the details of the change, said Sgt. Louis Cavaliere on Thursday. Cavaliere is the head of the police union.

The union and the city met on Tuesday and decided to extend the deadline, Cavaliere said. Once the hold-down system is abolished, the department will decide which officers work which extra-duty shifts. The city is working on a plan for how to make those appointments fairly, Cavaliere said.

Everybody’s a happy family here, which is upsetting City Hall for some reason,” Cavaliere said.

If the city carries through with the plan to end hold-downs, Cavaliere predicted, it will face a lawsuit brought by the department’s so-called gold shields.”

Ending hold-downs is necessary to eliminate several potential conflicts of interest, Chief James Lewis said in an interview. (Lewis is pictured at left in the above photo, beside Cavaliere.)

One of these conflicts: hold-down officers essentially become employees of tavern keepers. This presents problems since police are in the business of enforcing liquor laws, Lewis said. They are put in a position potentially to decide whether to arrest someone who’s paying them.

That’s a ridiculous unsubstantiated theory,” Cavaliere said. It’s a lie.” City police take an oath of office to prevent such conflicts of interest and if they break that oath they should be fired, until then, they should be trusted, Cavaliere said.

Another potential conflict of interest: Patrol cops who are hold-down officers can be in the position of doling out extra-duty work to their superiors, who later may evaluate their job performance, Lewis said.

The ability to pick who works where creates the potential for little cliques to exist,” he said.

Also, when on-duty police officers respond to a bar or club, they should be attending to their police work, not sourcing more work,” Lewis said.

Finally, although taxpayers are liable for the behavior of police on extra-duty jobs, the department isn’t able to pick who should work those shifts.

Lewis, who has worked in police departments in several states, said he has never come across a hold-down system like New Haven’s. I’ve never seen it anyplace.”

In California, police aren’t allowed to work second jobs anywhere near liquor, Lewis said. You can’t work part-time jobs even as a teller in a supermarket” that sells beer, he said.

Despite the new delay, hold-downs are definitely on their way out, Lewis said. There is no plan to allow hold-downs.”

The abolishment of the hold-down system is not only unnecessary, but potentially harmful to the city, Cavaliere claimed. The move to do away with hold-downs is causing stress and conflict among police officers, he said, since some cops stand to lose thousands of dollars of annual income.

The city also stands to lose money, Cavaliere warned. He said that businesses that currently use extra-duty officers are promising to stop hiring police if the hold-down system ends. Stores like Shaw’s, which employs 58 officers, may not want to have a different officer every night who will need to be re-trained, Cavaliere claimed. If businesses stop using extra-duty officers, the city will lose up to $1 million in annual surcharges, he said.

Without the hold-down system, extra-duty jobs will go to patrol officers — known as silver shields” — first and to detectives and sergeants — known as gold shields” second. Right now, the hold-down system serves to distribute the extra-duty shift equitably among the ranks, Cavaliere said. But without the system, gold shields will lose thousands of dollars in extra-duty income.

This potentiality is causing strife among the ranks, Cavaliere said. It would require a union vote to change the way extra-duty jobs would be assigned in the absence of the hold-down system. But since there are so many more silver shields than gold shields on the force, the silver shields will never vote against their interests, Cavaliere said.

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