Sam Gurwitt Photo
In a move that both returns to traditional budget management and aims to buck conventional department community policing practices, the Hamden Legislative Council voted Tuesday evening to gain oversight over police overtime and community policing in the 2019 – 2020 fiscal year.
In a vote of 10 – 3, the council moved $800,000, or 80 percent, out of police overtime and $180,000 (90 percent) out of community policing accounts in the Police Department and into the council’s emergency and contingency (E and C) account in the budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
In his proposed budget, Mayor Curt Leng originally set aside $1 million for overtime and $200,000 for community policing and bike patrol. With most of those funds now under the jurisdiction of the council, the police chief will have to come to the council periodically starting July 1 to ask for transfers to pay overtime and to carry out community policing efforts.
The vote occurred during a deliberation session on next year’s budget under the scrutinizing eyes of around 40 community members and activists. The Hamden Police Department has been the subject of statewide ire after Hamden Cop Devin Eaton shot at an unarmed couple in New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood on April 16.
The council also voted Tuesday night to eliminate eight positions in the department, including two officer positions that are currently vacant, five new positions proposed by the mayor, and one deputy chief position. Among the five new positions the mayor had proposed were two school resource officers and three community police officers, though in a last-minute memo, he urged the council to make all five of them community police officers with bike and foot patrols.
Community Policing “Should Not Require Overtime”
Majority Leader Cory O’Brien.
Though the community policing account is separate from the overtime account, the department often pays it out at overtime rates.
As Acting Chief John Cappiello said at the meeting, many of the officers working community policing assignments are working on overtime.
That, said many council members, is unacceptable, hence their decision to gain greater oversight over the account.
The council did not reduce the amount of money in the budget. It simply moved money from the police department into its own budget.
“We feel that it should not require overtime for our police force to engage with the community,” said Majority Leader Cory O’Brien. O’Brien, like other council members, said they think that community policing should be a part of normal operations and should be paid using straight time.
“All police should be community police,” said District 9 Rep. Justin Farmer. He argued, however, that community policing looks very different in different Hamden neighborhoods, and that it’s not always a benefit for the community. In Spring Glen, police participate in neighborhood watches and listen to the concerns of residents, Farmer said, while in his southern Hamden neighborhood, “it means we’re going to put police … and we’re going to tell you what the rules are.” He said it just means that there are more police.
The community policing/bike patrol line in the budget pays for officers to do bike and foot patrols in certain areas of town, including the Farmington Canal Trail, the shopping areas on Dixwell Avenue, and in neighborhoods such as Highwood, Spring Glen, Whitneyville, State Street, Woodin Street, and Hamden Plains.
Cappiello explained that most of the time, police officers on bike patrol have to be paid overtime when they do bike and foot patrols because other officers are busy on regular patrols fulfilling minimum manning requirements laid out by the union contract. The contract requires that a certain number of officers be out on patrol at any given time. Cappiello told the council Tuesday that he usually does not have enough officers working during their regular hours to fulfill minimum manning requirements and also do bike patrols. That means that in order to do bike and foot patrols, he must pay overtime, he said.
The department currently has one officer assigned full-time to community policing duties, paid straight time.
When council members asked why police officers can’t perform community policing duties while on regular patrol, Cappiello replied that “most of the time unfortunately, with the call volume, they go from call to call to call.” He said he encourages them to get out of their cars and stop by parks as much as possible, but that they often don’t have enough time.
Yet council members pressed him on why minimum officers who are out doing bike and foot patrols don’t count for minimum manning requirements.
Cappiello said that the union contract requires a certain number of cars on the road, though he could not confirm how many. The contract states that “for the patrol division minimum staffing shall be defined as ‘one patrol officer in one cruiser unit.’” At all times, there must be seven officers on patrol, except Friday through Sunday from 3 p.m. to midnight, when there must be eight.
Come July 1, when the new fiscal year begins, the chief will have $20,000 to start off the year’s bike and foot patrols. After a month or two, he will have to come to the council to ask for a transfer out of E and C account to continue. Some council members said that moving money from the community policing line to the council’s jurisdiction will allow the council to keep close tabs on how the department does community policing, hopefully pressuring the department to figure out how to do community policing without incurring overtime.
The chief will have to come to the council periodically with a plan for community policing in the next few months. While some council members welcomed that change, others said it would simply be a burden for the police chief.
“I don’t think its our job to be micromanaging how the police chief assigns and where he assigns” police officers, said Minority Leader Marjorie Bonadies. “We are stepping into areas that we are not proficient in and I’m not in favor of that,” she said. “I think it’s becoming a punitive assault on the police.”
Overtime Oversight
District 8 Rep. Jim Pascarella.
While funds dedicated to community policing have never before been placed under the council’s purview in the budget, money for overtime has often been housed in the E and C account.
“We are returning to the methodology that has been used for quite some time regarding managing overtime numbers,” said District 8 Rep. Jim Pascarella.
For a long time, he said, the council funded all of overtime accounts completely in the department budgets. When those overtime accounts started to go over consistently, he explained, the council began to take some of that money and place it in the council’s E and C account in order to exert some control over how departments award overtime pay.
For the current fiscal year, the council decided to give departments their full requests for overtime and save the E and C account for emergencies only, telling departments that they must live within their budgets. Overtime accounts have still gone over, forcing the council to pull funds from the pension line because there is not enough in E and C.
Placing $800,000 of the $1 million budgeted for overtime in E and C returns to past practices, but at a larger scale than before. Pascarella said that the council has never before placed that much of an overtime account in E and C.
“We might have used a third, 40 percent maybe, but not 80,” he told the Independent. “Essentially with leaving only 20 percent in, the police chief will be coming to the council very early on in the budget cycle regarding overtime. It will be like a monthly thing.” That, he said, was why he was the only Democrat on the council to vote no on the motion.
District 9 Rep. Brad Macdowall, who introduced the idea of moving $800,000 of overtime to E and C that ultimately got the support of all but one member of his caucus, called it “an attempt to have some oversight over overtime. This allows us to monitor throughout the year what’s being spent.”
At the meeting, he said that there are many instances in which the department spends needlessly on overtime. “There have been events in the last two weeks when we have put an inordinate amount of officers on the street,” he said.
He said that by having to come to the council periodically to get more money for overtime, police chief will be encouraged to reduce overtime expenses.
Pascarella said he worried that the council’s move overstepped its boundaries. “There’s a fine line between controlling it and administering. My concern is that we may have approached that line or even crossed it.”
Position Eliminations
District 8 Rep. Jim Pascarella.
With virtually no discussion, the council voted to eliminate 7 positions that the mayor had funded in his proposed budget. 2 were vacant officer positions, and 5 were new SRO and community police positions.
Leng had proposed that Hamden add two additional officers to serve as SROs in elementary schools. Residents spoke out against the proposal, and on Tuesday afternoon just before the deliberation meeting he urged the council instead to make those positions community police positions. Yet the council removed those positions entirely, making it a moot point.
The council also voted to remove one of the deputy chief positions as an additional cost-saving measure. The department currently has two deputy chief positions, though only one deputy chief. When former Chief Thomas Wydra left the department in the fall, Cappiello became acting chief, leaving his position as deputy chief. Since then, he has been fulfilling the duties of both chief and deputy chief, he told the council.
The council eliminated the position currently held by Deputy Chief Bo Kicak. Come July 1, Kicak will become a captain, and all members of the department will be bumped down one place in the pecking order until the lowest ranking officer is laid off. However, council members made it clear that a layoff is unlikely because at least one member of the department will probably retire.
If Leng appoints a new chief before July 1, Cappiello will serve as the single deputy chief. If Cappiello is still acting chief at that point, the town may go a period of time without a deputy chief.
