Fewer troopers on highways

LINCOLN — You're out driving on a lonely country highway. It's the middle of the night. Your car breaks down, you crash or hit a deer.

Who are you going to call?

Because of state budget cuts in Nebraska and Iowa, that 911 call is more and more likely to go to a local police officer or sheriff's deputy than a state trooper.

If a trooper is contacted, be prepared to wait longer than you used to.

It's all part of the numbers game that has lowered the number of state troopers patrolling the highways.

In Nebraska, the number of uniformed troopers is at a 21-year low. The number of Iowa troopers has dropped to a level last seen in 1964.

“We're just stretched thin everywhere,” said Maj. Russ Stanczyk, who heads the field services branch of the Nebraska State Patrol.

Although officers such as Stanczyk say technology is helping the State Patrol do “more with less,” having fewer troopers is translating into slower response times, especially at night and especially on less-traveled rural highways.

“People tell me they don't see a trooper like they used to,” said Brian Petersen, president of the State Troopers Association of Nebraska, the troopers' union. “People will travel the Interstate across Nebraska and only see one, two or three cruisers.”

“They just don't have the people any more. It's starting to catch up with them,” said Bob Thorson, Saunders County chief deputy sheriff, a former major in the State Patrol.

Blame budget cuts due to shrinking state tax receipts for the lower numbers of state troopers.

In Iowa, the 378 uniformed troopers are the fewest in 46 years. The number would have been 43 lower if the troopers union hadn't agreed to five-day, unpaid furloughs to stave off more layoffs.

The thinner ranks mean that in a majority of Iowa's 14 troop districts, none of the 250 to 275 officers assigned to roads is on duty at night.

The Nebraska State Patrol, in a cost-saving step, hasn't held a training academy for a new class of troopers since 2007. In the past year, 17 vacant positions were eliminated to help deal with budget shortfalls. Because of retirements and other job changes, eight other positions are now vacant.

That leaves the Nebraska patrol with 480 troopers on the job (about 200 of those patrol the roads, an additional 100 work in the truck weigh stations, and the rest have administrative or other duties).

The 488.5 sworn positions currently authorized for the Nebraska patrol are the lowest since 1989.

“We're trying to do more with less,” said Col. Bryan Tuma, patrol superintendent. “Is it more difficult? The answer is yes.”

Petersen, the trooper union representative in Nebraska, said it means that more off-duty troopers are being called in before or after their shifts to respond to accidents.

And more and more often, local sheriff's deputies or police officers are responding to calls in the middle of the night.

Calls to a half-dozen sheriffs in Nebraska elicited a mixed bag of responses. Some said they were lucky, that coverage by state troopers had not dropped in their area, but at least two said they've seen a decline.

“In the old days, it seemed like the troopers were a lot closer, a lot quicker to get to you,” said Scotts Bluff County Sheriff Jim Lawson. “Now with the economy and budget crunches, there are going to be longer response times.”

Technology is helping make up for the lack of bodies, according to State Patrol officials. The Nebraska patrol is halfway through an effort to install mobile data computers in all its patrol cars.

The computers allow troopers to file reports immediately on their in-car laptops. Information is electronically forwarded to a troop office.

Stanczyk said that saves troopers from having to drive a pile of papers to the troop office.

And increasingly, the State Patrol is relying on computers to help guide where and when they patrol. It's called a “data-driven'' approach to fighting crime and providing traffic services.

Through analysis of accident data and drunken-driving arrests, as well as citizen complaints about speeders, troopers learn where to focus their enforcement efforts.

There's also a greater focus on special enforcement, concentrating troopers on roads after concerts, town festivals and other events that generate high traffic.

A Metro Safety Initiative involving the State Patrol, Omaha police and the Douglas County Sheriff's Office, for instance, resulted in 1,700 traffic stops last summer.

Tuma, the State Patrol commander, is using the computer data to help tackle the top safety priority — reducing the number of traffic fatalities.

The goal is to bring the rate down — by 2011 — to one fatality per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, a 38 percent reduction from 2003.

By 2008, the rate had fallen to 1.1 fatalities per 100 million miles, but it rose a bit last year, to 1.16 fatalities, which Stanczyk attributed to an increase in miles driven.

He said 30 people, statistically, are alive today because of the falling rate of fatalities.

In Iowa, focusing the smaller ranks of troopers via computer data helped lower traffic deaths in the Hawkeye State to fewer than 400 in 2009. That had happened in only one other year since World War II.

Computer technology and special enforcement efforts have helped keep drunken-driving arrests on the rise. The Nebraska patrol logged 2,712 such arrests in 2009, up from 2,578 in 2008 and 2,205 in 2007.

The data-driven approach, Stanczyk said, means that less-traveled rural roads that aren't experiencing traffic fatalities are seeing fewer troopers.

But because of their concentration on high-volume, high-need roads, troopers are as visible as ever, he said.

“Even though we have reduced numbers, we can be as efficient as we always have.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9584, paul.hammel@owh.com

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