Police chief eyes layoffs

WORLD-HERALD EXCLUSIVE
The Omaha Police Department may need to lay off police officers next year under the budget just approved by the City Council, Chief Alex Hayes said Friday.

“It's definitely going to be a reduction in staffing,” Hayes said.

The Police Department now has 800 sworn officers on the payroll, 20 shy of its authorized strength. The 800 includes 48 trainees who are riding with seasoned police officers but aren't yet counted as officers from an operations standpoint, Hayes said.

The total will drop into the 700s next year, he said.

The anticipated reduction in the number of officers, combined with other cost-cutting measures, will mean that police might be slower to investigate misdemeanor crimes, he said.

“As the staffing levels drop, the response time will increase,” the chief said.

In addition, community groups holding parades might need to start paying the city for traffic control, he said.

Hayes expects as many as 20 veteran officers to retire in September, before the newly approved, less-generous police contract goes into effect. Even with those departures, Hayes said, it's possible he will have to lay off officers to meet the budget.

“I'm going to do everything I can to reduce expenditures to not lay people off,” Hayes said. “But with that said, we still have to operate a police department.

“We're about as thin as we can be,” he said. “That's why we're at the point where layoffs are a possibility.”

The mayor's proposed 2011 budget for the Police Department was $106.8 million. That included an $8 million increase from this year's $98.8 million.

Council members scaled back the increase to $2.8 million, Hayes said. Almost all of that, he said, will be needed to cover pay increases set out in the new contract.

City Councilman Chris Jerram has said the council's cuts would trim the next police recruit class from 30 to 17. He reiterated Friday that the council left $1.1 million in the budget for police recruits.

But Hayes said the budget won't allow him to hire a recruit class in December, as planned. He noted that as officers retire, he won't replace them.

Jerram said it's up to department heads to determine what is cut.

“We're not going to micromanage them,” Jerram said.

“He may say he doesn't have any other choices, but that's his decision,” Jerram said of the police chief. “I'd like to think that between September and January that the chief has a chance to sit back and explore other alternatives. But ultimately, how he decides to implement it is up to him.”

Mayor Jim Suttle decided Friday not to veto any of the spending cuts approved Tuesday by the City Council. If he had, the council probably would have had enough votes for an override.

Hayes said that on a given day, the department has 720 to 730 officers on duty, with vacations, illnesses and extended leaves figured in. While getting the 48 recruits up to speed will help greatly, he said, “we need more people to do what we want to do. Going the other way isn't going to help much.”

Hayes said he wouldn't want officer numbers to dip below 110 assigned to any one shift, noting that the evening shift has the most officers on duty, followed by the day shift and the midnight shift. The staffing numbers aren't yet close to falling below that threshold, he said.

The news of potential staff reductions wasn't welcomed by the president of the Omaha police union.

It doesn't make sense to budget for a smaller department “when we just recently were able to get a little closer to our authorized strength,” Aaron Hanson said. “Part of the reason you've seen Chief Hayes and the Police Department being so effective on crime in north Omaha and the homicide rate is we've been close to getting adequate manpower.

“My fear would be a backslide in our ability to be effective.”

Hanson said that under terms of the police contract, part-time and seasonal officers would have to be laid off before full-time officers could be.

The council's budget changes also reduced the number of new police cruisers the department planned to buy, from 44 to 34. That number might be reduced further to save money, Hayes said, but the age of the fleet is a safety concern for both the officers and the public.

Jerram said he was open to considering Hayes' idea of charging groups for a police presence at parades.

“I would always look into and consider with an open mind innovative approaches like that to address city costs,” he said.

Hayes said his staff is researching whether that would require an ordinance change.

The chief said he isn't upset with the council for making the trims.

“It's one of those deals where everybody's trying to do the best they can to make it through the recession. It's tough times. … Everybody's going to have to do some sacrificing.”

Contact the writer: 444-1109, bob.glissmann@owh.com

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