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General News: Village Board Critical of Police Study
October 21, 2009
Village officials are not impressed with the efficiency study of the Cornwall-on-Hudson police department conducted by the Division of Criminal Justice Services. On Monday, Village trustees and police chief found plenty to criticize in the study, which was commissioned as a step towards evaluating the merits of consolidating the small department with the larger one in the town of Cornwall.
Some Recommendations Are "Absurd"
Trustees Mark Edsall and Doug Vatter were in agreement that many of the report’s recommendations were “absurd” and based on faulty reasoning. They described how the study figured the cost of running the department on a cost-per-call basis. Under its calculations, each call a police officer responded to cost the village $68 , but it didn’t account for the time spent patrolling the village or performing routine services like assisting the school crosswalk guards, Edall said. Under that calculation, the village spent 64 percent of its $467,000 budget on making vacant house checks. Similarly, the cost of patrolling the riverfront to hand out parking tickets would run at least a quarter of a million dollars, Edsall calculated, while routine patrols had no cost assigned.
Routine Patrol Work Not Accounted For
Edsall said that he found it “bordered on the ridiculous” that DCJS didn’t take into account the cost of routine patrol work that is a major factor in the village’s low crime rate. He also said that he and trustee Vatter disagree with the recommendation to eliminate the midnight to 8 a.m. shift because of the low number of calls received during that period. Edsall pointed out that most incidents that occur at night are reported in the morning and he cautioned that the crime rate could go up if the nighttime patrol is eliminated.
Trustee Barbara Gosda also said she was somewhat disappointed with the long-anticipated study, noting that she would have liked more detailed recommendations on training, operations, administration and community policing. She did agree with its recommendation to reduce the number of vehicles in the department and said that some vacant house checks may go on for too long at the taxpayer’s expense.
No Proposed Coverage 24/7 in Village
Trustee Rick Gioia noted that the study appeared to corroborate the board’s observations of the operation of the police department under former Chief Charles Williams, but said that it didn’t offer much new useful information. Interim police chief Paul Weber, who was hired in September to replace the retiring Williams, said that he was disappointed in the study. Weber said that it proposes that the village could get police coverage from the town at a cost of about $200,000 but doesn’t say whether that would include an officer dedicated to the village 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He also noted that since becoming chief he has taken action on three of the nine recommendations in the preliminary report.
Department Headed in New Direction Regardless of Report
Mayor Joseph Gross agreed that the study falls short in many areas but noted that with new leadership of the police department, the need for the study of efficiencies may not be as urgent as it once was. “I am pretty happy to say that with the study or not, we are moving in a new direction,” Mayor Gross said. Any talks about how much to pay the town to provide police protection to the village should take place directly with town officials, he suggested.
The trustees agreed to submit their comments to the DCJS, although it was clear that they had little faith in the final document. They decided to push ahead with it because if they don’t, the report will remain private. It only becomes available for public scrutiny when the final version is released, according to the village attorney.
Comments:
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I fail to understand how the town can help the village when on two recent occasions during the day I called the town police and was told "no one was available at this time" but I have NEVER gotten that response from the Village police currently or over the years and additionally their response time at anytime of day or night has always been quick. So why change something from better to worse based on what sounds like flawed information a best?
posted by Diane Parodi on 10/22/09 at 12:36 PM
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