Overtime To Play Key Factor In Stamford Police Budget

Stamford city officials are in the midst of drafting a 2012-2013 budget for the SPD with the intent of hopefully finding a way to balance officer overtime with a manpower shortage growing in severity.

"Their major concern is to keep taxes as low as possible. Sometimes, that has a negative impact on services," Stamford Board of Representatives Randall Skigen said.

"We are desperately still behind the numbers we need for a city this size, and is constantly growing. So, I think we would have to revisit what we were asking for last year, which is a raise in manpower to bring us up to the proper staffing levels between, 315 and 325," Stamford Police Association president Joe Kennedy said.

According to Kennedy, SPD's manpower shortage may have undesirable effects felt throughout the police department and the city of Stamford. Unlike Stamford's annual education budget, which is complete enough to be presented to the Board of Education, Stamford's police budget is still being prepared.

"What happens is political football with departmental overtime. Certain politicians will blame the chief of police for going overbudget, because they know that in any business, it's cheaper to pay overtime than it is pay a salaried employee with all the benefits, pension, obligations, and things of that nature," Kennedy said.

"It really is quite a shell game, but when you're trying to provide safety for citizens, you need a certain amount of police officers to do that, and we are, I'm going to say 35-to-50 officers behind."

Overtime is the only way that most SPD officers can afford to live in Fairfield County, according to Kennedy, and while there are certainly officers willing to do overtime for that reason, excess overtime coupled with a manpower shortage creates a fatigue issue.

"It also becomes an issue of public safety," Kennedy said.

"We have a lot more officers working to keep crime low, but too much overtime can cause burnout. Numbers have been dropping for years...we're reaching a critical point," Skigen said.

There are downsides to hiring more officers, however.

"The only negative to hiring is that if you're doing it in a forced situation and you're going to relax your hiring standards, you're subjecting yourself to potential problems down the road," Kennedy said.

"It takes a long time to hire, train, and put police officers on the street," Policy and Management director Pete Privitera said.

In 2011, a $53,137,160 police budget was estimated for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, with $3,600,000 of that set aside for overtime. In 2010, $4,055,984 was put into overtime with an overall department budget of $45,481,945.

In October, recently-elected Board of Finance members Mary Lou Rinaldi, John Louizos, and David Martin that they would be flexible in their budgetary dealings with SPD.