Will Chief Noble Wray listen to the City Council or do his own thing? And if he does, what does that mean?
During the budget, we added $50,000 for a staffing study for the police department. That staffing study is different that the previous staffing oversight committees that the Common Council has set up to provide a report to us. This time, we’re hiring an outside consultant and it is unclear if there will be an public oversight committee or not.
During the budget, I originally introduced an amendment saying that the 10 new police officers should be neighborhood police officers, but I replaced it with an amendment that said:
A police staffing subcommittee shall be established by the Common Council to review the police staffing report funded in the 2007 budget, if completed, and shall make recommendations to the Common Council and Police Chief which shall include, but not be limited to recommendations regarding the number of neighborhood officers, the staffing levels for Community Policing Teams and other community policing initiatives. This committee shall report back to the Common Council by October 1, 2007.
It was the subject of much debate and it ultimately was the one amendment I introduced that failed. For more details, see amendment #13 here.
Interestingly enough, I later get a phone call from Paul Skidmore (who supported my amendment) asking me to support his resolution that asks the Chief to not pull the neighborhood officers until the staffing report it done. And I agreed.
Chief Wray maintains that these neighborhoods no longer need the police officers. Others think that they are part of what is stabilizing the neighborhoods and removing them from these fragile neighborhoods may cause the progress the neighborhoods have made to go backwards. But, behind those arguments, is the one about if the Council should have a role in what happens in the police department or if we just give over your tax dollars and let them do their thing the rest of the year without any input.
Tonight at the council meeting, we’ll get to sort through what this all means and find out where relations with Common Council and the Police Chief are at. And if Mike Hanson was speaking for the Chief when he recently made these statements in the Isthmus:
Alders to cops: Don’t go!
Wray opposes the measure. “The chief of police, and only the chief of police, can assign personnel,” says MPD spokesman Mike Hanson. “So it wouldn’t be prudent for the Common Council to start advising him where police resources are to be allocated.”
Hanson adds that police can’t wait for the staffing study to be completed in 2007, because the department needs to reassign staff in January. “Those resources are needed back on patrol and for implementing another community police team for the south side.”
Or is Chief Wray interested in our input and that of the public? Should be interesting.
