http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/local/scn-sa-nor.sros3nov29,0,6411216.story?coll=stam-news-local-headlines
By Brian Lockhart
Staff Writer
November 29, 2005
NORWALK -- A weekend of violence had Mayor Richard Moccia renewing his campaign pledge yesterday to hire more police officers to patrol streets and school parking lots.
"This is a No. 1 priority for me," he said at City Hall.
Moccia talked about several initiatives to fight crime, including boosting the number of police officers in coming years. Police Chief Harry Rilling is seeking to hire more than 20 new officers over the next six years, Moccia said.
Moccia's most immediate challenges are completing the combined dispatch center -- which would free up officers for patrol duties -- and filling the newly created high school resource officer positions.
At a news conference yesterday with Rilling, Moccia discussed the arrests of suspects on weapons charges and a shooting early Sunday afternoon outside a Westport Avenue shopping center.
A handful of other unsolved crimes also kept police busy this weekend, including: a shooting Friday night on Perry Avenue that left a city man with a non-life threatening bullet wound to the abdomen; a Saturday morning robbery on Ryan Avenue in which the suspect cut a taxi driver across the throat with a knife; and a Saturday night holdup in the Wall Street area in which two males -- one armed with a handgun -- forced a city man to withdraw cash from an ATM machine.
Moccia said this weekend's shootings and robberies "just reinforces what I said" during the campaign.
During his campaign against Democratic incumbent Alex Knopp, Republican Moccia used a spike in homicides and an uptick in youth violence to argue that the city is unsafe, despite an overall drop in most major crimes.
The weekend's incidents typify "why we need more police officers," he said.
Moccia is trying to increase police patrols to end months of delays in Knopp's efforts to merge the disparate fire and police dispatch offices and replace their uniformed staffs with civilians.
The new dispatch center in police headquarters has been under way for the past year, but problems updating the fire department's phone system kept five civilian dispatchers at the main fire station on Connecticut Avenue.
Moccia yesterday said a plan is in place to get those individuals moved over to the new dispatch center by mid-January, freeing five police officers for patrol duty.
Moccia has also inherited Knopp's plans to place police officers within each of the city's three high schools to create relationships, teach courses and augment existing private security forces. The officers would be hired from within the department's ranks and Rilling could then find three new hires to replace them on patrol.
Moccia has said he supports the hiring of the school resource officers but hopes the anticipated annual cost of about $375,000 will be funded through federal grants.
An application made three years ago by police for a federal grant to hire three school resource officers for three years is in limbo, Rilling said.
"We're told our grant is still under consideration," Rilling said.
In response to an increase in youth violence, Knopp in August proposed hiring the officers using the Board of Education's 2004-05 operating surplus.
Knopp and School Superintendent Salvatore Corda also recommended in future budget years that the resource officers be funded through money that paid for daily police patrols of schools' parking lots.
During his campaign, Moccia sided with the police union's position that the schools needed the resource officers and the parking lot patrols.
He said he met yesterday with U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Bridgeport, and asked him to help Norwalk obtain the federal grant to hire the school resource officers.
Shays said in a statement yesterday that his office is again contacting the Department of Justice to underscore the urgency of this grant.
However the positions are funded, Rilling hoped the school resource officers would be in place before the end of the current school year.
Moccia said it is up to the school board to decide whether it wants to continue funding the parking lot patrols but said he hoped to meet with Corda on the matter.
The new mayor appears to have Rilling's support.
"The more officers we have at a school, the safer that school's going to be," Rilling said. "We should opt for the highest level of security possible and then evaluate that practice and determine whether we want to continue or modify it. . . . If you have a school resource officer there and have arranged to have the lot patrolled in the way it is now, that's going to be a higher level of security."
School board Chairman Thomas Vetter, a Democrat, said last night he is not convinced the school resource officers can replace the parking lot patrols and would hold off on making any changes.
"We're not sure what the effect will be until we put the resource officers in," he said.
Moccia will soon begin crafting his first budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Rilling submitted his budget request to Finance Director Thomas Hamilton.
Neither Rilling nor Hamilton would discuss the 2006-07 request. Moccia yesterday said Rilling has notified him of a tentative plan to meet the department's current authorized staffing level of 179 officers -- it now has 173 -- and hire 20 more over six years.
"Obviously, we have budget concerns, (but) we're committed to trying to find the money to add more officers," Moccia said.
Moccia said during the campaign that he would seek grants to hire more police officers, but if that money is not available, residents would "understand we might have to cut other areas" to find the necessary money.
Moccia's budget will require approval from the Democratic majority of Common Council.
"If our recommended force strength is a certain number, should we be at our strength? Absolutely," newly elected council President Michael Coffey said. But Coffey said nothing has been proposed to the council by Rilling or Moccia.
"I'm sure the mayor will speak with us," Coffey said. "We're always willing to sit down to talk about these issues . . . Clearly, the council wants to reduce crime."
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