New London— When Police Chief Bruce Rinehart laid out the department's staffing prospects last week to the Public Safety Committee, the scenario he offered threw a scare into at least one city official.
“We need more police officers, more visible,” said City Councilor Margaret Curtin, who drives a cab in the city three days a week. “It's something we need to do in the immediate future,” she said.
While Curtin cited a disturbing amount of drug activity, traffic violations and dangerous school zones in the city, on Sunday afternoon residents of Willetts Avenue said the city needs more police after a man was shot twice in their neighborhood.
Rinehart gave a less-than-optimistic glimpse of hiring police officers for the near future, telling councilors William Cornish, Rob Pero and Curtin that it is difficult to get good people and becoming more difficult to keep them.
Rinehart said the department could lose from 10 to 15 people by next spring: Four are, or will soon be, eligible for retirement; at least four have applications pending for positions with other departments; and two officers, currently out of service because of long-term injuries, might retire.
But finding the replacements and getting them to come to New London has proved difficult, said Rinehart and the city's personnel director, Bernadette Welch.
Rinehart said eight officers have been hired in 2006: Four are working, three are at the police academy and one will attend the academy beginning in the next two weeks, he said.
Offsetting the hiring this year, however were six departures, including one who was hired in 2005.
“That was a great disappointment to us,” Rinehart said. The officer left during her field training. “We invested a lot of time and money in her, and she just decided, after all, that the job wasn't for her.”
The department gets officers in two ways. One is to go through the Law Enforcement Council (LEC), a sort of clearinghouse for departments across the state, which administers its own tests and provides a large pool of candidates from which all interested towns and cities can draw. The other is when the city sometimes advertises its own openings and holds it own tests.
Rinehart recalled a time when there was a starting pool of about 40 potential officers in the LEC program. After initial testing, the number plummeted to 20, he said. Many drop out of the academy, Rinehart said. Finally, 11 officers qualified.
Ten went elsewhere, he said. New London came away with one officer.
Starting salary for a New London police officer is about $40,000. Rinehart said other cities offer better starting pay and sometimes even signing bonuses.
New London is waiting on a new LEC class to emerge from recent testing. Once they have done that, the candidates are qualified to go to police officer training academy. During that process, they are asked whether they are looking for work in a specific town, or anywhere.
Those who choose anywhere and those whose choice is New London are up for consideration by city personnel. “We hope to end up with (a pool of ) 10,” Welch said. “From that, we'll get three or four. We'll hire as many as we can. When we reach the point where we have to come back to the City Council, we'll be back.”
The city budget identifies 65 members in the police department, including 52 patrol officers, the chief, three captains, three lieutenants and six detectives. Rinehart would like to have as many as 86 police officers. The council authorizes 81.
Rinehart's outlook sent the committee, chaired by Cornish, into an impromptu brainstorming exercise to find ways to augment the ranks. Their ideas included the immediate rehiring of retirees to work part-time or as consultants; creating job descriptions that would allow the city to hire people to perform noninvestigative tasks, getting drug dogs, and even supplementing the police force with state troopers.
Rinehart told the committee that part-time officers are not as feasible as they were in the past because officers would have to maintain a 480-hours-per-year training regimen, far more than in years gone by. He said part-time officers are not motivated to put in that kind of time.
“Some of the things you ask, cops will say 'If we need them done, then hire more officers,' ” Rinehart said. “As soon as you have civilians doing bargaining unit's work, you have a problem.”
Union President Marshall “Chip” Segar said the union would not be opposed to talking about supernumeraries, part-time officers or other means to help lighten the officers' load.
“Understanding that they are just proposals,” he said, “they would all have to be negotiated, but the union would not be obstructionist. ”
Segar said the city is in a difficult time. Many departments in the region are seeking officers and are able to offer more attractive packages than New London. He said New London is a victim of supply and demand at a time when it is also financially strapped.