New Haven’s next police chief faces a challenge — transforming a department widely acknowledged as broken — in return for a $105,079 annual salary.by Paul Bass | November 19, 2007 4:19 PM
New Haven’s next police chief faces a challenge — transforming a department widely acknowledged as broken — in return for a $105,079 annual salary.
The excitement of such a challenge is how one high-ranking administrator, Rob Smuts, hopes to see the city lure a top talent to replace Cisco Ortiz, who announced Monday that he’s resigning as chief to take a job with Yale University. (A story about the resignation can be found here.)
Meanwhile, a key city politician — Alex Rhodeen, chair of the Board of Aldermen’s Public Safety Committee — said the next chief needs to start with how civilian employees answer the phone at 1 Union Ave. and how officers respond to citizens in the field.
Rhodeen (pictured above at Monday’s City Hall press conference announcing Ortiz’s retirement) said a consensus has developed on the board: It’s not more money the police department needs. It’s smarter management, better training and deployment of resources. He sees the changing of the guard in the chief’s office as an opportunity to accomplish that.
“The resources we have now are appropriate. How they are managed is the real problem — and the obstacle to getting back to the level of service people expect,” Rhodeen said.
When a citizen calls the non-emergency police number to report a complaint, he or she often gets no answer, Rhodeen said. It can take several calls before someone picks up the phone.
Then it can take “one, two, six hours” for a police officer to show up, Rhodeen continued. “Residents feel officers [then] are quick to dismiss their concerns and point out there’s nothing they can do,” Rhodeen said. “That’s the experience people are having,” and that’s the first problem that needs to be fixed in order to establish the basic level of public trust and support that enable community policing to flourish.
Fixing the problem will involve “straightening out” how civilians deal with the public, deploying officers better so they can respond more quickly to complaints, and training officers so their interactions “leave residents believing that the police department is supporting them.”
A Chance To Mold A Force
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Mayor John DeStefano and Police Commission Chairman Richard Epstein emphasized Monday that the city plans to cast a wide net for a new chief capable of implementing the ambitious organizational shake-up outlined in a new experts’ report. (Click here, here, andhereto read the report and to read aboutit.)
The $105,079 the job pays may not seem like a lot to an experienced top cop staring at a department with devastated morale and broken systems. Unless the case can be made that this presents an opportunity to mold a department in a chief’s image.
City Chief Administrative Officer Smuts — whose portfolio includes overseeing the police department — made such a case when asked Monday how the city hopes to pitch the job to candidates.
“The department is in a really exciting place,” said Smuts (at right in above file photo, with Chief Ortiz). He noted that the city is in the process of hiring enough cops to raise the force to 494 sworn officers, up from the 420s. Seven out of eight captain positions are vacant, 11 out of 22 lieutenant positions, and seven sergeants, Smuts said.
“You get to shape the expectations and shape the direction” of a large chunk of newly promoted supervisors right from the start, he observed.
Plus, the city plans to hire two new assistant chiefs, likely from outside the department. The next chief will have a hand in picking those two assistants, according to Smuts. The chief will probably be hired before they are.