City to name assistant police chief

AARON LEO
Article Last Updated: 09/02/2008 12:24:54 AM EDT

City to name assistant police chief - Topix

BRIDGEPORT — The city is re-establishing the job of assistant police chief, an administrator whose goal will be to help cut the huge overtime piled up by the department.

"This person is going to be critical to the chief in reining in an out-of-control police overtime budget," Mayor Bill Finch said of the non-union post.

The Police Department overspent its overtime budget by $1.3 million in the last fiscal year, and is poised to burn through its reduced $4.5 million overtime budget for 2008-09 in six or seven months, Finch said. He has ordered Chief Bryan T. Norwood to halve overtime spending.

The assistant chief job would be salaried, not subject to overtime and would likely be filled from within the department's ranks, according to the mayor.

The position doesn't violate the city's contract with the Bridgeport Police Union Local 1159, said Officer Frank Cuccaro, union president. The pact expired on June 30.

The job was approved in 2002 by the city's Civil Service Commission, and again last month, said Ralph Jacobs, the city's personnel director.

"The chief needed someone who is not affiliated with the union, a direct assistant," Jacobs said.

The chief is now the only member of the department who doesn't belong to the union.

The new job would add to the number of supervisors in the department. There are four deputy chiefs, the next-highest rank, who are paid annual salaries of $85,803 to $94,425.

Two of those chiefs, Joseph Gaudett Jr. and James Honis, were among the top 10 overtime earners last year, which angered Finch.

He said that he isn't opposed to patrol officers being paid overtime, but doesn't think supervisors should. Also on that overtime list were lieutenants and sergeants.

Cutting overtime is actually the deputy chiefs' jobs, and Norwood should be preventing them from earning overtime, Cuccaro said.

"That's the chief's job, to rein in his people," the union president said.

But Cuccaro also suggested dismantling the Neighborhood Enforcement Team — a point in contention between the union and the chief, who says he has the right to assign officers of his choosing to the unit — to bolster patrol and reduce overtime. That would return about a dozen officers and a sergeant to regular duty.

Norwood handpicked the members of the team, which takes on a range of quality-of-life crime issues rather than handling daily calls. That subjective selection process violated the union contract's seniority clause, a state arbitrator has ruled. The city is appealing that in court, and the squad remains in service.

Finch also said he wants to restructure the Police Department by removing more supervisors from the union and changing seniority-based selection for squads to right of assignment by the chief.

The current setup isn't good for running a "fiscally prudent police department," he said.

Norwood has already disbanded the Traffic Division, which had 12 officers, and other units may also be closed, with the officers being re-assigned to patrol duties. The union has identified the Mounted and K-9 units and the Tactical Narcotics Team as possible targets for future cuts.

The assistant chief's position must now be reviewed by the Miscellaneous Matters Committee of the City Council.

"The concept of the job is as far as it's gone," Jacobs said.

The last assistant chief in the department was Karen Krasicky, who retired in 2005 to lead the Plymouth Police Department. The assistant chief before her was the late Robert Mangano.