County lawmakers and members of the municipal police forces throughout Schenectady County are opposed to the idea of a countywide police force suggested after numerous acts of misconduct amongst several members of the Schenectady City Police force.
I received numerous calls from residents and officials throughout the county, expressing concern over the remarks of [City of Schenectady] Mayor [Brian] Stratton regarding the abolishment of local police agencies and the establishment of a countywide police force,` said Susan Savage, D-Niskayuna, in a written statement.
She said that shifting the underlying problems facing the city police department to another level of government would not solve the problem.
Some officials said sharing resources would benefit law enforcement, but won’t go as far as to advocate a consolidation of forces.
`I am certainly an advocate of sharing services under the right conditions. I also believe that consolidating some police departments can, in fact, be a good idea ` but not necessarily under the circumstance that we’re facing now,` said Michael Ranalli, Chief of Police for the Town of Glenville.
`We work very well with the Schenectady police department and we will continue to do so, and we will assist them in any manner that we can and hope that they will continue to assist us as we do on an ongoing basis,` said Renalli.
John Pitlovaney, Chief of Police for the Town of Scotia, discussed both the positive and negative benefits of consolidating police forces ultimately stating that he thought it was a bad idea.
`There are certain areas where a consolidated police department would be better,` said Pitlovaney.
`Certainly the sharing of communities and the different staffing levels and so forth, the technology, and the possibility of being able to purchase things cheaper and in larger quantities,` said Pitlovaney.
However, he said that if they’re looking to save money, he hasn’t seen where consolidations have achieved that goal.
`I know it’s a different issue here, as to why they want to consolidate, but … consolidating police departments wouldn’t fix the problems that the Schenectady City Police Department are having, so if you’re consolidating in order to try and repair the Schenectady City Police Department, as most of the politicians have come out and said, that’s not the fix,` said Pitlovaney.
Besides the fact that the Town of Niskayuna is pleased with their police force, Niskayuna Town Supervisor Joe Landry spoke about logistical problems of consolidating police forces.
`We have great service here in Niskayuna. The residents really appreciate what their police force does and they pay for that through their tax dollars. If you were to consolidate and form a countywide police department, the concerns would be, where are most of the police forces going to be working? Will you get the same amount of service? Will you see the same police officers in town?,` said Landry.
`In town, probably not, so we are very concerned as to what would happen if you were to consolidate the police forces, and as far as cost, we don’t know where the cost would be,` said Landry.
He said they might be a little concerned that even if costs are the same, they wouldn’t be getting the same services that they’re used to.
Chris Gardner, Schenectady County attorney, said there are many reasons dissolving the city’s police force and creating a countywide one would not work.
`In essence, there are some false arguments going on about consolidation and I can think of [several] off the top of my head,` said Gardner.
`The first one is that you cannot discipline Schenectady’s police officers. Discipline right now is covered for the Schenectady police force under the Second Class Cities Law, which replaces the contract provision which had been in place for many, many years,` said Gardner.
Under section 137 of the Second Class Cities Law, Gardner said in an e-mail to The Spotlight, the Police Commissioner is the sole trier of fact and the sole determiner of punishment to be meted out, subject only to limited court review. Gardner said that based upon recent court decisions, that provision supplants the union contract provision. He said that although the police union has challenged the position, section 137, essentially, is not going to change. He said that Section 137 grants the City even greater authority to impose discipline ` more than under any contract or any other provision of law.
The second point, Gardner said, is that under the Taylor Law, or the New York State Public Employees Fair Employment Act, the city cannot unilaterally transfer non-bargaining work to non-bargaining employees without a union agreement.
`What that means is that you have to negotiate the unit transfer work, so in order to get the union’s agreement, one would imagine that you need the new entity to agree to take on the old police officers with the same or better contract,` said Gardner. `You’d really have quite a bit of work, not to say it couldn’t be done, but what would tend to happen so you could get the agreement from of all of these groups, is that the most favorable employee contracts would tend to prevail,` he said.
Gardner added that this is not a partisan issue.
`Joe Landry, Supervisor of Niskayuna, is on record opposing this ` he’s a Democrat, but Steve Tommasone, Republican supervisor of the Town of Rotterdam, is also opposed,` said Gardner.
`There are a lot of great police officers in the Schenectady City police department ` the vast majority ` and there might be a few who have a problem,` Gardner said. `Not every police officer who engages in misconduct needs to be fired for some sort of off-duty misconduct, which is relatively minor, or an alcohol issue ` you can get them into a treatment program and preserve their careers.`
He said that ultimately it’s up the Mayor, the City Council and the Police Commissioner to look at each case individually. `If someone has been charged criminally five times in a year, you know there’s problem there,` said Gardner.“