Expert: Jack Toomey - 4/10/2008

Question
QUESTION: Occasionally our newspaper has articles on the financial challenges facing our Police Chief's and Sheriff's due to the rising cost of almost everything. When I read other newspaper articles where one smaller police department in one city, merges with another larger police department in another city, it would seem to me that the smaller police department get's the better end of this deal, while the larger police department now has a BIGGER budget to try to deal with in these financially-trying times. And the larger police department has just added a lot more roads and buildings to patrol!

I guess this is a good idea. That is why I keep reading about it more and more all the time. In fact, our local school board's own police department has asked the county sheriff's department to "take over" their department, too.

I was wondering what you thought about this..

Thanks for the time. I look forward to hearing from you.



ANSWER: David,

  In all my life I have never heard of two police departments merging.  That would involve collective bargaining, sorting out retirement issues, salaries, rank structure, and many other things that I can think of.  In my area there aren't many small town departments.  The county police departments handle all calls for service within the county and a few small towns have two or three man departments who basically are there to make the townsfolk feel good.  In fact they would probably fight to keep their little departments instead of allowing them to merge.  Another reason that this would never happen in my state is because the larger departments have such high hiring standards and educational requirements for employment that the officers in the smaller towns would never qualify because typically they only have high school.

  Your county has a seperate police force for the school system?  Now that is another thing that I have never heard about except for the city of Los Angeles because I happen to have traded for one of their shoulder patches years ago.  In my area retired police officers provide the security for the high schools.  Usually two or three people, unarmed, per school, and it works out fine and there is almost no trouble.

  Sorry that I haven't really answered your question but at least you have a perspective on how other area of the country operate.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I can remember that the town of Mangonia Park, Florida merged with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's office, I believe it was a year or two ago. I read last year that the City of Lake Worth, Florida also was going to merge with the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. Today the School Board of Palm Beach County, which have their own police department for the schools, want's to merge with the Sheriff's Office.

Even our commuter railroad system has it's own police department. The railroad commuter system covers Palm Beach County, Broward County and Dade County.

I agree that merging is probably a very complicated nightmare that very smart people loose sleep over, but it seems to being done more and more locally.

The smallest police department that I know of here locally is Ocean Ridge, which is a mobile home park "town" that I read has 5 officers on the road per 8-hour shift, and 5 'bosses,' one of which is the chief. 20 officers total!

And the most interesting police department I read about in the local paper is on an island in Jupiter, Florida. Very wealthy people, with 20+ acre homes on the beach. The police department all dress like Swat, and the security camera systems cover 100% of the beach and roads. An 18-year old boy wanting to see his girl friend, according to the paper, tried climbing over one of the many security walls. He got 8 feet in the development before the police tackled him to the ground. They go around in golf carts...

Less noise...

Thanks very much for the answer. It was good.

Answer
No problem but I still don't understand how they manage a situation where officers from a smaller department, who merge into a larger department, on issues of pay, retirement, seniority, take home car eligibility, assignments, and anything else that would apply.  It has to cause a great deal of resentment between the two groups of officers because in the end someone has to get screwed.

In my area the county police department just bargained for 28% pay raise over the next three years in addition to a better retirement system.  I guess that it is not quite the same in other parts of the country.  But I wouldn't know since I have never worked anywhere but "here".