The Syracuse Police Department’s annual budget is now being reviewed by the city.
Overtime funds and academy classes were among the top priorities for the Syracuse Police Department as officials presented their budget to the city’s common councilors Monday. Chief Joe Cecile highlighted the department's issues with overtime funding. He said with the department short-staffed, overtime is needed to fill the gaps.
“Would 40 or so extra cops really eliminate all overtime?” Cecile said. “It wouldn’t eliminate all of it, but if you look at the combined hours of 40 or more officers, another 90,000 hours per year of patrol work, it would cut down on a great deal of it.”
But Cecile said the number of people applying for and interested in becoming police officers remains low.
“I can say confidently that if we were still getting the numbers of people still interested in becoming police officers and the numbers of people taking the civil service tests, even four years ago, we would be at full staff right now given the number of academies that Mayor Walsh has put on,” Cecile said. “But we just aren’t. Those large classes continue to elude us as they do for everyone around the country.”
And heading into summer, Cecile says other factors may impact overtime costs. The budget hearing had been delayed following the loss of Syracuse Police Officer Michael Jensen who died in the line of duty on April 14. Cecile said the loss of Jensen will continue to be felt by the police department, potentially impacting the amount of overtime work needed.
“When summer rolls around, we will still likely have officers on administrative leave from the situation we had,” Cecile said. “We have officers struggling with grief and shock and deciding whether they want to come back to work and how many hours they want to work a day. We’re going to do our best to give them as many services as we can, hook them up with therapists or whatever it takes, hugs, whatever it takes to get all those officers back. But you will likely see officers still struggling by the time summer comes around and we are going to have to backfill with overtime.”
Cecile also highlighted increasing technology costs and the end of some ARPA funding as having a significant impact on this year’s budget.
