Syracuse City Auditor Alex Marion released a report Monday saying the city's police department shouldn't be required to oversee things like parking enforcement, business licenses, and school crossing guards.
There’s no magic number in a consultant's staffing report when it comes to how many police officers should be patrolling the streets of Syracuse. But, there are suggestions meant to make the police department more efficient and effective.
When a regular crossing guard didn’t show up at a Syracuse school crossing recently, a sergeant with the Syracuse Police Department was forced to escort kids across the street. That’s because according to the City Charter, the police department is in charge of crossing guards. Police Chief Joe Cecile said it’s not a good use of a trained police officer’s time.
"An officer that could be taking a call, patrolling his area, preventing crime is now standing in an intersection," Cecile said. "I don't want to say it's not important to get children across the street so they get to school safely, but as an officer, tied up, it could be five to ten officers and any given day tied up on crossing."
One of the suggestions in the Common Council-commissioned report by the Matrix Consulting Group, would shift crossing guard duty as well as other non-police type jobs, elsewhere. It’s one of ten priority recommendations that City Auditor Alex Marion said can create a sleeker, more productive police department.
"Our law enforcement officers are some of our highest trained, most expensive employees," Marion said. "We need to get them doing the work that is most essential that people with that training and experience do."
It’s something that won’t happen over night. The crossing guard issue alone requires changing the City Charter. There are issues with union contracts. And a proposal to create a Syracuse Police Civil Service exam requires cooperation from Onondaga County. Marion though believes the report can be the first step towards making changes.
"If we have everyone reading off the same sheet of music, we can get the song out there," Marion said. "And right now, this study is the same sheet of music that everyone can read off of. So I think that we can get folks moving in the right direction on a lot of these issues."
As far as making a dent in the chronic problem of spending millions of dollars on overtime in the department, Cecile expects that could be a harder nut to crack. For example, the city recently started a new after party patrol in certain neighborhoods and he said it’s been successful in stopping violence, but it relies on overtime.
"All these cost savings things we're getting on one end," Cecile said. "There are things happening in the city that are forcing us to spend money elsewhere. And we may not hit budget again next year for overtime hours."
Marion expects lawmakers to hold a meeting to dive into the particulars of the report.
