The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.
To the editor:
I like the Croton police. Having had personal experience with the Westchester County Police, I have serious reservations about having the county provide police coverage. That being said, the May 29 memorandum of Village Manager Janine King defending the cost of the Croton police is both offensive to the people of Croton and unprofessional.
Trustee John Habib suggested that the village undertake a cost/benefit study of the Croton Police Department (The Gazette, week of May 21/27). In her memorandum, Ms. King says that this suggestion “may have undermined morale by expressing doubt as to their worth.”
If the mere suggestion of a cost/benefit study has undermined the morale of the Croton Police Department, then we have a leadership problem with the Village Manager and Police Chief. Most of us have jobs where we are evaluated and assessed.
Much as I think Chief Harper and his force have done a great job, they are not above scrutiny and I was surprised by the suggestion that the Croton police might take offense because of a legitimate question raised by a member of the Board of Trustees charged with oversight of the police department.
Ms. King says that the value of having our own police department “cannot be measured in dollars and cents.” After saying this, Ms. King then sets out a dollars and cents analysis measuring the value of the Croton police department. I recommend that every Croton taxpayer read Ms. King’s memorandum. Not only do her own numbers not support her conclusion, they support Mr. Habib’s recommendation for a cost analysis of the department.
The town of Cortlandt pays $1,043,761 per year. Cortlandt has roughly 43,000 residents. If you deduct the 8200 residents of Croton and the 2300 residents of Buchanan, that means that Cortlandt is spending roughly $32 per capita to cover 32,500 residents.
The town of Ossining pays $2,222,605 per year. If you take the 38,000 town residents and deduct the 25,000 village residents, that means that Ossining is spending roughly $171 per capita to cover 13,000 residents.
The village of Buchanan is the only outlier. Due to its small population of 2300, the $1.8 million budget (for 5 officers) works out to $782 per capita. The only reason the residents can afford this is because 46 percent of their budget comes from Indian Point, so in reality the taxpayers only have to come up with $422 per capita. Now that Indian Point is closing down, Buchanan is in discussions to join with Cortlandt’s police contract.
Croton pays $4,533,744 to cover 8200 people, or roughly $552 per capita. So a Croton couple with 2 children is paying on average $2,208 each year for police coverage—considerably more than nearby communities.
Cortlandt taxpayers pay $32 per capita, Ossining taxpayers pay $171, Buchanan taxpayers pay $422 (net of Indian Point money), and Croton taxpayers pay $552.
Ms. King’s memorandum justifies the cost of the Croton PD by computing cost per officer. But this is at best a metric not relevant to whether an acceptable level of service can be provided more efficiently by an alternate law enforcement agency. We may simply be overly policed. The fact is that the community to the north of Croton and the community to the south of Croton both pay significantly less per capita for police coverage.
I don’t think that Supervisor Puglisi and Supervisor Levenberg are putting the lives of their residents at risk. But let us assume that we in Croton want a level of policing suitable for an upscale community. Even by that standard, Croton is paying top dollar.
Darien Connecticut is one of the wealthiest communities in the nation, with a household income roughly double that of Croton. It has 22,000 residents who can afford to pay for a police force which is well-compensated and has made Darien the safest community in Connecticut year after year. To achieve this, the wealthy taxpayers shelled out $7,384,850 last year—in other words, about $336 per person.
“I am disappointed by the fact that the Village Manager and Police Chief won’t even acknowledge the economic hardship facing residents and are unwilling to undertake the same type of post-Covid cost/benefit analysis that most of us are undertaking at our own workplace. I am not asking for a reduction in per capita cost to match other municipalities, but it would be helpful if Chief Harper engaged in a dialogue with we the taxpayers. I think the Chief is making a mistake in not having such discussions: many Croton residents support our hometown police but we are concerned about the skyrocketing cost and office space demands being placed on taxpayers.”
If Darien can manage to keep its citizens safe for $336 per capita, is it unreasonable to ask Croton why we are spending $552 per capita?
I am not opposed to keeping the Croton police force the way it is now. But it is quite reasonable for a Village Trustee charged with a duty to represent taxpayers to explore the possibility of saving taxpayer dollars. That is particularly true as we prepare to spend another five million dollars on a massive expansion of the police department to consume the entire first floor of the Municipal Building.
An ominous sign of police budgets to come was during last fall’s discussion of the police capital budget where we were told that the Croton PD needs to prepare for a “black swan” event. Normally we might be tempted to dismiss this as another jumped-the-shark buzzword that our Board of Trustees is fond of using, but my guess is that we taxpayers are being prepared for a “black swan” blank check.
Does anyone seriously believe that this new Police Palace will not result in an expansion of mission and…. cost? So far we have seen no indication that the police budget will even be contained, let alone reduced. I rather suspect that most of us in Croton will be taking home less money in 2021, if we are not suffering from income decline already. The readers of this newspaper are cutting their budgets, and asking the same financial restraint from our police department seems reasonable.
Yet when we ask whether policing can be made more efficient we “may have undermined morale” of the Croton police force? Seriously? Village Manager King and Chief Harper don’t have to worry about pay cuts or furloughs or employers reducing 401(k) pension matching. But most of us living in Croton do have to worry about the fragile economy. If things don’t improve quickly, many of us will be out of a job. The Village Manager should remember that most people in Croton don’t have her level of pay nor her level of job security.
I am disappointed by the fact that the Village Manager and Police Chief won’t even acknowledge the economic hardship facing residents and are unwilling to undertake the same type of post-Covid cost/benefit analysis that most of us are undertaking at our own workplace. I am not asking for a reduction in per capita cost to match other municipalities, but it would be helpful if Chief Harper engaged in a dialogue with we the taxpayers. I think the Chief is making a mistake in not having such discussions: many Croton residents support our hometown police but we are concerned about the skyrocketing cost and office space demands being placed on taxpayers.
A final consideration which the Village Manager and Board of Trustees refuse to discuss is the impact of laws being proposed at the state and national level. I am personally opposed to much of what is being proposed and I think that it is an over-reaction to the actions of a tiny number of rogue police officers. But the reality is that these laws will increase litigation against police officers and the governmental entity which employs them. Indeed a key goal of these laws is to change police behavior by increasing liability for law enforcement officers.
There is a rabid anti-police feeling driving legislation in Albany this week, and even talk in Washington of doing away with Section 1983 qualified immunity. Regardless of how you feel about the desirability of such legislation, it dramatically increases the risk for a community of 8,200 people which has its own police department. The Board of Trustees needs to tell us: how will Croton manage the increased liability risk, whether this risk can be adequately managed through insurance, and what the cost will be.
I would prefer to keep the Croton police department rather than switch to using the county police. In particular, both Chief Harper and his predecessor Chief Tramaglini maintained good relations with the hispanic community, which is more than can be said for the county police. There is a benefit to having a police force with roots in the community it serves. But such a choice should be made with the full knowledge as to how much extra that is going to cost us.
Cortlandt is spending $1,043,761 versus Croton spending $4,533,744. Over the course of a decade, that equates to almost $35 million dollars! Add in the $5 million police department expansion and you have Croton taxpayers paying an excess of $40 million dollars versus our neighbors in Cortlandt.
Even for the spendthrift members of the Croton Board of Trustees, the potential to save forty million dollars over the next decade should cause the trustees to consider a cost/benefit analysis such as that proposed by Mr. Habib. I understand and share the emotional attachment we all have to the Croton Police, but we are talking about an annual police department budget in excess of $4.5 million.
The Board of Trustees owes Croton taxpayers a duty to make a decision based on both emotional attachment and prudent financial management.
Paul Steinberg