The Madison Police Department announced plans Friday to reduce the city's popular neighborhood officers from 14 to 11 beginning in January. The decision will affect several downtown communities.
MPD Police Chief Noble Wray said the neighborhood officer program began in 1986, and the officers have been extremely popular and effective in curbing crime and violence ever since but are very expensive to maintain.
"[The neighborhood officers] are a premium in terms of a resource," Wray said at Thursday's City Council meeting. "It would be very expensive to staff the entire city with these officers."
With the money allocated to MPD in Mayor Dave Cieslewicz's budget, Wray said police will continue research and studies to determine the efficiency of neighborhood officers. The officers offer solutions to community problems and are an addition to existing police forces, he added.
"We look at a neighborhood officer as an example of problem solving for a particular neighborhood under certain conditions," Wray said.
Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, said it is not unusual for MPD to "phase out" officers after the crime in a neighborhood reduces dramatically because at that point, they are no longer necessary and their productivity drops. But he also said that oftentimes residents get to know the police on a personal level and feel something is missing when their neighborhood officer gets taken away.
"The neighborhood officer program is very popular — most neighborhoods take a very quick liking to their officers and come to really love them and depend on them in many cases," Verveer noted.
But after the officer leaves the neighborhood, he added, residents see drastic changes in the feel of the area.
"It's very difficult for many in the neighborhood … to know that they are supposed to be happy when their officers leave because that means crime rates decreased," Verveer said. "It is kind of a tough pill to swallow because [residents] really come to depend on the neighborhood police officer."
When a neighborhood officer gets eliminated from an area, he added, the officer is simply re-assigned to another position within the department, though not always to another neighborhood.
Verveer also said one of the city's budget amendments would have provided funding for permanent neighborhood officers to avoid reductions like these, but it failed to gain approval by other City Council members.
Verveer said the success of these officers so far has been a phenomenal resource for everyone, including students. Additional funds for neighborhood officers, he added, would have created better relationships between police and students. Currently, in the campus area only State Street and Langdon Street have their own police officers.
"It would be a neat experiment to have one cop work in student neighborhoods … that could deal with house party issues in a kinder, gentler way during the day and on a proactive basis," he said. "But the police would really have to change their staffing to make that happen."
