Colona police want to hire a new officer
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By Dustin Lemmon | Saturday, December 08, 2007 |
Retirements and surprise resignations can be an even bigger problem for small-town police departments than they are for their big-city counterparts.
Over the past year, Colona, Ill., has struggled to keep up with overtime expenses after two retirements and a resignation.
Colona Police Chief Tim Krebs recently asked city leaders if they could hire an additional officer in the coming year.
The city of about 5,000 residents has two officers in training who will soon bring them to full staff with 10 full-time officers, but an additional officer would help if a similar problem arises in the future, the chief said. Larger cities in the area with 40,000 or more residents have anywhere from 50 to 100 officers.
Krebs said the city will look at including another officer in its next budget. In the meantime, the city has $5,000 left in its $35,000 police overtime budget to last until April.
“I had to adjust how the officers were taking time off and only make it one officer per day,” Krebs said, adding the department’s seven part-time officers have been helping out.
Krebs himself has been doing some patrol duties.
He noted that it takes about six months from the time an inexperienced officer is hired to the time they’re ready to patrol on their own. They first have to spend 12 weeks at the police academy and then another few months of training with an experienced officer.
“This is a growing pain for our city,” he said.
Krebs said the department has two officers who are eligible to retire, but he doesn’t expect them to do so right away.
Colona Mayor Danny McDaniel said there was a special meeting among city leaders to discuss hiring another officer. He estimates it would cost the city $50,000 to $60,000 more per year.
“You can’t really put a price tag on public safety,” he said.
McDaniel said this is the first time he can recall the city having a problem with staffing shortages.
“Hopefully, it all comes in one year and we don’t have anymore problems with it for a while,” he said.
Other cities with a population similar to that of Colona have also looked at adding more officers.
Milan Police Chief Mark Beckwith said his department recently added a 14th full-time officer to keep up with the city’s growth and rising service calls. With future annexation he expects to need an even bigger staff.
Milan has no staff shortages at the moment, but resignations can be difficult to predict and plan for.
“If they don’t have the academy training, they’re looking at being gone for 12 weeks,” Beckwith said of new officers. “That could put you in a bind for months.”
Beckwith said it’s not safe for officers to not have backup, even in a small town.
“People can’t just say we’re a small community and we only need one officer out there,” he said. “There are calls that require no less than two” officers.
Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com.
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