Police overtime in Allentown “is a runaway train,” declared City Council president Roy O’Connell Wednesday night.
“We’re deploying way too many officers at the arena,” declared O’Connell. “That has to be pulled back.”
O’Connell revealed that $1.4 million was budgeted for police overtime in 2014, “but we ended up spending $2,032,000. We exceeded what was budgeted for overtime by $632,000. We can’t continue to do that.”
He also reported police overtime totaled nearly $250,000 for just the first two months of this year.
“The city cannot afford a quarter of a million dollars every two months,” said O’Connell. “We have to begin to control the overtime.”
City Council member Daryl Hendricks, a former city police officer, said: “We went through this much money in the months of January and February, which were some of the coldest on record — ever.
“That’s the time when we should have been cutting back. The [criminal] activity on the streets is very limited at those times of year. Now we’re looking at springtime, when there’s going to be a lot more activity.”
The city wants a highly visible police presence around the PPL Center multi-purpose hockey arena, as well as restaurants and other businesses surrounding it, to ensure visitors downtown Allentown is safe and keep them coming back.
O’Connell had a message for both Police Chief Joel Fitzgerald and Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who were not at the Wednesday public safety committee meeting: “We need to get the business community more involved. How do we get them more involved? Money.
“They are getting a wonderful benefit. The restaurants are full, the buildings are full. Everything’s great. It’s the best thing to ever happen in Allentown in 25 or 30 years.”
But O’Connell said the city needs to get the business community to help defray police overtime costs.
Francis Dougherty, Allentown’s managing director, said the mayor is “extremely concerned” about the use of police overtime.
“The mayor is, and has been, attempting to work with the business community to ensure that they pay their fair share,” said Dougherty. “He has not gotten very far.”
Added Dougherty: “They need to step up and pay their fair share for the fine coverage the police department gives them.”
“Someone needs to make them step up quickly,” said O’Connell.
The council president explained when city police work inside the arena, “the arena people pick up the tab. Anybody outside the arena, it’s overtime.”
He was unable to persuade an assistant police chief at the meeting to give him even an estimate of how many city police officers are assigned to work outside the arena during hockey games, concerts and other events.
O’Connell is not on City Council’s public safety committee but obviously wanted to speak out on the police overtime issue.
The three members of the committee, Jeanette Eichenwald, Joe Davis and Hendricks, supported his position.
“I know it’s easy to say that they’re not going to pay, but there’s a fairness issue here,” said Eichenwald, chair of the committee.
“It is as important to the management of the arena as it is to the management of the police department that the safety of the citizens be considered.
“I just don’t think we can sustain this, as the arena has more events and more venues, clubs and restaurant open.”
Davis said police have to protect citizens, but overtime seems to be “a little bit overboard” right now.
Davis doesn’t understand how businesses benefitting from the revitalized center-city — and the increased police presence — can say no to helping pay O.T. “They must realize what we’re going though.”
Assistant chief in hot seat
Assistant Police Chief Keith Morris was in the hot seat during the committee meeting, where the overtime issue was discussed.
O’Connell repeatedly stressed he was not making a personal attack on the Allentown Police Department and told Morris: “You’re the messenger. I’m not going to try to shoot the messenger. I respect you tremendously.”
Eichenwald later indicated the police chief had been invited to the meeting, but chose not to attend.
The assistant chief told the committee that the police department is committed to the safety of downtown visitors as well as to “the safety of our officers that work downtown.”
Morris also said the police department already has cut back on overtime after assessing the needs of both the department and the downtown.
He explained: “We have looked at our deployment strategies and took steps to operate within our overtime budget, without sacrificing public safety and the safety of our officers that are out there working downtown during these large-scale events.”
In 2014, said O’Connell, the city budgeted $1.4 million for police overtime. This year $1.8 million is in the city budget for that overtime.
“You have $400,000 in the kitty that you didn’t have last year,” he told Morris.
Another perspective
Council member Jeff Glazier, who is not on the public safety committee, offered a different perspective on the issue during the meeting.
Glazier acknowledged the arena has had an impact on police overtime, but reminded his colleagues that the city administration proposed, and City Council approved, the city budget with that additional $400,000 for police overtime this year.
Glazier added: “That isn’t to say that the business community can’t make a contribution for the additional overtime we’ve had to budget. but we’ve already approved the budget and the department appears to be spending within that budget.
“If the assistant chief said ‘we’ve already spent 25 percent of our budget, and it’s March 4’, I would be alarmed.
“I think the department is adequately managing deployment resources. The committee might want to revisit this in June or July and see what the spend rate is then.”
Eichenwald said PPL Center was only open for a few months in 2014 — it opened in September — but will be open for 12 months this year.
“This $1.8 million has to go over the whole year and cover many more arena events.”
She said when a non-profit organization has an event that will draw a large number of people, it hires city police and pays to do so.
“Here we have a case of a business that’s operating for profit and we are asking very little of them for financial assistance.
“There has to be an understanding on the part of the business community that they have the same responsibility to pay for police protection as does a non-profit. They need to be responsible citizens in this community.”
Deceiving statistics?
“I’m very happy to say that this year, we’ve only spent 14 percent of our overtime budget, compared to last year when we spent 15 percent in the same time frame— January and February,” said Morris. “And last year there was no arena at that point in time.”
While the percentage went down, the actual amount of money spent on police overtime went up in those two months, agreed Morris.
O.T. cost the police department $249,604 in the first two months of this year, Morris reported, compared to $208,583 in the first two months of 2014.
“The percentages went down…” began Morris.
“But the actual number went up,” said Eichenwald.
“Correct,” said Morris.
“Sometime statistics are a little bit deceiving,” said O’Connell.
How many police outside arena
O’Connell asked Morris how many officers were deployed outside the arena for the Friday night Neil Diamond concert.
Morris would not reveal that number, saying making it public “would jeopardize the safety of our officers"— despite O’Connell pressing him to at least: “Give me a rough estimate.”
Backing the assistant chief, Hendricks said: “We don’t want the [criminal] element to know how many people we have up there at any given time. Not now, not ever.”
“We need to look at the deployment of how many officers we use for each event,” said O’Connell.
The council president said the Neil Diamond concert was for old-timers, adding: “You don’t need 15,17, maybe 18 officers. Maybe for a heavy metal group, or the World Wrestling Federation, you need more.”
Morris disagreed, saying Neil Diamond may not have attracted a rough crowd, “but we’re talking about 10,000 people inside an arena. It’s more about their safety.
“We need to get them across streets and to wherever they want to go. And we need to make sure the officers out there doing that are safe and protected as well.”
Committee chairs criticizes chief
At the end of the meeting, Eichenwald said the absence of the Police Chief Fitzgerald “is glaring” at her public safety committee meetings.
She said other city department heads routinely attend council committee meetings.
“In the best interest of good government, it behooves us to make sure that the chief is present,” said Eichenwald.
“It is necessary that the chief hears what we have to say. The public safety committee deserves the same kind of dialogue opportunity as all the other committees in the city have.”
Eichenwald said the next time a meeting is scheduled, she will not conduct that meeting “unless the police chief is here.”
She said she’s willing to change the time and date of meeting to accommodate the chief. “I will accommodate him in every way possible.”
Council expedites police hiring
During the City Council meeting that followed the committee meeting, council took unanimous action to get more police officers on the city’s streets faster.
An ordinance unanimously passed by council states there is an immediate need to increase the number of police officers to protect the safety of Allentown’s citizens.
It was reported that the city has 211 police officers. The goal is to have 222.
Morris, the assistant chief, said the department wants to get up “to our previous budgeted amount of 216,” so a federal grant will kick in that allows them to hire six more officers who are military veterans.
The approved ordinance will allow the city to hire people who already are certified police officers, without them having to go through a competitive hiring process via the civil service board, then months of training at the Allentown Police Academy.
The police department was hiring people that way, until the city did away with a separate police civil service board.
Council member Julio Guridy suggested, when doing its hiring of new officers, the police department should diversify the police department to reflect Allentown’s population.
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