City's proposed budget shifts positions to bolster police patrols

Columbia Missourian

COLUMBIA — Columbia residents do not feel safe, and the city needs at least 40 more police officers, according to City Manager Mike Matthes' proposed budget for the 2016 fiscal year. The city will attempt to raise citizen satisfaction with police services 6 percent by 2019, Matthes said Friday during a news conference.

To partially address residents' concerns about public safety, the budget proposes shifting three Columbia Police Department positions — public information officer, crime scene investigator and police trainer — to civilian roles, rather than fill the jobs with sworn officers. The move would allow these officers to be available for patrol.

Having a civilian crime scene investigator to process evidence at a crime scene would allow officers working a crime scene to leave for other calls sooner. This would not be the only benefit for the police department, said Columbia police spokeswoman Bryana Larimer who has been serving as a civilian public information officer for about a year.

"Civilian employees also have a different benefit package and have a different salary requirement than officers do, and so it would help financially within our budget at the police department," Larimer said.

The previous year's budget didn't include her position, so Larimer was hired below the pay grade of a patrol officer. Now, Larimer's position is included in the budget, freeing up space to hire another police officer.

Larimer said when she took her position, there was a learning curve. The other two civilian positions are expected to be filled by people who have working knowledge of law enforcement activities.

"It's a different kind of world when you're (new to) law enforcement," Larimer said. "If you're a civilian, you'll have to learn all of the statutes and learn all of the police codes and learn everything that law enforcement does."

Hopefully, Larimer said, a civilian crime scene investigator would have gone to forensic school and already learned what they need to do within the police department.

"Our ideal candidate will possess those skills," Larimer said. "They'll be coming in and already aware of what they need to be doing when they're out on the scene. Essentially, it's a win."

As for the police trainer, any random civilian wouldn't be teaching officers, Police Department Training Supervisor Sgt. Lance Bolinger said.

"(The trainer) will be someone who's been in law enforcement for a significant amount of time, so we're not exactly bringing in someone off the street with no background knowledge of police work," Bolinger said. "The position requires at least five years of experience, but I imagine we will get someone with more experience than five years."

The department's Training and Recruitment Unit did have a part-time police trainer this past year, who was a civilian, and this went smoothly, Bolinger said.

"The person who was in our position moved to another specialty assignment," Bolinger said. "I think it's just the right time to do it with the personnel changes that we had down here. That way, we didn't disrupt anybody by sending them back to patrol when we had them here as a sworn position."

Crime in Columbia

Although violent crime in Columbia is at its lowest point since the mid-1990s, so is resident satisfaction with crime prevention; 56 percent of respondents to a 2014 city survey said they were satisfied with police efforts to stop crime, according to the budget. The number of police officers is not matching Columbia's population growth: In 2012, Columbia had 1.4 officers for every 1,000 people, which fell below other cities in Missouri, college towns around the country, and cities that were similar in size, according to previous Missourian reporting.

"Our police department solves a higher percentage of crime, but the community doesn't seem to be aware of that," Matthes said during a July 24 press conference. "Or, for some reason, their fear of crime is still heightened to historical levels, even though there's really no reason for that."

Sales tax revenue, which pays for public safety and other city services, has been trending downward due to an increase in online purchases, according to the budget. And in November, almost 60 percent of city voters said "No" to Proposition 1, which would have increased property taxes by 30 cents over the course of five years in order to pay for more police officers and firefighters.

"We're analyzing why we think that (Proposition 1) failed," Matthes said during the July 24 press conference. "The bottom line is the workload is getting too great. The city is growing — the calls for police go up, our funding is not."

Though the 2016 budget provides for hiring four more firefighters, the city is still trying to hire more police officers. The increase in workload for the current force will eventually cause a strain, Matthes said.

"It's directly affecting our ability to answer the phone when we are called," Matthes said.

Though the addition of three officer positions will fall short of the city's previous goal, any additional officers on patrol will help Columbia, Bolinger said.

"I think the way it's going to benefit us is it's going to allow us to keep more sworn officers on the street," Bolinger said. "(The police trainer) is just one position but still, any additional help the road guys can get, I think, is a good move for us."