By KEITH GRANT
The Long Beach Police Department's return to a rotating patrol system became subject to a public debate last week even as city officials said it was the last place the matter belonged.
At a meeting of the Central Neighborhood Block Association on Thursday, Feb. 1, several city leaders reiterated their stance that the community is safe under any patrol system, and that the matter was nothing more than a negotiating issue with the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, whose contract expired July 1. The PBA continues to argue that the issue is one of public safety.
Police Officer David Walpole, 2nd vice president of the PBA, argued before members of the block association and a team of city officials that the city is not as safe under the rotating schedule Long Beach police were returned to on Jan. 1 as it was during the past three years under steady patrols. He further charged that the issue was used as a bargaining tool by city negotiators from the first day of contract talks last summer.
"Within the first 15 minutes of the first meeting, we were told to 'take what we give you or you lose [steady] tours,'" Walpole said. "It was like a hammer held over our heads."
City officials acknowledged the issue's presence in and importance to the contract talks, but said that the bargaining table is where the matter begins and ends. City Manager Bruce Nyman disputed statements that the issue is even controversial.
"I don't think it really is a controversy," he said, adding that he had received only one phone call from a resident about the change in patrols in its first month. "It's really not an issue of public safety. It's an issue that was under negotiation for the police contract."
The steady patrol, or tour, system used from Jan. 1, 1998 through Jan. 1 this year placed police on a regular shift for a year, patrolling the same area of the city, while working within a "team" of officers under the same sergeant. Shifts ran either 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to 4 a.m., or 10 p.m. to 8 a.m.
Rotating tours have officers' schedules regularly changing among shifts of 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., 4 p.m. to midnight and midnight to 8 a.m., with their patrol areas also rotating.
City officials acknowledge that steady tours are more convenient for officers, allowing them to remain on a set schedule for a year, but disagree that the tours were ever a significant benefit to the community. Nyman stated that three years ago, the change to steady tours was not considered to be a public-safety issue; rather, it was something the union had sought.
Referring to the public positions taken by Walpole and PBA President Sgt. Richard Bart, Nyman said, "They're speaking as union representatives about a union issue. That's what we believe this is, a union issue. We believe there's been no change" in police protection. "I assure you the city is being protected."
Nyman was joined in his argument by Director of Operations Gene Cammarato, Police Commissioner Ken Cohen and the city's attorney in the contract negotiations, Terry O'Neil.
Cohen echoed Nyman's assurance that the city had in no way compromised the safety of residents, and said the 1998 change to the system of steady tours had merely been an experiment. Among its selling points at the time, Cohen said, were cost-saving issues that the city asserts did not pan out as projected. According to O'Neil, the city has spent more money on police overtime under steady tours than rotating. O'Neil attributed that to steady tours leaving just six officers on patrol between 4 a.m. and 8 a.m., one more than the department's minimum. That meant that if only two officers were not be available, the department incurred overtime costs for another officer. Cohen said such costs were incurred 135 times during the three years of steady tours.
Cohen also suggested that steady tours lessened the supervision of patrolmen at certain hours and restricted possible disciplinary action because the commissioner was prevented from moving an officer from one tour to another.
While steady tours placed more officers on the street during potential high-crime hours of 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., Cohen argued that it wasn't always necessary.
"I don't think there's a need for 11 or 12 men on patrol on a Thursday night in February," he said.
That issue, Walpole said, was one the PBA had been willing negotiate. However, he stuck to the PBA's position that steady tours had more officers on the street when they were needed most. A former New York City police officer, Walpole said there were times he felt safer in some of Brooklyn's worst areas than he did on Long Beach streets because of the number of officers on patrol.
"This is an absolute public-safety issue," he said in differing with the commissioner.
For civic leaders, the main concern has been the tour change's potential effect on community policing. Under steady tours, they believe residents were able to become familiar with the officers in their neighborhoods, and vice versa.
"I recognized the cops in my neighborhood. We built a rapport," said Sam Roca, president of the Central block association. Roca pointed to the police's successful efforts to keep gangs out of the area a few years ago as a prime example of community policing's success.
Cohen, though, insists that the idea and success of community policing will not be lost, describing community policing as "a state of mind."
The bottom line, he said, was that rotating tours was the system the department used for 25 years, and all but two current police officers have worked under it.
"This was the system in place during the whole resurgence of Long Beach," Cohen said. "The change in no way affects any of your security. At no time would we ever compromise the safety of the city or the officers working."
The matter will not likely be settled until the contract is. Both the city and the PBA must address charges that they did not negotiate in good faith, and then eventually move ahead into mediation to attempt to settle the contract stalemate.
