08:22 PM CDT on Friday, June 12, 2009
By Lee McGuire / 11 News / KHOU.COM
HOUSTON -- The head of Houston’s police union says residents should brace for a crime wave if the city council approves a budget that includes cuts in academy classes, police overtime, and the elimination of a $12,000 signing bonus for new recruits.
Houston Police Officers’ Union president Gary Blankinship sent Mayor Bill White and council members a letter June 8 outlining his concerns, and went further during an interview Friday.
“The mayor might as well acknowledge that we are going to have a crime wave here,” Blankinship said. “Crime is going to go up, response time is going to go up, and officers are going to be put in harm’s way because we are going to have officers responding to calls without proper backup.”
Blankinship opposes a plan to eliminate approximately $14 million in police overtime, as well as the signing bonus and two planned police academy classes in the 2010 fiscal year, which starts in July. A spokesman for White said the overtime money had been part of a temporary measure to add additional patrols during a staffing shortage, and was never projected to be a permanent fix.
White spokesman Frank Michel said the police department has hired more than a thousand new officers in the last five years, with the largest addition coming in the last two years. He said the increase means the police department no longer needs to rely heavily on overtime for regular patrols.
On Wednesday, White said “it has always been our intention, which we have expressed in open council meetings, to bring down the amount of overtime funding, as we did in the 1990s.”
The Mayor also said the signing bonus for new recruits is no longer necessary because the soft economy has increased the number of people looking for new jobs.
“We have somewhat decreased demand for slots in the Academy,” he said, “and a larger supply of applicants, because it’s a slow economy.”
For this reason, White said the police department does not need to start new police academy classes, which had been planned for this fall. Instead, the current budget funds only two academy classes in the next year, down from four. The next academy class begins later this month, and under the proposed budget, the next academy class would not begin until March of 2010.
Blankinship said the elimination of two proposed classes would quickly wipe out any staffing gains the department had made in the last year.
“We have a lot of people retiring right now,” he said. “And to cut this 12 thousand dollar signing bonus really hampers us.”
Officials in the White administration strongly dispute Blankinship’s characterization that a crime wave will develop if the 2010 budget is passed.
“The mayor and this administration have done nothing but beef up the police force,” Michel said. “The crime rate is going down, and crime here is the lowest it has been in the last 28 years. The police budget has gone up $201 million since Mayor White arrived.”
Michael Moore, White’s chief of staff, sent 11 News a list of other major cities that are cutting deep into police budgets. In Houston, he said, the police budget is actually projected to increase by $18 million in fiscal year 2010. In addition, Moore said the city has applied for funding under the federal stimulus package, which could allow the police department to reinstate at least one academy class.
White officials also point to heavy investments in public safety infrastructure projects, such as a massive overhaul of the city’s antiquated police radio system; a new property room and DNA testing lab to replace crumbling facilities; and new police squad cars to upgrade an aging fleet.
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