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City discontinues Park Patrol, keeps school officers
By LESTER R. DAILEY
Article published on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 |
CLEARWATER – Many homeless people live in Clearwater’s parks, and they publicly do the things that other people do behind closed doors.
They sleep, bathe, go to the bathroom, have sex, drink alcoholic beverages and even engage in such illegal activities as fighting and using drugs.
On Dec. 1, 2007, in response to complaints from the parks’ neighbors, the city launched a Park Patrol program on a 6-month trial basis. At its June 19 meeting, the City Council unanimously voted to discontinue the program.
It wasn’t that the program was a failure; it was just that it didn’t meet the strict cost-versus-benefit ratio that programs need to survive in Florida’s current climate of tight municipal budgets.
In its first five months of operation, Park Patrol officers worked 152 four-hour shifts in 23 specific parks and public places. They made direct contact with more than 300 individuals, wrote 125 offense incident reports and made 32 arrests on various charges. But only two of those arrests were for felonies, and most were for such minor violations of city ordinances as having an open container of alcohol.
“Although citizens who have made contact with the Police Department or the officers on Park Patrol have been supportive and appreciative, due to budget constraints, it is no longer prudent for the Police Department to allocate funding for the program in the current year budget or in the 2008-09 operating budget,” a police memo to the City Council said. “The Police Department proposes that we return to having on-duty patrol officers and community policing officers patrol the parks as time and resources allow, supplemented by Americorps members and volunteers.”
The cost of the program averaged $1,436 a week. Continuing it through the end of September would have cost $24,415, and keeping it going for another year would have cost $74,672, so the council members decided to immediately shut it down.
The School Resource Officer program at Clearwater High School, Countryside High School, Kennedy Middle School and Oak Grove Middle School fared better. The council unanimously voted to continue it for another year.
There have been SROs at Clearwater High since 1985 and at Countryside High since 1986. This is their second year at the two middle schools.
The value of the SRO program was demonstrated in 1986, when students who had established a rapport with Clearwater High SRO Thomas Dawe told him that a troubled sophomore might be planning a Columbine-style massacre at their school. The student was arrested and a search of his home yielded weapons and a videotape of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Col.
But it was only one year ago that Clearwater police Chief Sid Klein predicted that his department would soon “be out of the SRO business” unless Mayor Frank Hibbard could negotiate an agreement whereby the Pinellas County School Board would pick up more of the officers’ cost. Such an agreement was subsequently reached. The new agreement calls for one SRO to be stationed at each of the four schools. The total cost for the year will be $323,749, which will be paid from the Police Department’s operating budget. The School Board will then reimburse the department $186,046.
“The cost incurred by the Police Department is offset by the benefit of the program to the community and the Police Department,” a police memo to the council explained.
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Article published on Wednesday, June 25, 2008
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