By Herbert Lowe
STAFF WRITER
Two City Council members, both former police officers, yesterday
warned that threatened Police Department layoffs would result
in more crime citywide.
Council members Hiram Monserrate (D-Corona) and James Davis (D-Brooklyn)
each served 12 years with the department and joined the Council
last year. Both serve on the Council's Public Safety Committee.
"We're here not only as legislators but as former law enforcement
officers saying layoffs are a bad thing and ... this needs to
be one of the agencies where we can definitely not do more with
less," Monserrate said at a City Hall news conference.
All city agencies are expected by today to submit their latest
budget proposals to the Office of Management and Budget.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said repeatedly that all city departments
must reduce their budgets.
"If we can get the police, for example, to do more with
less, then we won't need layoffs," Bloomberg said Friday
on his weekly radio show. "If we can't find ways, or if everybody
can't agree on ways to do that, it will probably come down to
that."
Two days earlier, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said it would
be "very difficult" to reduce the department's budget
by another 3 percent, as the city's budget office has requested,
without layoffs.
Such a 3 percent cut of about $94 million could mean the loss
of 1,500 entry-level officers in the department's first layoffs
of police officers since the 1970s.
Davis said layoffs should not be an option.
"We must keep our streets safe at all costs - but on the
same token we cannot afford layoffs," he said.
Davis suggested that one way to reduce police costs without layoffs
would be to pair more rookies with veteran officers, instead of
having veterans working with veterans. That way, he said, after
an arrest is made, the lower-paid rookie, if overtime is needed,
could process the suspect and handle the paperwork alone - allowing
the veteran, who makes more money, to not have to work the extra
hours.
