PD working on improving efficiency
The Dickinson Police Department has been working on becoming more efficient in the last few weeks in hopes of saving money and better serving the community.By: Ashley Martin, The Dickinson Press
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The Dickinson Police Department has been working on becoming more efficient in the last few weeks in hopes of saving money and better serving the community.
The process started when Rick Shirey resigned as lieutenant and head of criminal investigations. His position will not be filled, said Lt. Dave Wallace.
“We are going to change the way we do business,” Wallace said. “Our community services, our drug unit and our school resource officer all are going under criminal investigations.”
Wallace took over Shirey’s position, but will continue working with community services as he was.
Wallace said since the department used to have four lieutenants, all the officers were split into sections and didn’t overlap much in their work. Wallace said this system closed down communication lines.
For example, the school resource officer, investigators and narcotics officer rarely ever worked on cases together, Wallace said.
“What we’re finding is that these issues were all crossing paths … but they were all being supervised under other areas,” Wallace said. “We’ve centralized our people so that they all have become more of a resource for each other and for our community.”
Since officers will be cross checking and cross training, Wallace said connections in crime, which may have never been noticed, may be now.
He added officers will also be sharing workloads.
“It just made sense to bring everybody together and utilize all of our assets in a more clearly defined role and to really strive and bring it all under a team, so we can address those things that haven’t been addressed in a timely matter,” Wallace said.
Officers now will have to call people back within three days, Wallace said.
Shawn Kessel, city administrator, said he would like the remaining three lieutenant positions eliminated.
“There’s an effective amount of people that one person can supervise and … we have a lot of supervisors,” Kessel said. “The less levels of communications there are, the better the communication is, so that’s a huge benefit to doing that.”
If those positions are eliminated, Kessel said, that like Shirey’s position, the city would wait until retirements opened the positions.
Kessel would like there to be a chief and two captains, rather than a chief, a captain and four lieutenants.
“Let’s face it, somebody could come down with
He added officers will also be sharing workloads.
“It just made sense to bring everybody together and utilize all of our assets in a more clearly defined roll and to really strive and bring it all under a team, so we can address those things that haven’t been addressed in a timely matter,” Wallace said.
Officers now will have to call people back within three days, Wallace said.
Shawn Kessel, city administrator, said he would like the remaining three lieutenant positions eliminated.
“There’s an effective amount of people that one person can supervise and … we have a lot of supervisors,” Kessel said. “The less levels of communications there are, the better the communication is, so that’s a huge benefit to doing that.”
If those positions are eliminated, Kessel said, like Shirey’s position, the city would wait until retirements opened the positions.
Kessel would like there to be a chief and two captains, rather than a chief, a captain and four lieutenants.
“Let’s face it, somebody could come down with a terrible illness or injury and the expectations of the citizens continue. So we have to make a seamless transition regardless of what’s going on,” Kessel said.
He and Wallace are also looking forward to money saved by cutting back administration. Kessel said a lieutenant costs the city an average of $72,000 a year.
He added one or two patrol officers may be added to the department using the savings.
All the details haven’t been worked out, but Kessel said the money may also be used to increase officers’ wages.
“We don’t want to be the highest paying entity out there, but we don’t want to be the lowest,” Kessel said.
More departments city-wide may undergo similar processes next year, he said.
“Because we’re trying to do this with taking advantage of natural departures from our staff, like retirement, the implementation is going to take some time,” Kessel said.
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