The Denver City Council’s 10-2 vote to authorize 19 more police officers next year is a classic example of the old political principle: Fire, ready, aim.
The fact that the council voted to hire the new recruits without having any clear idea of whether they’re needed or how they would be used is bad enough.
Worse is the decision to ignore the city’s fiscal fragility and fund them out of reserve funds that can’t be counted upon for ongoing obligations. The $612,102 cost authorized by the council for 2006 will nearly double in 2007 when the new hires will then be on the payroll for the whole year. By 2010, rising seniority and normal wage increases will raise the cost of the 19 positions to $1.7 million, nearly triple what the council voted to authorize Monday.
Mayor John Hickenlooper should veto this act of political grandstanding. The murmurs we hear from the mayor’s office suggest he probably won’t, preferring to keep his relations with the council amicable. We understand the impulse toward amity, but staying on good terms with the council isn’t always in the interest of the taxpayers.
Fortunately, Hickenlooper doesn’t really have to veto the council action – he can just ignore it. The council’s vote to authorize 19 more officers is just that – authorization. It doesn’t mean the mayor has to do it.
Hickenlooper had already budgeted $2.8 million to hire and train 137 officers next year, bringing the force to an authorized strength of 1,427.
Those new recruits are expected to offset the loss of both retiring veterans and to allow the city to reduce the amount of overtime it pays to existing officers, while still adding the equivalent of 22 new officers on the street.
But if retirements come faster than expected, the city might actually have to hire some or all of those extra 19 officers just to meet Hickenlooper’s target. Because those recruits would replace retiring veterans, they could be hired at no additional cost. But the point is hiring police is an executive function, and the mayor should do it at sensible pace, not a political one.
Denver, with 2.35 police officers per 1,000 citizens, already has more police than most cities of its size, and a lower crime rate to boot (although police Chief Gerry Whitman’s house was burglarized Tuesday). Rather than just blindly hiring more bodies, Hickenlooper wants to give more support jobs to civilians and use improved technology to make the existing force more efficient.
Such careful management is a clearer blueprint for a safer city than reflexively hiring more officers before we even know how they will be deployed.
