Watertown Police Dept. is Fighting Rising Crime Rate with a Smaller Force

After losing eight officers in three years, the Watertown Police Department must juggle officers to have a full complement of officers on patrol while facing a rising crime rate, Police Chief Edward Deveau told the Town Council Saturday morning during budget hearing.

The police budget is up about $150,000, to $7.42 million, according to Town Manager Michael Driscoll’s budget, and the number of police officers will not be cut in fiscal 2012.

The department, however, lost four officers in fiscal 2009 and another four the following year. That reduced the number of patrol officers from 55 to 47, Deveau said. On top of that five more spots are temporarily unfilled – two because officers are on military leave and three unfilled positions.

At the same time, calls to police have risen nearly 29 percent this year compared to the first 4.5 months of 2010, Deveau said. He added that the crime rate has risen sharply:

• Rape: up 100 percent
• Robbery: up 86 percent
• Assault: up 16 percent
• Total crime: up 20 percent

The number of officers patrolling the streets remains the same, Deveau said, but this has required others to fill in.

“I don’t want to scare anyone. When you call 911, someone will be there,” Deveau said. “We continue to do that by moving people out of their positions to fill patrol. With 55 [officers] we could deal with it a lot easier than with 47.”

In Driscoll’s budget overview on May 18, he noted that Watertown has more sworn officers than either Arlington or Belmont. Arlington, which has a population that is about 10,000 larger than Watertown, has 61 total, including 46 patrol officers. Belmont, which has about 7,000 fewer residents, has a force of 46, including 29 patrol officers.

Watertown has 65 sworn officers, which includes the chief, two captains, six lieutenants and nine sergeants, according to Driscoll’s presentation.

Positions left empty after the job cuts include a detective from the night shift and a drug investigator in the detective division, Deveau said.

“We really don’t have anyone doing drug investigations,” Deveau said.

Among the other positions lost were the student resource officers at the elementary schools and at Watertown Middle School. There remains one resource officer at Watertown High School.

The other four positions come from the traffic division and the community division, Deveau said.

Town Councilor Cecilia Lenk said the she is concerned about the loss of the community officers and the student resource officers.

Councilor Tony Palomba asked whether it might be better to have the school resource officer work with younger kids.

“At a meeting I attended, I heard the group that has most benefited from the having a resource officer is at the middle school,” Palomba said. “Can we move the school resource officer there?”

Deveau said he and others debated that, but most communities with one resource officer use the person at the high school.

“You can develop a closer relationship with students at the middle school – you can mold them,” Deveau said. “At the high school, you can identify troubled kids and work with them, so you can get through to them before – God forbid – it becomes an Columbine situation.”

The loss of the middle school resource officer did mean losing more than the connection with students, Deveau said. The DARE – Drug Abuse Resistance Education – program is no longer offered.

The program has a lasting impact on the students who went through it, Deveau said. He hears from adults who said they still remember the lessons they learned in DARE classes.