City May End Free Funeral Police Escorts

Bethlehem is on the verge of ending its longstanding practice of providing free police escorts for all funeral processions traveling through the city.

On Tuesday night, City Council had a first reading of a bill that would, first, eliminate the current requirement that all funeral processions in the city have a police escort, and, second, add a $150 fee for any cortege for which a police escort is provided.

City Police Commissioner Jason Schiffer told council that he conservatively estimates that providing traffic escorts for funerals costs the city $125,000 a year. That figure, he said, represents half the annual salary of the city’s four motorcycle officers who are typically dispatched to provide cortege escort duty.

This is a service that is disappearing in communities across the country, Schiffer told council, citing a USA Today story. Allentown and Easton do not provide police escorts and Schiffer says he knows of no other Lehigh Valley community that does.

Those communities that do provide the service do typically charge for it – between $150 and $600, the commissioner said. Schiffer said he has been researching the issue for nearly a year.

Still, the move got a chilly reception from one regular council attendee, Mary Pongracz, the retired teacher from South Bethlehem, who called the idea “an insult to the citizens of Bethlehem.”

“That’s unbelievable,” she said. “That’s unfair.”

Council voted 6-0 in favor of the legislation, with Council President Robert Donchez absent from the proceedings. The final vote on adoption is currently scheduled for council’s next meeting on December 21.

The move could free up motorcycle officers to participate in more traffic enforcement and emergency response than they are able to now, Schiffer told council.

Currently, those officers, who are part of the department’s traffic division, are not included in the “stack” of officers who are dispatched for 911 calls because so much of their typical daily shift is tied up in funeral duty, Schiffer said. Within the department, they are known as the FEDs, the Funeral Escort Division, the commissioner said.

The commissioner may also be looking to maximize staffing efficiency in the department, since Mayor John Callahan’s proposed 2012 budget .

It also could provide a modest income stream for the city if many families do choose to pay the $150 flat rate. The department provided escorts for 612 funerals in 2010. At $150 per service, that would have netted nearly $92,000 in fees.