By David Tyler
The town of Manlius police department may soon be short-handed by six officers.
At a meeting of the town police committee last week, Chief Mike Crowell said the department is currently down four officers and three more have announced their plans to leave the department, either to join other agencies or to retire. The department has hired one officer that is set to join the force shortly.
The shortage of officers is not unique to the Manlius department, Crowell said. He listed a mixture of factors: not enough applicants, a 20-year retirement system, high standards for policing in New York that often disqualify out-of-state applicants.
Crowell said he recently canvassed a list of 133 applicants on the civil service list, which elicited “zero real prospects.”
Over the past few weeks, Crowell has said that morale in the department has been low in light of the protests over policing practices nationwide, but the current staffing challenges aren’t related to that.
“This is a national problem,” he said. “There’s not a lot of people who are attracted to law enforcement.”
Police review process begins
The police committee discussed the possible creation of a citizen review board similar to those in other communities, in keeping with Gov. Cuomo’s executive order requiring a review of policing in every police agency statewide that would include citizen input.
“I’m fully in favor of that,” Crowell said, adding that it’s similar to a committee that he put together a few years ago when he first became police chief to gain input from stakeholders throughout the town.
“We had some really great input from all the members,” Crowell said, adding that he had intended to put together a strategic plan from those sessions “so we had some real good direction on where we’re going to bring the police department.”
Crowell said the town of Manlius Police Department will participate with the Onondaga County District Attorney’s office, which is leading an effort for all the police agencies in the county to meet the governor’s requirements.
“As much as some of these things are tragic, they do prompt change, which is great – change for the better,” he said.
In the district attorney’s original plans, the Manlius and DeWitt police departments would be “lumped up” together into a single subcommittee for the purposes of this review, which Crowell said he opposes.
“Our unique needs in the town of Manlius are much different those in the town of DeWitt,” he said. “That’s not a knock on the town of DeWitt police department. They’re a great department. But our needs are unique.”
