Cuts hit close to home

You don’t need to tell the neighbors living along the 1900 block of West Gordon Avenue what’s driving Spokane’s crime problem.

They’ve been working with police for months to shut down a drug house that’s brought hundreds of cars and suspicious people into an otherwise quiet neighborhood. As a result of police work, a suspect was arrested and he led officers to another residence where drugs, a gun and a homemade bomb were seized, police said.

“You never know how crazy these guys are,” said Karl Zacher.

With the city police department facing the loss of 17 officers, Chief Roger Bragdon is shuffling his officers and the neighborhood programs to focus on the kinds of crimes affecting Zacher and his neighbors.

There’s a tradeoff. Five fewer officers will investigate property crimes – the thefts, burglaries and car prowls that make up 85 percent of crime in the city, and which already are frequently not investigated.

Every day, Sgt. Jason Hartman gets videotapes of suspects cashing forged checks in area stores. Every day, many of those cases go nowhere.

“We may have a citizen who has never called the police department,” said Hartman. “They get victimized and we might not be able to provide service. It can be tough because the officers back here (in the detective offices) want to help their community.”

The police cuts are part of a city budget crisis that finds the department facing $7 million in cuts from its $40 million-plus budget. In addition, eight police positions were eliminated last summer and five other officers were lost in 2002, bringing the total reduction to 30 officers and 20 support personnel in just over two years.

Bragdon said he believes it’s the lowest staffing level in more than 30 years.

The chief wants to keep a maximum number of officers in prowl cars, so he is taking the largest cuts outside the patrol division.

Crime Check operators, who take telephone reports from crime victims, will no longer be available in the early-morning hours. The K-9 units are being reduced from eight to five. One officer each is being transferred out of drugs, training and volunteer services to beef up losses in patrol. The vehicle replacement fund is being reduced by $1 million.

“The cold reality is we are going to have to eliminate some functions,” Assistant Chief Jim Nicks said. “Isolated cases probably won’t get the attention that they should.”

Neighborhood watch

Bragdon is reorganizing his troops to keep maximum pressure on drug abusers, burglars and the like. But he acknowledges that the cuts won’t come without a cost.

The public “will see less of us,” he said. In terms of property crimes, only about 30 percent of cases with suspects or witnesses are now being solved, and that percentage is likely to go down, Bragdon said

Hartman supervises 18 detectives. Of those, one property-crime detective on the South Side and four on the North Side are expected to be demoted to patrol.

“Right now I have cases with good leads and suspects with videotape or identification that I just can’t assign now,” Hartman said. “You add on the cuts and it’s going to be difficult. There is no physical way possible to assign all the cases.”

Instead, the department is being organized into teams to attack areas of the city where criminals are active. Bragdon said he hopes to use technology and crime intelligence to deploy a well-trained force on city streets, despite the losses of personnel.

The patrol division is being reduced from 16 teams to 14 teams.

But neighborhood resource officers are being reorganized into teams and will be ordered to go after drug houses more aggressively. Currently, there are six neighborhood officers assigned to individual COPS stations. After the budget cuts take effect, five remaining neighborhood resource officers will work wider geographic areas as teams, concentrating on problems like the drug house on West Gordon.

Sue Havlovick, a volunteer at the COPS Northwest office, said the police cuts make crime-prevention programs even more important. Neighbors who have not formed Block Watches should do so, she said. Block Watch is a program in which neighbors keep an eye out for criminals and for each other, largely by sharing information with one another.

“People are going to have to watch out for their neighbors,” she said. “That’s what it’s going to come to.”

Front lines

Police officials believe they have found a way to strengthen traffic patrol while saving jobs for five officers, Nicks said. As part of the department’s reorganization, eight officers will be transferred from community service, training and the detective’s office to work a weekend traffic unit.

“We will weaken those areas of the department,” Nicks said. “But we will strengthen our presence on the front lines. We cover the weekday rush hours. But we’ve done a very poor job of traffic flow and collisions on weekends.”

Currently, the department has a day-shift traffic unit, which patrols the streets from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. The swing-shift monitors traffic from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

But traffic statistics show that 27 percent of the city’s injury accidents occur on Friday night or weekend evenings, said Sgt. Joe Walker, who supervises the traffic units.

“We’re not out looking to stop every car. We are looking to write racing tickets, stopping road rage and stop collisions,” he said.

The average ticket in Spokane is $101. Of that, the city gets back about $34, Nicks said. He expects that the eight officers will write enough tickets to cover about 70 percent of the cost of running the unit, or the salaries of five officers.

Walker said Spokane drivers paid about $111 million last year for collisions, which is a higher value than the loss of all property crimes combined.

Mayor Jim West will have the final say on the longevity of the new traffic unit, Nicks said. If the weekend shift generates the same revenue as the two current shifts, it will remain. “The mayor has assured us that he will continue to support it as long as it is viable.”

‘All-time low’

Those are not the only changes the budget cuts will bring. In the reorganization, police officials eliminated the department’s captain classification. The four captains will be reduced in rank to lieutenant. Since the four captains do administrative work, the department will add another deputy chief position, Nicks said.

Four current lieutenants will be demoted to sergeant and four sergeants will be demoted either to detective or officer, depending on their previous rank, Nicks said. Four corporals also will be moved back to officer, Nicks said. Every demotion includes a pay cut.

“Morale is probably at an all-time low. It will just take some time to get through this period,” he said. The impact of the cuts doesn’t stop in the police department. Even when officers make arrests, property cases have clogged the court system, said Carlin Jude, a Spokane County senior prosecutor who supervises property crimes.

In 2003, residents of Spokane County reported 1,564 burglaries, 5,274 thefts and 630 car thefts, Jude said. Of those, detectives sent 1,464 requests for formal charges to prosecutors.

And of those referrals, prosecutors brought 1,062 felony cases and cleared 1,000 of them, Jude said.

“We keep 600 cases in progress at any one time,” she said. “I can tell you with those kinds of numbers coming at me, it’s been a pretty hectic job to stay up with it and catch up with the backlog that has been here so long.”

Jude expects to see several hundred fewer cases coming her way in 2005. But she, too, has lost one of her eight deputy prosecutors who handle property crimes.

“While fewer prosecutors can keep up with fewer detectives, that does not mean we are keeping up with the crime that is actually happening,” Jude said. “It’s not a good balance. It’s at the cost of the community.”

Jude said she has worked four years to reduce the backlog of property crimes and has had success. But Hartman said suspects often wait 18 to 30 months before they get to court. “In the meantime, they are committing more crimes.”

Authorities said they hope residents don’t become frustrated and stop reporting every time a suspect breaks into a car, garage or home.

“It’s depressing to all of us,” Jude said. “Not only are we prosecutors, we are residents of this city.”