So, you want to consolidate police services. Well, I can count on the hand of a bad woodshop teacher the number of times this discussion has gone any further than idle talk. Nonetheless, at first glance, it sounds like a good idea.

After all, times are tough. To feed our lust for saving money, we’ve declared that nothing is off-limits. Administrators and union leaders alike are now known not for what they can negotiate but for what they can keep. This includes the very identity of our police force.

Most of the literature on this topic acknowledges the potential for short- and long-term cost savings. Just think of the purchasing power a large agency like that could wield. Capital projects would not be duplicated. Overhead costs could be easier to swallow. The ball and chain of jurisdictional boundaries would no longer plague enforcement measures.

Over the past few years, police have been told to do more with less. They can no longer do that. Some think you can take a blowtorch to a Cadillac and cut it down to a Volvo. In the end, however, you don’t get a Volvo. All you have is a wreck. Consider a few things:

Financially, as a county, we would have to show significant cost savings for the long term. In a recent interview, former Mayor Mary Verner said that this issue had been “thoroughly analyzed” by researchers at Eastern Washington University. I read through the monograph last week and can say that she is correct – sort of.

The meta-analysis (a review of multiple studies) she referred to did indeed conclude that prior research suggests that consolidating police services yields no significant long-term cost savings. But a majority of the studies included in the meta-analysis were conducted during the 1970s. Since then, there has been a dearth of literature on the subject, suggesting that the topic is no longer relevant.

Oddly enough, one of the sites used in the dated studies was Indianapolis. It was hardly a success story for long-term cost savings then, and a more recent 2005 study concluded services might increase modestly, but no improvement was forecast for efficiency, morale, or the overall economy.

Legally, consolidation could be more trouble than it’s worth. Set aside for the moment revisions to the city charter and other legal intricacies. The labor issues alone are mind-boggling. Original rights and privileges, health benefits, compensatory time accrual buyout, pay parity, seniority and rank, and all of the human resource technicalities inherent to the employment process would have to be negotiated through collective bargaining by labor attorneys who bill by the hour.

Philosophically, and perhaps most importantly, we must ask ourselves how community policing survives without an identity. At a time when community policing has raised public expectations of police, could working in Deer Park one evening, and in Browne’s Addition the next, have a positive impact on police/community relations? Also, are we taking two steps backward by merging departments that have significantly different call loads?

The path to fiscal responsibility regarding police consolidation certainly runs through common sense. If we are serious about the idea, it should be thoroughly studied. Stakeholders should have a voice early on in the process. Most of all, because we can no longer do more with less, we must be smarter with less. That might mean paying as much or a little more to retain our identity simply because we cannot afford to lose it.

That’s all the more reason to be skeptical about a politician who would offer to oversee the entire process – for free.

How many of us recall wedding plans compromised when a relative suggested Uncle Ernie could be swapped for that very reputable but expensive photographer?

How’d those pictures turn out?