Review of Police Department Resources Discussed by Township Committee

The township will be administering departmental resource reviews for each department, according to Montville's township administrator Frank Bastone. At Tuesday night's township committee meeting, the review of the police department, which is the first department being reviewed, was discussed.

Bastone said that the goal is to first look at the table of organization for each department, which he said the "best way to do that is from a bottom up approach."

On Tuesday, Bastone presented a list of police department functions.

"Ultimately the goal is to take this list of functions to determine what we think are necessary," said Bastone.

Some examples were the traffic division, but others that Bastone said might not be as necessary would be K-9, SWAT, and the DARE program.

Mayor Jim Sandham said he had expected more information, including things like average response time, and what would happen if changes were made to the number of uniformed officers on a shift. Bastone said that further information would be provided as the next step of the departmental review process.

"First and foremost this township committee is responsible for the safety of the citizens," said Sandham. "I need to understand what impact would be when we make changes to the table of organization."

Committeeman Scott Gallopo emphasized that reducing the amount of time a patrolman is taken off the road for prisoner transport, paper work, and other job duties is vital.

Committeeman Don Kostka said that he wants to remain skeptical of what he called "the fear factor."

"Safety is really important," he said. "But I think it's really important also to be skeptical; this is a topic that it's easy to scare people, and say…we don't have enough boots on the ground, we need to have more. You can run up hiring, you can run up a number of things.

"For me I try to take all of the emotion out, history is history, what other towns do is nice…I want to be very careful, because here is a topic where you can introduce the fear factor so easily."

Chief Richard Cook of the Montville Police Department spoke during the presentation, and responded to Kostka's statements.

"Unfortunately the fear factor is there," said Cook. "When you have an officer that is down on 46 that has to go to Boonton Ave., that's reality."

Gallopo responded as well.

"None of us up here can pretend to be experts on this, which is why we should consider hiring someone to take a look at this," he said. "You know, Don, it is about boots on the ground, there's certain things that you can't change, guidelines and standards you have to follow."

Deb Nielson suggested that the committee look into an estimate of what it would cost to perform an efficiency study.

"I'm sure were not aware of all the cutting edge technologies," she said. "It may be money well spent."

Tuesday night's discussion was merely step one in the review process, which will continue as the township committee looks more closely at the functions and staffing needs of the department.