It could be a month before residents and senior officers in the Hoboken Police Department (HPD) find out how 18 impending police layoffs, announced on Wednesday, will affect staffing in the department and crime in the city.
Under this budget-cutting plan Mayor Dawn Zimmer said that besides the 18 impending layoffs in the Police Department, another 18 employees will be cut at Cit Hall and 19 senior police officers will be demoted. As part of the plan, some clerical duties currently performed by police officers will be done by civilian employees.
Staffing changes in the HPD have been anticipated since February when the results of a state audit of the department were made public.
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The HPD currently has 153 officers, according to a city spokesman.
Audit gave suggestions
Staffing changes in the HPD have been anticipated since February, when results of a long-awaited audit of staffing levels in the HPD requested by the City Council were made public. The audit was conducted by the state Division of Local Government Services when Hoboken was under the control of a state fiscal monitor.
Similar audits have also been planned for other municipal departments in the city, including the Hoboken Fire Department, in order to save money.
The personnel changes must still be approved by the New Jersey Civil Service Commission, according to Zimmer spokesman Juan Melli. The commission, which could take two to four weeks to respond to the plan, will determine which officers will be demoted or let go.
In a statement released Wednesday, the mayor said, “Layoffs create real hardship for employees and their families, and I recognize that this decision has serious consequences for them … We have a responsibility to use our resources more efficiently. By civilianizing non-police functions and moving police from behind desks and out on our streets, we can improve efficiency and maintain the exceptional level of public safety our Police Department has always provided our community.”
Audit recommended personnel cuts
The HPD audit concluded that the department “contained more superior officers than was necessary to maintain essential police services within Hoboken. Any reduction in staff may be accomplished through a variety of means or combination of means, including but not limited to attrition, layoffs, elimination of positions, or other methods permitted by contract or statute.”
The audit also specifically recommended that the position of public safety director, a City Hall employee who functions as a liaison between the mayor’s office and Police Chief, be eliminated. Angel Alicea is the current public safety director.
Details regarding who will be demoted were not announced Wednesday. But it is expected the city will demote one captain, six lieutenants, and four sergeants.
The audit also suggested the department hire eight civilians to work in dispatch, the Evidence Department, and the Records Division. Melli said last week the city does not yet know how many civilian employees will be hired.
The audit also recommended the city make changes to work hours within the HPD. Officers currently work 35-hour work weeks, which the state concluded resulted in an annual net loss of 38,500 productivity hours department-wide. The audit recommended the department move to a standard 40-hour work week.
Police union responds
The Hoboken Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA) has been critical of the methodology used to reach the conclusions in the audit. Two weeks ago, they released their own report to counter the state audit.
“What they did is, they used proper formulas, but then they input improper data to reach a conclusion that they wanted,” said PBA President Vincent Lombardi last week. “They went into the process knowing they wanted to cut X amount of officers to save a predetermined amount of money. So, the auditor worked backwards.”
Lombardi said that some data – for example, calls for HPD assistance and “self-initiated” investigations – was excluded from the audit. Such exclusions, he said, made it appear as though officers had too little work and the department had too much personnel.
Lombardi believes that such manipulations were done to undermine the PBA’s collective bargaining position with the city. Officers have been without a contract for three years, and the two sides are still negotiating.
Hoboken Police Chief Anthony Falco, who was critical of the audit earlier this year, has not commented publically on the pending layoffs and demotions announced last week.
‘Economic fact’
Melli disagreed with Lombardi’s assessment of the audit.
“This is based on both the economy and the fact that the city needs to live with its means,” said Melli. “[The city is] a normal hard working family, and we have to make tough choices.”
He added the city won’t have any say in which specific officers are demoted, and that it will be “dictated by the Civil Service Commission. There’s a formula, based on seniority. The city doesn’t get a choice.”
Additional reporting by Gene Ritchings.
E-mail E. Assata Wright at awright@hudsonreporter.com.