A new police command position created by city councilors this week will focus mainly on carrying out internal investigations of officers who are alleged to have done something wrong.
The $57,000-a-year lieutenant’s position is slated to begin on Nov. 1.
“One of his main jobs will be” internal affairs investigations,” said city Councilor Frank Nicastro, a Police Board commissioner.
Nicastro said that the existing lieutenants “are just spread too thin” so the new post will allow the police do a better job administratively.
The new lieutenant’s post will also oversee community relations, code enforcement, youth officers, neighborhood watches, the DARE program and related activities, said Police Chief John DiVenere.
City Councilor Ellen Zoppo said she is “a little concerned” the change could crimp the successful code enforcement work by Officer Tom Lavigne, but the chief said it won’t.
Creating the new post will spread the work over more command officers, officials said, and allow all of them to do a better job.
City Councilor Craig Minor said he is concerned that the internal affairs investigations “may get lost” with the new lieutenant required to oversee so many other activities.
But DiVenere said that its main focus will be to probe issues raised about other police officers. He said the community relations oversight is meant mostly “to keep this position busy” when there’s nothing to investigate.
DiVenere said that the lieutenant would largely look into charges made against police officers.
He said a detective lieutenant would investigate charges against lieutenants while he would generally be the one to investigate issues raised about a captain.
“We don’t have that many IA investigations,” the chief said.
A 2006 study of the department recommended creating the position, DiVenere said.
Minor said that he finds it “mind-boggling” that there are no job descriptions for police lieutenants. They basically do what the chief orders them to carry out.
The council voted unanimously to create the new position.
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Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
6 comments:
If these two council people had these concerns why did they vote yes on the position?
Before we add another essentially administrative position, i.e., another chief without Indians, there should be a detailed description of what is expected of that position and what it will cost.
The other duties also concern me. They all seem to be "feel good" jobs. For example, take the DARE program. I understand that there are studies showing that DARE does not work in the sense that there are no measurable long term effects. The kids get the training make the promise and in a few years get high anyway. This by the way should be no surprise because many programs which sound good on paper, for example "Scared Straight" and "Boot Camps", do not work.
The police union contract forbids job descriptions for lieutenants. That's why the council approved the position anyway, because they felt that the need for an Internal Affairs investigator outweighed that. The system we have now recently resulted in two guys investigating each other at the same time. This will end that.
Perhaps description was a bad term. But it does not have to be a formal job description. But whatever you call it, there should be a detailed explanation what this individual will do beyond Internal Affairs.
Everything mentioned beyond the Internal; Affairs aspect of the position, is community outreach. For once I agree with Minor. The Internal Affairs function is likely to get lost among the other responsibilities. Of course, his moment of independence behind, Minor than followed the herd and voted his approval.
This simply does not sound well thought out. In my moments of cynicism, I suspect that this is no more than an attempt to paper over problems within the department by pretending to act. I wonder who the new LT will be.
Minor got the Chief to state, on the record, that the new lieutenant's first responsibility will be IA investigations, and a commitment from him that all IA investigations of mid-ranking officers will be done by this individual and not by each other, as is done now. Not sure what you mean by "moment of independence", but he probably did this to create a public record that the Chief can be held to later.
That is nice. Minor scored a political point which will be quickly forgotten. After scoring his point, he rejoined the pack and voted with the rest of them. As for holding the chief to his word, good luck.
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