Retirements leave leadership void in NCCo Police

As the realities of New Castle County's budgetary constraints came into focus over the last several months, the conversation about police staffing quickly moved from adding cops, to seeking concessions from officers officials say are needed just to keep them all on the street.

So it's not surprising that talks of filling high-paying senior staff positions have been put on the back burner. But that doesn't mean the void at the top isn't growing with every passing month, as more and more senior officers reach retirement age.

Lt. Col. Scott McLaren, second-in-command of the 364-member department, will retire on July 24 after 20 years with the department. In February, Maj. Stuart Snyder left the department after 34 years, forced to retire by law after turning 55.

With existing vacancies at the other rank of major and one of five captains positions, a senior staff that was at nine in 2006 is now down to five. And that concerns some, who say it could put the department at risk operationally.

"There's the potential for things to fall through the cracks," McLaren said. "It's just not good police management to run as short as the county police are right now."

McLaren said his duties have been spread out among the department's remaining captains, and said while each is "more than capable," it amounts to a lot of extra work.

"Every captain is now wearing three or four hats rather than focusing on their area of command solely," he said. "People always look at the top and say 'you make too much money and you don't do a darn thing.' Well, now you don't have enough at the top, the stress is double or triple what it was...and it's going to start taking a toll."

Councilman Bill Bell (D-Middletown), who co-chairs the county council's Public Safety Committee, has been beating the drum for some of the senior staff vacancies to be filled for more than a year. Bell said he's concerned that there's no plan in place to replace officers as they retire.

"If we didn't need the positions, we wouldn't have them, we'd just do away with them," Bell said. "I just don't want to see us lose ground. We have to have a managerial succession plan in place."

While overall crime is down 8 percent from last year, Snyder said crimes are becoming more complex. Things like cyber-crimes are requiring more and more agency resources, he said.

"When you keep adding tasks to the pile, it gets harder to get things done," he said.

Chief Rick Gregory said people within the agency have been able to absorb the work left by Snyder and McLaren, but that doesn't make them easy to replace.

"When you lose people like them, you miss their institutional knowledge," he said. "And we have had to reprioritize internally what is important."

Two years ago, when the Commission for Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies reviewed the department, it got high praise for its operations under a "lean" senior staff.

County Executive Chris Coons said a stagnant housing market has significantly impacted the county's revenues over the last year and said he didn't think the county could afford the senior staff levels that were in place when he took office in 2005. With a $51 million police budget, his priority going into this budget year, which began July 1, was keeping officers on the street. Some stimulus money the county is applying for could potentially be used to bring on new officers, but only if the county is able to identify permanent funding streams to pay salaries once that money dries up, Coons said.

As baby boomers approach retirement age, Coons said departments across the county were losing senior staffers. He said his basic philosophy, especially over the last several budget years when money has been tight, is to seek leaner back-offices leading county departments. He said he's eliminated 200 full-time positions from 1,600-plus on the books when he took office. This year alone, 97 jobs were unfunded or eliminated.

But despite assurances Gregory and the agency's captains were capable of leading the department, Coons conceded there were compelling reasons to try to fill at least some positions going forward.

"Across any department of county government, or any business for that matter, having clear promotional opportunities available is one way people feel good about their jobs," Coons said. "It does have an effect on morale."

When a senior staff position gets filled, that trickles all the way down through the department, said Cpl. Joseph Lavelle, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5.

"We look at it as, if there's a promotion at the top, there's going to be movement at the bottom within our bargaining unit," he said.

But like Coons, Lavelle said his focus has been on negotiating a new contract that "keeps feet on the streets." He said the conversation about promotions is one to have "once the dust settles" and a new contract is in place, which could happen this week.

"It's definitely something we'll be discussing, because what if something happens to someone at the top?" he said. "We owe it to the agency to have people in place prepared to lead it."