PAX Centurion - April / June 2016

Page 32 • PAX CENTURION • April-May-June 2016 617-989-BPPA (2772) “We’re all in it together” By Sergeant Detective Thomas N. Pratt, Past BPPA Treasurer B efore I start this opinion piece, I would just like to thank the leadership of the BPPA along with the editor and editorial staff for allowing me to be printed in this issue of your PAX. I’m sure you will hear and read many things on the topic I am about to write about, which is the manpower shortage in the police department, all ranks excluding civilians. To the best of my knowledge the Boston Police Department has around 2,144 sworn members of all ranks who respond to a myriad of calls and situations according to their assignments. The busy summer months for the police department are now upon us, the vacation periods have started, kids are out of school, tourists are arriving, parades and festivals are every weekend. Odds are that many of you, if it has not already started, are going to be ordered to work double and maybe triple shifts. Contrary to popular belief, no supervisor enjoys ordering an officer to work, we all know that many of you have set plans with your families and friends for functions and cookouts and that that time is needed to unwind and decompress. According to the most recent census, the population of the City of Boston is 655,844 which is a number that represents people who actually maintain city residence. Additionally, during the day, due to commuters coming into the city to work and visiting tourists, the population of the city can easily reach over a million and a half and possibly higher. We must not forget the homeless population that is virtually undocumented but lives within the city limits and the students who come to study at our many institutions for at least nine months of the year. According to the City of Boston, experts estimate by 2030 the population of Boston will be over 700,000, a level not seen since 1950. Between 2000 and 2010 the city gained over 28,000 people and is estimated to gain a total of around 91,000 people by 2030. In the 20 years between 2010 and 2030 the City of Boston aims to build 53,000 additional housing units. With all that Boston has to offer, we have also seen major companies relocating to Boston. The problem in the police department is that there are not enough police officers to go around. The City of Boston and members of the City Council have to realize that Boston is getting bigger but its Police Department is not. That being said, you would think that with the increase in population and the increase in calls for police services, someone would forecast that we need to increase the overall sworn members of the department. Classes of 70 or 80, including outside departments, are being put on about once a year with academy class # 55-15 about to graduate. This means that the City of Boston and the police department have had at least 55 chances (since classes started being numbered in 1982 with class # “1-82”) to see that there is a significant number of potential recruits who arrive at the BPD Academy on day one who will not be there on graduation day. In past years, classes of 120-150 people were routinely put on by the department and in the next five years 300 to 400 members of the police department from these classes will be eligible to retire. We are not even keeping up with the attrition rate. Additionally, in a dangerous job like the one we work in, there is always a risk of injury which further decreases available manpower. The City, our employer, must realize that being ordered for three and four tours of duty a week is not healthy both physically and mentally. Especially if you are working a shift that is an overnight. We do not get to sleep on duty! We do not get to cook meals together or sit down at a communal table and eat that hot meal. We are expected to be on the move all the time searching for someone or somebody who has broken the law or out on foot interacting with the community. Civilian employees are not the answer; neither is civilianizing the detail clerks and other clerical duties that are being performed by sworn officers. The only “fix” to this problem will be the hiring of several classes of 125 recruits or more. The city must factor in the dropout rate of the academy and hire in greater numbers. Hopefully someone in city government will read this and look into the problem. Next topic that I wanted to discuss is public schools and why are the police being called to assist with an unruly 6-year old? Listening to my portable radio and reading reports over the past few months, I have noticed the amount of radio calls the patrol force is responding to at our grammar schools. Why are you being called for these? It is the job of the school administrator or teacher to control their own students, especially younger students in elementary grades. To simply call the police for an out-of-control child is passing the buck onto someone else for fear that if something goes wrong, you can blame the responding officers. I have also been told that when officers arrive at some of the schools they have been called to, the officers themselves are treated like errant children by school staff who tell them how to perform their duty and how they want the problem handled. That is absurd! They called us to a problem, we have our protocols and they have theirs. If they do not like the way the police department handles the situations in the schools, then they should handle it themselves. They’re the ones with the Ph.D’s in child psychology. Teachers should realize that police officers should not be the ones who remove children from school property, it should be them. I know that teaching can be taxing on the nerves , teachers have a tough job but they should not makes us “the boogie man” just because they are afraid to do what is asked of them. Having police officers constantly respond to the schools and remove children is just furthering the message that the police are the bad guys. Children seeing this will grow up to be very distrustful of the police, never wanting to ask for help if it is needed for fear that the police will just take them away like they keep taking their little friends. When the children are removed from the school, their classmates do not understand that their friend is going to see a doctor, they think when the police come and take someone away, they’re going to jail! In all fairness, it is not all their fault that we live in a litigious society where parents no longer want to discipline their own children and choose to let others handle it (although when the least little thing goes wrong they blame society and not themselves). We as the police should not be abused as society’s whipping boys, but everyday more and more problems and tasks are thrust upon us. A lot of these tasks are put on us because people who were hired to do jobs suddenly no longer feel like doing them, and parents do not feel like parenting, so the logical solution is to call 911. In the early days of policing we were called blue canaries, look that up on the web and see what canaries were used for in the coal mines. Society has to realize we are the people who say “NO” to you a lot and we can’t always be nice, not because we don’t want to, but because sometimes people do bad or wrong things and that behavior needs to be corrected. We are not sadists or masochists, just people who are trying to do a job, better our lives and our family’s lives