A POLICE VIEW
FORUM
This material is excerpted from an article by Patrolmen Elden Willingham and David K. Hartin that appeared in “The Police Chief ” magazine in April I960. The excerpts are reproduced with permission of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
In these days of rocketing inflation and increasing crime rates, city administrators are hard pressed to find funds to support needed law enforcement programs . . . Some city administrators, feeling that more cutbacks are needed in police budgets despite close scrutinization of department excesses, have sought, to some extent, to consolidate their police and fire services. Under this plan, city administrators hope to capitalize on the supposed “non-productive” time of their fire fighters.
In reality, the consolidation plan is not the panacea which frugal municipal managers wish it to be.
Speaking as attorney general for the State of Michigan, Frank). Kelly has labeled consolidation a “costly failure.” In a public statement issued recently, he pointed out that the moves by cities to a consolidated police and fire service have invariably resuited in a sharp increase in the cost of fire and police protection.
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Traditionally, the fire service has trained fire fighters by requiring them to work, live, and train together; thus producing a wellcoordinated team .. The fire fighters are trained to depend on each other and to anticipate each other s actions and commands . . . The police training concept is different. Police officers are expected to work independently of supervision… The result of consolidation is a PSO with two conflicting working environments. As a police officer, he is his own boss; as a fire fighter, he is part of a directed team.
For the most part, a PSO spends approximately 90 percent of his time performing law enforcement duties, leaving only 10 percent of his time to fighting fires and training in fire fighting. The result is, instead of a well-orchestrated team responding to a fire, a group of minimally trained individuals who are expected to successfully fight fire … Awkwardness is often the result.
Other problems found from utilization of a PSO are as follows:
1.PSOs must drive their vehicles close to the fire in order to have time to put their equipment on and report on time. These vehicles add to congestion in the fire area; and in many cases PSO fire fighters have had to be called from the fire to move vehicles to allow room for more equipment to arrive at the scene.
2. The plan rests on the premise that a PSO will be able to respond to the fire at the same time as, or ahead of, the fire fighting apparatus. In many cases, this is not possible due to law enforcement functions taking precedence or the vehicle being a significant distance from the fire.
3. The lack of fire fighters to perform routine maintenance and refitting of apparatus after fires increases costs in terms of downtime for equipment and money for paying for repairs normally done by fire fighters in their spare time.
4. Pre-fire planning, to include building, block and area surveys, is reduced or neglected under the PSO plan.
5. Fire prevention activities, such as inspections, education, etc., have been neglected due to lack of available personnel.
A PSO is often thought of as a bastard child at a family reunion – neither side wants to claim him. This lack of identification with either profession is a contributing factor to a higher employee turnover in departments which have consolidated … (then the city has) the increased expense of recruiting and training for replacement . .. The mental turmoil created by such a mixture is breeding ground for the morale problems which so often undermine the program.
Residential communities with limited industry generally experience a better reaction to the consolidation program. This is especially true of those with a population of middle-to-high-income people living in well-constructed houses. Their need for fire protection is far more limited.
When a full-scale emergency arises, one of the services must suffer.
All in all, in terms of cost, morale, training, and, above all, effectiveness, the disadvantages of the consolidated police-fire department far outweigh the advantages.
Ironically, considering the fact that the program is aimed at public safety, it is the public that must pay for the program’s shortcomings.
