The U’s budget cut means school is out for the campus police, with less money for officer training and overtime hours.
Before the cut, the public safety department had about $2.5 million of state allocated funds, according to the budget office. Now it has to weigh its options with $2.4 million after a 4 percent budget cut.
The department’s proposal was submitted Oct. 17, and Vice President for Administrative Services Arnie Combe and Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Mike Perez have to approve it. The department has been operating as though the proposal were in effect.
Besides the suspension of the rape awareness and self-defense classes, which cost $1,800, the proposal includes cutting back on most of the officers’ additional education and training to meet the demands of the lowered budget.
The officer training offers advanced courses of skills taught in police academy training.
“There’s that old adage, do more with less,” said Scott Folsom, chief of campus police. “Well, at some point, we have to do less with less.”
The department is also eliminating room in the budget for officers to work overtime, unless the additional presence is deemed absolutely necessary. Overtime hours include any hours the officer is not pre-scheduled for. However, Folsom said there will be just as many officers patrolling the campus to keep the peace and provide all regular services. They just might not be as versatile at their jobs as they used to be.
The department used to pay for its officers to attend training programs once or twice a month, such as collision reconstruction or advanced interrogation. The classes would cost anywhere between $100 to $900, said police Capt. Lynn Mitchell. Under the new budget, the department can afford to send one or two officers to the programs so that they can come back to the station and train the rest of the force on their own time.
Hopefully, teaching their comrades will pound the training into the minds of the officers who attended the courses and they can understand the material even better, Folsom said.
Without the cuts of the rape self-defense course and the training programs, the department would have had to start laying officers off, he said.
“People who say, “You’re just driving around,’ don’t have a basic understanding of what the police do,” Folsom said.
It’s important to keep just as many officers and security guards on payroll at the loss of exterior programs, because the campus is part of a society before it’s a school, he said. A police presence is paramount for student safety.
If the U’s budget is cut again, Folsom said the department would try to draw the line and demand it keep its funds in the interest of student security.