GA allows for the county government to merge with one or more of the municipalities within it. These are called consolidated governments.
The neighboring county to me consolidated in 1991 or 1992. That county had an existing county PD. The city PD and the county PD merged. When I went to the academy in 1999, that agency was still struggling from the merger and issue still popup from time to time. It's only faded from being an issue as the old heads are now steadily retiring.
I had an ER nurse in a class. I noticed she kept taking all head shots. Her response when asked why, "'I've seen too many people who have been shot in the chest putting up a fight in the ER." Point taken.
The culture clash is something that will always happen; my bad if I gave the impression that particular aspect isn't an issue. Using my prior reference to federal reorganization, we saw this with Customs vs INS special agents within HSI, as a prime example, where for a long time the legacy Customs guys openly looked down on the INS guys and treated them/their programs as chopped liver.Originally Posted by jlw
I think what I'm trying to get at more is that the logistical issues (different cars/radios/guns/vests/uniforms etc) and HR issues (like, say, pay grades) aren't as big an issue for most mergers as BBI's is making it out to be...especially since lots of mergers/reformations are accompanied with union breaks, giving carte-blanche to rewrite the HR issues.
No doubt there's always going to be culture clashes as people hold on to allegiances of their prior department/personnel, though.
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Van Horn has the best, and most affordable, hotel I’ve found in West Texas. I’ve spent a lot of time out there, and I believe it to be one of the best deals in lodging period, if you don’t mind bare bones.
Out west, you often only have an SO for LE services due to how rural the county is and the limited population.
Given this is a publicly viewable portion of the forum, I will simply say that there were and are ongoing challenges in both Indianapolis and Louisville and that much of the promised benefits have not materialized for those officers or communities, particularly in terms of costs, top heavy rank structures, and police coverage. And these were near peer agencies in the same geographic area with similar hiring requirements and training levels merging with only one other department, as ideal a situation as you can have for organizations of that size.
In a hypothetical circumstance, if I lived in a reasonably affluent area with a low violent crime rate, I would vehemently oppose my police merging with any other police. In very short order what you will have is fewer police but the same or higher tax burden to support police who are now working elsewhere. One can also see the effect in places like Atlanta, where Buckhead is fighting a legal battle to be allowed to become it's own city so they can have their own police.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
I should add that Savannah and Chatham County merged their PDs via contract only to split them apart several years later.
I had an ER nurse in a class. I noticed she kept taking all head shots. Her response when asked why, "'I've seen too many people who have been shot in the chest putting up a fight in the ER." Point taken.
Consolidation of agencies can work. Most would agree Las Vegas Metro was a successful merger of a city police department with a county sheriff's office. The LVMPD website details the story of this consolidation and mentions many of the problems incurred in the merger and mentions that initial savings did not immediately occur. The Nashville Metropolitan Police is another merger that, as far as I can tell, seems to be working. Pennsylvania, which has the issue of multiple "tiny" police forces, has over thirty regional departments. The state government even has a manual on its website discussing the how-to of this endeavor.
That said, consolidation often involves an outside agency taking over the functions of a smaller department. This seems to work more smoothly if they are at the same level of government, but it still may have some issues, Examples are the merger of the NYPD merging the Transit Police and Housing Police in the 1990's and Los Angeles County Sheriff absorbing the county police, harbor patrol, marshals, and community college police.
Maryland had the idea of merging state law enforcement agencies some years ago. This led to the Maryland State Police absorbing the Toll Facilities Police, the Airport Police, the Port Administration Police, and the Fire Marshal. I had the impression that the Troopers wanted the toll roads and tolerated the airport ,but wanted nothing to do with foot posts in the tunnels. Airport officers could become Troopers, but had to complete the MSP Academy. Otherwise, they were given Trooper uniforms with an airport rocker on the sleeve, but could never leave the airport. Some years later, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police were formed to handle the toll facilities, the airport, and the port, The FM's remain part of MSP, but their career path is not that of a Trooper.
The state also opted to merge the law enforcement functions of the Maryland Park Service into the Maryland Natural Resources Police. I believe the marriage eventually worked, but there were issues of the different cultures of the beat cops of the Ranger service and the lone hunters of NRP.
From a federal perspective that's likely true. It is much less true, again laughably untrue, on the budget of most local and county departments. Something as simple as a stripe package that costs $500 more can be very significant for fleet management costs and when a fleet is already on the edge due to budget concerns that becomes problematic. When you now have multiple types of vehicles to support, meaning you have to either farm it out or train mechanics on more models, stock more spare parts, stock different grades of oil, different tires, etc. those costs add up.
It's a very different world when your boss can't borrow a couple trillion dollars or just print more. Things like reissuing uniforms, striping cars, standardizing radios, etc. adds up in a way that's irrelevant to your budget but back breaking to many localitys that are already struggling. Pay grades?
My home town has an annual budget of $6.7 million. The next largest city in the county has a budget of $1.8 million. That's not for the police, that's for the entire city budget. They have something like 25 and 10 officers, respectively. A lieutenant on the bigger department makes 50% more than the *chief* of the smaller town makes, and a lieutenant on my department makes over double what that chief makes... Do you think it would be burdensome for them to raise their pay rates to parity with the bigger department in their county, let alone my department? A back of the envelope figuring puts the smaller city at something like $350k if everyone but the chief gets to keep their rank. Out of a budget of $1.8 million for the entire city. Who's paying that? Or does a merger to one big department not include parity of pay?
Seriously, you've no idea what you don't know here because you are looking at it through a lense that does not apply. I've no interest in arguing it further.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
Well, I'm not arguing it further with you either, so I'm not sure why your knickers are in a twist.
Signed,
The guy who wasn't born into the federal government and previously worked as a municipal employee
"Are you ready? Okay. Let's roll."- Last words of Todd Beamer
Wow, there are lots of experiences here that paint consolidation as a nearly impossible situation. But also experiences where it more or less worked out. It just struck me though that the whole discussion came out of the Uvalde mess and, it seems to me, that about 95% of the fault there lies w/ one person. Would working in a larger department w/ more training budget have helped? Or would he still have been worthless? Or perhaps his shortcomings would have been more obvious and he would have been gone before that fateful day. And then there is another question, if he were either better or been replaced, would all those other officers have been any better or any more willing to do their job?
Here’s the thing:
More than enough badges showed up at Uvalde to deal with that problem.
The problem wasn’t the size or scope of the agencies involved.
I had an ER nurse in a class. I noticed she kept taking all head shots. Her response when asked why, "'I've seen too many people who have been shot in the chest putting up a fight in the ER." Point taken.
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