Text Size: A
A
A
A
New Collegedale Police Chief Brian Hickman is taking measures to improve efficiency in the department.
“We’ve streamlined the department to keep up with the economic times,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of things coming down the line.”
Through the natural phasing out of three positions, the department is now operating with 20 full-time officers, which “keeps everything within a good budget,” according to Hickman.
“I think it’s a lot more efficient,” City Manager Ted Rogers said. “I think at this point we’re keeping 20 for the foreseeable future — until things pop up and we have population growth.”
And through examining prisoner intake procedures, Hickman said those officers will now be able to spend more time on the streets protecting the city.
“It will save turnaround time which saves on the officer being away from the city,” he said. “It will keep officers in town more.”
Collegedale books all its offenders but can’t contain them for any real duration of time. Previously, when a prisoner was picked up on another offense outside the city’s jurisdiction, officers retrieved the prisoner from downtown, drove them to Collegedale to be booked and then returned them to the courthouse.
Now, officers simply make one trip, taking everything needed to book the prisoner on the spot.
And instead of depositing pretrial male prisoners picked up in Collegedale to the county courthouse downtown, officers will make the short trip with them over to Silverdale where previously only pretrial females were accepted.
“I’m really, really pleased we were able to get that worked out,” Hickman said.
He noted the savings in fuel costs as well.
Money won’t be the only thing being saved in the department if a grant expected from the Homeland Security Council comes through.
The anticipated $80,000 of federal money will be used to buy 19 digital, portable radios to provide increased reception. Another grant would fund a new tower in the same location as the current one to support the new radios.
“From a safety standpoint for our guys and gals, this is huge,” Mayor John Turner said after Hickman recounted a medical call he responded to that actually turned out to be a dangerous situation.
Unprepared to walk into a situation of that nature, Hickman was unable to be reached by the current analog radios, which often have transmission trouble and a small coverage area, he said.
“Our police officers could look at (the tower) but they couldn’t use it. That is unacceptable,” Rogers said.
The new radios would be able to be used from Dalton to Knoxville.
del.icio.us
digg
Furl
Spurl
YahooMyWeb
co.mments
Ma.gnolia
De.lirio.us
blogmarks
BlinkList
NewsVine
scuttle
Fark
Shadows
Comments
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.