Stamford rep blasts Board of Finance for delaying creation of new police officer positions

STAMFORD — A member of the Stamford Board of Representatives said he was “disgusted” by the city’s Board of Finance’s decision to delay a potential increase in budgeted officers for the city’s police department. 

“I’m angry,” said Sean Boeger, D-15, during the Board of Representatives’ Fiscal Committee meeting Monday. 

Boeger is also a sergeant in the Stamford Police Department. The increase, which was on the committee’s agenda, would have created 13 more officer positions in the department. A grant would help pay for six of the 13 new positions.

It would’ve brought the total number of officers in the patrol division from 217 to 230, resulting in a 300-person force when all other ranks are considered. In the early 2000s, the department had 314 budgeted sworn officers, according to Chief of Police Timothy Shaw.

Lou DeRubeis, Stamford’s director of public safety, health and welfare, said the proposed increase was the first “in quite a number of years.” 

The Board of Finance, however, during its Oct. 9 meeting, voted to hold the increase and asked the police department to provide more information, such as where the officers would be used and the total cost of hiring them outside of wages, such as health insurance and overtime. 

Boeger said during Monday’s fiscal committee meeting that he believed there were four officers assigned to traffic enforcement because “patrol demand is so high.” He said the department should be able to double the number of officers for traffic enforcement, which he said was “the top gripe of our citizenry.”

He also said the department was “lucky if we could cover the high schools when it’s busy.” 

“If we want to be responsible and we want to have the nice things that a nice city like Stamford should have…we have to do something about this,” Boeger said. 

Boeger said the department had opened up testing for new positions and that the department can’t send people to police academies, whether the city’s own or others, until the new positions are approved.

“We’re gambling with open positions based on academy availability,” Boeger said. 

Amiel Goldberg, D-13, said he wanted members of the committee to reach out to the Board of Finance to “let them know how deeply disappointed and frustrated our committee is.”

There had been an attempt to add the 13 police officer positions during the most recent budget process, but the Board of Finance cut the funding for those jobs. 

At that time, members of the board said to come back with the request once the department filled out the rest of their 287 budgeted officer positions. The department will reach that goal by December, Bridget Fox, chief of staff of the mayor’s office, said during the Oct. 9 meeting. 

Shaw, in an interview before the fiscal committee meeting, said getting more people for the department would mean less people have to work overtime and because of that, less people would burn out and leave the force. Half the budgeted overtime, he said, is for the patrol division. 

During the Oct. 9 meeting, the chief said the 13-person increase could result in a $500,000 reduction in overtime costs. 

Laura Burwick, a member of the Board of Finance, said during the Oct. 9 meeting the request of $743,941 for the new positions was “a huge additional expense to the budget” and that she wanted to “see a little bit of the analysis that went into this.”

Geoff Alswanger, a member of the finance board, said during that meeting that there have been “many sessions” where the board had “angst at the management” of the city’s pension funds and that the board “can’t ignore that as part of this equation.” 

Boeger, however, during Monday’s meeting, said the department “has no power or control over that.”