Riley County’s former top cop told a Lyon County task force Thursday that merging the police and sheriff’s departments can work — but only if all the players want it to work.
To date, Riley County is the only county in Kansas to have a completely consolidated police department. Voters approved the move in 1972 and the new department went into action in 1974. And one reason it happened fairly smoothly, former police director Al Johnson said, is that neither the police chief nor the sheriff opposed it.
“You have to have the support of both for the process,” said Johnson, who headed the consolidated police department from 1978 to 2000 and is now a Riley County commissioner. “If one or the other chief is against it, I don’t think it can be done.”
That’s exactly what Lyon County’s consolidation task force wants to know — can it be done here? The group, which includes both city and county residents, is trying to see whether consolidation would save money and produce more efficient law enforcement. A report was originally planned for August, but chairman Marshall Miller has suggested that more time might be needed.
Even in Riley County’s case, consolidation didn’t happen overnight. The movement started in the late ’60s with Don Everett, a former county attorney elected to the Legislature in 1968. Everett tried several times to push the issue, but because of technical problems in the bill, it didn’t go to the voters until 1972.
It passed with 57 percent of the vote, despite every rural precinct voting against it and an opposition effort supported by the state sheriff’s association. A group spent all of 1973 working out the details — how would the beats work? Whose insurance package do you use? What will the uniforms look like? — before inaugurating the new department on Jan. 1, 1974.
Johnson was assistant director then. From the start, he said, rural feelings had to be considered. The county beats were drawn up carefully and officers for those beats were handpicked, folks who knew about country life and its needs.
Something must have worked. Opponents forced the issue back onto the ballot in 1976. It passed again, this time with a 70 percent vote. And it didn’t lose a single precinct.
Everyone who served in one of the old departments was offered a job in the new one, Johnson said. Almost everyone accepted.
“In the end, the only person who didn’t come aboard was the undersheriff,” he said. “He was just upset about it.”
Today, day-to-day operations are run by the director while overall policy is set by a police board. Officially, the board sets its own budget without the approval of the city or county commissions. In practice, the seven-member board always includes at least three city commissioners and at least two county commissioners, so approval tends to be understood.
Eighty percent of the budget is borne by the city of Manhattan while the other 20 percent comes from the county as a whole. The budget is funded by property taxes.
The police director is appointed rather than elected. Ironically, Johnson said, that may ensure greater accountability.
“People like their elected officials,” he said. “But the reality is, you can get rid of a police chief a lot faster than a sheriff.”
It is expensive in the early years, Johnson said, especially if you want to be fair to your officers. Police and sheriff salaries have to be equalized, benefits have to be made level and equipment has to be standardized. But over the long run, he said, it is more efficient and there can be some savings in administration. The Riley County force today has a budget of $12 million to $13 million and about 180 sworn officers.
Some task force members asked whether it would be necessary to build one law-enforcement center to house the new department, as Riley County eventually did. Emporia City Attorney Blaise Plummer wasn’t sure that was necessary, because the police department and sheriff’s department sit less than a block from each other.
Task force vice-chair Julie Johnson was less sure.
“From a psychological standpoint, I would say the way Riley County did it — to have a separate building for law enforcement to be in — makes a lot more sense,” she said. “Then it is a consolidated force. It’s not using a building that’s the city’s and a building that’s the county’s.”
Al Johnson said two buildings could work if the officers were divided by function instead of geography. For example, he said, all detectives could work out of one building and all patrol officers out of the other.
“You’ve presented a fairly positive impression of the consolidation process in Riley County,” Julie Johnson said. “Do you have any specifics as to why it’s a model that hasn’t been more adopted?”
“I think for the most part, it’s politics,” Al Johnson said.
“One question I’m always asked is ‘Will it work?’” he said. “If you want it to, it will. And if you don’t want it to, you can undermine it. That depends on the politicians.”
The next task force meeting will be 4 p.m. on July 26 in the jury assembly room at the Lyon County Courthouse.