Part 3 of 4
About the time that Lyon County was saying “no” to consolidation in the ’70s, Riley County was giving it a great big “yes.”
To this day, Riley County remains the only county in Kansas to have a consolidated law enforcement department. The sheriff’s department there merged with the Manhattan police force in 1974, as did all the smaller police agencies.
It can take some getting used to, even for the current director. Mike Watson spent 25 years with the Wichita Police Department before being hired to head the Riley County police in 2000.
“In Wichita, I worked for one individual, the city manager,” Watson said. “Going to work for a board of seven people ... it was a little different. It’s still different.
“But it works,” he added. “It works very well.”
Come together
It started in the late ’60s and early ’70s with Don Everett. As county attorney, Everett worked closely with the Manhattan Police Department and the Riley County Sheriff’s Department ... not to mention the 14 smaller police departments that made up the county.
Sixteen departments, it turned out, had a lot of issues between them. Sometimes it was lack of resources. Sometimes it was lack of training. Sometimes it was just the need to communicate between that many jurisdictions.
One way or another, Everett got tired of it. In 1968, he won a seat in the Kansas Legislature. And by 1972, he led the way for a bill that would clear the board and start over, merging all of Riley County’s police agencies into one.
“He felt it’d be a lot more efficient, a lot more effective, if there were just one agency,” Watson said.
The bill was specific to Riley County and had to pass countywide. It did, getting 57 percent of the vote. Opponents of the measure forced a second vote a year later, only to see it pass with even more support.
“They had the opportunity to work with it for a year and liked it,” Watson said. “And there hasn’t been an appeal since.”
Stars and shields
There are a lot of things to consider when setting up a unified agency. And as it turned out, the toughest issues were the cosmetic ones.
“What’s the color of the uniform going to be?”
“Do we wear a star or a shield?”
“Are we police officers or deputies?”
They might sound like small things now, Watson said, but for people who had spent a lifetime in the force, they were very real.
“Some of these guys might have been wearing that uniform for 50 years,” Watson said. “There were some real issues with that.”
Where possible, the department compromised. A new uniform combined both colors. A new badge had a star in the middle of a shield. Most of the ranks were thrown out and renamed, although beat officers were called “police officers.”
Some of that did cost. So did the salary and pension plan adjustments, which were phased in to match the Manhattan Police Department. That won a lot of friends, especially with the former small-town city marshals, but it also meant more of a start-up cost.
Watson re-emphasized the point — don’t consolidate just for financial reasons.
“You do save a little bit of money,” he said. “But if the only reason you’re doing this is to save money, it’s probably a mistake.”
Where the savings come in the long run, he said, is administration. That includes, of course, having one appointed director instead of an elected sheriff and an appointed chief. In Riley County’s case, the measure was timed perfectly — the chief of police was retiring and the sheriff wasn’t interested in running for re-election.
“That was an easy time to do it,” Watson said.
Making it work
The result is a fairly flexible system, although some officers do remain more comfortable working a city or a county beat. For that matter, some residents remain more comfortable with an officer from their area.
“The people in the county are still a little leery of city cops responding,” Watson said. “When there’s a cow out, a county officer knows what to do. If it’s a city officer, a lot of them are not cow experts.”
Then again, it can be a mistake to divide the force into “city” and “county” people. Coming from Wichita, Watson may be the most “city” officer on the force — and he recently doubled the number of officers assigned to the county beats.
It does become important to watch the beats, Watson said, and make sure that no part of the county is getting neglected. Right now, the Riley County Police Department is in the midst of a manpower study to see what its needs are.
“That should be done anywhere, not just in a consolidated police department,” Watson said.
For now, he’s satisfied with the system he’s got. And he knows it can work elsewhere, even if no one else has taken the plunge yet.
“Every entity owes it to the constituency to take a look at consolidation and see if it would work,” Watson said. “It does save some money. It is efficient.
“Politically, you may not be able to do it. Politically, you may not want to do it. But I think you owe it to the taxpayers to see if it’s something you can do.”
WEDNESDAY: Law-enforcement consolidation in Lyon County would require legislative approval.
Comments
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Posted by ks_farmboy (anonymous) on March 20, 2007 at 10:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
if there is nothing wrong with the current system, why fix it?
Posted by jmb232 (anonymous) on March 22, 2007 at 5:32 a.m. (Suggest removal)
The Chief of Police is appointed in the city. The county Sheriff is elected by the people. They do two different jobs with some simularities. The Sheriff, besides patrolling the areas outside the city limits keeps the jail and serves civil process and warrants and transports prisoners to court.
If for some reason the public does not like the job that he is doing they can re-elect a new Sheriff. I don't know why the people would give up this very important right, the right to elect
their top county law enforcement officer. If this is being done
to attempt to save a few dollars they are on the wrong track.
Posted by dj2879 (anonymous) on March 22, 2007 at 12:34 p.m. (Suggest removal)
For lack of a better place to post this comment, I find it interesting that whoever wrote this week's poll can't spell Democrat correctly.
Proofreading error or lack of quality editing?
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