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Albuquerque Public Schools commission requests new estimates for security
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In its recent review of the Albuquerque Public Schools police, the Council of Great City schools recommended contracting with the Albuquerque Police Department or the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department for law enforcement and changing the district police department into a safety and security arm. On June 21, more details of the council's findings were made public, including:
• APS police uniformly expressed the desire that the department be transferred to another police agency.
• Because of low salaries compared with other police agencies, APS is viewed as an employer of last resort.
• The force chronically lacks young officers who can relate to students.
• Low salaries, inadequate equipment and poor relations with the human resources department have created mistrust of the district administration and low morale.
• In an emergency, officers must go through a cumbersome chain of command before they can retrieve firearms locked in trunks.
• There is a lack of standard codes for notifying staff and students in emergency situations.
• No policy about school key distribution leads to an estimated 3,000 alarm calls per weekend.
• APS police have used questionable methods to try to improve staff compensations, such as promoting an excessive number of sergeants, giving unearned comp time, providing a higher than normal clothing allowance and paying inappropriate shift differentials.
Source: Council of the Great City Schools
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A panel charged with reforming the troubled Albuquerque Public Schools police force has quickly run into money trouble - trouble estimating what a changed force would need, that is.
The district's Community Safety Commission met on June 21 to hear estimates of how much it would cost to reform the police force using three proposals evaluated by experts from the Council of the Great City Schools:
• Create a fully authorized, professional department for safety, security and law enforcement.
• Contract out law enforcement but retain safety and security functions in-house.
• Contract out all safety, security and law enforcement functions.
An estimate from Bill Moffat, the district's chief financial officer, put the last option at roughly $7 million, $1.8 million more than the $5.2 million budgeted for the school police force.
Moffat estimated a security-only service would cost $2.6 million.
However, commission members poked at some of Moffat's assumptions, including budgeting for a security service without a dispatch office. In the end, they asked him to come back with new estimates that corresponded with the scenarios being considered.
The commission was formed by Superintendent Beth Everitt to recommend changes after debate over arming school officers heated up and an audit verified problems in the department.
The chief for the last 16 years, Gil Lovato, has been on administrative leave since January, and his contract has not been renewed.
The commission is expected to make recommendations on security changes before school starts in August.
