CITY & REGION

New deputies already a seasoned bunch

Sheriff recruits from ranks of state parks police, village forces to fill gap left by wave of retirements

The Erie County Sheriff's Department is solving its police manpower shortage by hiring village and state parks police officers.

The decision to hire experienced officers instead of new recruits came when 27 deputies retired at the end of last year rather than be forced to start contributing to the cost of their health insurance.

The sudden loss of more than 750 combined years of police experience led the department to rebuild the patrol force with trained police officers from other agencies.

"We weren't going to be able to screen and hire new officers and send them through the Erie County Police Training Academy that quickly, so we had to go and recruit lateral entries," Undersheriff Mark N. Wipperman said Friday.

By the end of June, there will be 16 replacement deputies out on patrol, many of them coming from the New York State Park Police ranks and local village police departments.

Eleven deputy patrol positions were permanently eliminated because of a 20 percent budget reduction imposed on the department in the latest county budget.

"We're operating on an austerity budget," Wipperman said.

The wave of retirements was the result of an arbitrator's decision that Erie County patrol deputies must help foot the bill for health insurance.

The arbitrator had ruled that anyone still on the payroll as of Jan. 1 would have to begin contributing 15 percent toward their health insurance premiums while working and in retirement.

Twenty-seven deputies and supervisors with 20 years or more of service retired as of Dec. 31, while they were still eligible for fully paid medical insurance for life.

"We were decimated," Wipperman said.

But because the retirements occurred at about the same time as the budget cut, he said, the sheriff's department was able to avoid layoffs in the patrol division.

Contributions to health insurance are not new in the sheriff's department; an arbitrator in 2007 required all deputies hired in 2008 and later to contribute 15 percent to health care costs.

So with the latest ruling, all road patrol deputies are now contributing to health insurance.

The union representing road deputies is not pleased.

"There are a lot of people who left because financially they had no choice," said Senior Detective Alan N. Rozansky, president of the Erie County Sheriff's Police Benevolent Association.

In the latest arbitration, deputies were awarded 2 percent pay raises for 2007 and 2008, which is expected to offset the 15 percent health care contribution.

But when current deputies retire, Rozansky said, they will have to pay the 15 percent.

On recruitment, Wipperman estimated that the department saved about $1 million in training academy costs by hiring people already certified by the state as police officers, though some of the savings were eaten up by overtime costs because of the large number of retirements.

"When you lose about one-fifth of your police services division with no advance notice, there are inherent consequences in the form of increased overtime costs.

"The increased overtime costs was money well-spent. We were able to maintain our quick and efficient response time in all of our patrol districts," Wipperman said.

Sheriff's deputies patrol 16 towns and five villages in the county.

A bonus in seeking lateral transfers, he explained, is that some of the new hires come with additional training in areas such as search and rescue, advanced crime scene investigation skills, and marine and snowmobile certification.

 Among those to retire was K-9 Deputy Brian Rossi and his dog Billy, an older German shepherd. That team has been replaced by Deputy Brad Ballantyne and Hayco, a young Belgian Malinois.

lmichel@buffnews.com