Penny-Pinching Towns Put Police Out to Pasture

FORT COLLINS, Colo. (July 13) -- The sheriff will be walking the streets again in San Luis -- the oldest community in Colorado. But it's not a return to the Wild West; the town fired its entire police force to save money.

Around the country other towns -- large and small -- are also eliminating their police departments. The Los Angeles suburb of Maywood, Calif., fired its officers, as did rural Bethel, Maine. Near Pittsburgh, Fallowfield, Pa., also voted to disband its police department.

The towns have been turning law enforcement over to county sheriffs, a decision that Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police, called "penny wise and pound foolish."

He told AOL News that sheriff's departments and state police don't have the manpower to properly patrol larger areas.

"The absolute threshold responsibility of a government at any level is to ensure the safety of its citizens," he said, adding that local police officers are more effective because they "know the town, know the people and know the nuances."

San Luis, established in southern Colorado in 1851, is facing a $750,000 budget deficit. The town of 740 residents has a median income is $20,875. It's about 225 miles from Denver.

"We just did not have the money to pay these people," San Luis Mayor Theresa S. Medina said by telephone.

She said firing the police chief and three part-time officers was expected to save about $10,000 a month in salaries, gas and car maintenance. The unanimous decision by the San Luis City Council on July 2 also saw the town's sole maintenance worker fired, leaving the town clerk as the only employee.

At the monthly town meeting, the only opposition came from the police chief, Medina said. Discussions about a volunteer force didn't make sense because the town would have liability problems, she said.

The mayor said a grant received by the Costilla County sheriff should allow that agency to provide coverage at no charge to San Luis for at least three years.

Medina, 61, a lifelong resident of San Luis, isn't worried about not having a police department. The previous officers didn't live in town anyhow. She also said there hadn't been a serious crime for as far back as she could remember.

"Every little town has crime. Ours isn't major," the mayor said. "We have kids getting in fights," vandalism and some burglary.

But the crime rate is significant in Maywood, Calif., an industrial working-class town of more than 30,000 residents. There were four murders in 2008, twice the national average, according to the website city-data.com.

Maywood had a $450,000 deficit in a $210 million budget. In addition, it had been unable to obtain insurance and workers' compensation coverage because it had faced too many lawsuits, many involving the police.

Rather than declare bankruptcy, all city functions were outsourced this month. The duties of the 41 police officers -- who also patrolled the neighboring city of Cudahy -- were turned over to the sheriff's department in neighboring East Los Angeles.

The firings were opposed by some at the city council, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"You guys had the power to change it, and you didn't," City Treasurer Lizeth Sandoval told the council. "You single-handedly destroyed the city."

Sandoval, 28, who was speaking as a resident, was laid off as part of the cuts.

The decision to eliminate the police force in Bethel, Maine -- 70 miles northwest of Portland -- was also one that divided the vacation town of 2,500.

Bethel had only one full-time officer and five vacancies it hadn't been able to fill, Town Clerk Christen Mason told AOL News in a telephone interview.

It would have cost $453,800 for academy-trained officers. The contract with the Oxford County sheriff, which started July 1, costs $295,000 per year, she said.

But that doesn't sit well with some residents, like Nathan White. "I think it's going to adversely affect the town, he said, according to an area television station. "I don't think we're going to have the coverage we thought we were going to have."

At a special town meeting in the spring, the decision to eliminate the police department passed by only seven votes. A new vote was held at the annual meeting in June, and it passed by 123 votes out of 929 votes cast.

In Fallowfield, Pa., the supervisors voted 2-1 to fire the two full- and three part-time officers when their contract expires Dec. 31. The town, about 25 miles south of Pittsburgh, has 4,400 residents.

Supervisor Olga Woodward said in a telephone interview that she couldn't comment because the police union may sue. However, 14 townships in Pennsylvania's Washington County have no municipal police force, she said.

"This is happening everywhere," Woodward said.