As you may have seen, today’s Globe reports that Mayor Menino has submitted a home rule petition that, if endorsed by the City Council and then adopted by the state, would essentially exempt Boston from the Governor’s new rules regarding civilian flaggers at construction sites.
The mayor submitted a home-rule petition yesterday to the City Council that, with state approval, would require construction projects to have police details on roads that have heavy traffic volume, even if the speed limit is below the 45-mile-per-hour benchmark set by the state.
The proposal, to go before the council today, could effectively eclipse Patrick’s highly touted use of civilian flaggers at certain construction sites, at least in the city, where the state is starting significant road reconstruction projections. Under Patrick’s cost-cutting changes, the state uses civilian flaggers on roads with a speed limit below 45 miles per hour.
Why this? Why now?
Menino’s support for using police details on Boston roads could help earn him political points with police unions ahead of this year’s competitive mayoral race. The mayor had a strained relationship with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the city’s largest police union, over contract disagreements prior to his last reelection bid, in 2005.
Ah.
Anyway, I asked Mayor Menino’s three challengers what they thought of his proposal. Here’s what I got.
Yoon:
[I]n short – no, he does not support Menino’s legislation to roll back the Governor’s initiative.
McCrea:
I am in support of replacing police details with civilian flaggers wherever possible. Obviously, I oppose the Mayor’s proposal.
Good answers — both nice and clear, in addition to being on what I think is the right side of the issue.
Flaherty:
Currently the City of Boston does not pay for flagmen. This practice adds critical law enforcement officers to our streets while not adding dollars to our budget. Michael’s focus is protecting the residents of Boston with the resources available. What happens in other cities and towns and on our highways is the domain of the Governor.
Huh? I sought clarification.
The Mayor’s proposal was submitted to the council today and went directly into the government ops committee. No discussion was had on this proposal. Michael has not yet reviewed Menino’s specific proposal. There will be a number of public hearings on the proposal before any decisions are made about accepting this proposal in its current form.
Michael is on the record in the past for supporting police details on the City streets because Boston doesn’t pay for it, so it adds police without adding cost to the City’s budget. In addition there is a record of police on these details making active arrests and playing a role in public safety.
Uh, OK. I think what I’m hearing is that Flaherty generally likes the idea of police doing construction details, on the theory that it’s another way of getting cops on the streets thereby improving public safety. He’s not prepared to endorse Menino’s specific proposal yet, but to me he seems generally simpatico with it.
I could swear Yoon wrote a letter to the Banner expressing his opposition to the use of civilian flaggers about six months ago. In the letter, he argued (among other things) that the cost savings would be close to negligible. I’ll try to dig up the letter- hopefilly it’s available online.
Of course, everyone has a right to change their mind.
Yoon’s letter was published in the Bay State Banner, November 27, 2008.
Old opinion
Let me be the first to invite the City of Boston to pay for its own police details.
It’s a developer working on a building. It’s a utility doing work on their lines. Why should Boston pay for police (or flagmen) working because of a for-profit activity by a private party?
In my view, the very fact that this is a for-profit activity by a private party is why there should be no requirement that the flagger be a police officer.
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p>I don’t buy the argument that police are no more expensive than civilians. As the behavior of the uniformed thugs who disrupted construction sites this spring demonstrated, this looks to me like an old-fashioned extortion/protection racket. Most of the time, at most construction sites, off-duty cops are standing around drinking coffee, distracting the construction workers, and studiously ignoring the traffic bedlam that generally accompanies a construction site. If off-duty police want to compete for gigs with anybody else who is qualified and willing (I can’t believe it takes very much training to wave a flag), they may do so.
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p>It seems to me that if Boston (or any other municipality) wants to put more cops on the street, then they should do so. If police presence is required at construction sites, then those officers should be on, not off, duty. In that scenario, that increased police presence caused by the construction activity should be paid for by whoever is doing the construction.
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p>They should also be enforcing traffic violations, ticketing the drivers who so often clog construction sites by blocking intersections, blocking on-coming traffic, and so on. They should be ticketing and towing double-parked cars in the vicinity of the construction site. In short — they should be acting like on-duty police officers, maintaining a semblance of order at a construction site.
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p>That’s not what they do now, and that’s why they should either be replaced with civilians or required to perform the police duties for which they demand payment.
the general trend of lefties (and righties) on BMG is that police details are inefficient and flagmen, if cheaper, should be used.
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p>The argument Flaherty makes is one I’ve made on BMG a few times. It puts cops on the street, and not on the taxpayer’s (direct) dime. Now it’s true, that detail cop may be lounging around, but the fact is that nobody is going to be physically assaulted right in front of the cop. A bank robbery around the corner will have an awfully fast response. If you believe as I do that cops on the street and visible help deter (not merely displace) crime, then you agree that these cops offer a public benefit not paid (directly!) by the taxpayers.
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p>Furthermore, the idea that 45 mph is a sensible cutoff is madness. While it’s true that speed is an important criteria, it surely isn’t the only one. The number of vehicles per minute is quite relevant. The complexity of the road geometry (mid block one lane each direction vs. the middle of a 5-way intersection) matters. Proximity to significant pedestrian, bicycle, schoolchild, or other kinds of vulnerable traffic matters. I can imagine plenty of locations in Boston where a flagman simply isn’t enough for safety, despite 35 mph speed limits.
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p>That written, there are two issues I do have with using police details.
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p>1. While it doesn’t come out of the taxpayer’s purse directly, clearly there are indirect costs, and somebody in society is picking up the tab. Developers typically pay the cost initially, but does it come directly out of their profits or is it really coming out of future homeowners, small business owners, and larger businesses pockets? My economics degree and my common sense tells me some of both, and I’m not really sure the breakdown.
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p>2. I don’t think a policeman should be allowed to be working a detail within 12 hours of starting his next regular shift, nor within 12 hours of working his most recent regular shift. If these policemen really are to be an improvement on flagmen, they’ve got to be rested and alert. Furthermore, I don’t want a policeman showing up to work exhausted because he worked 8 hours on the job yesterday and followed it up with another 8 hours of detail work to make extra scratch. I want my policemen well rested so that they are both mentally and physically prepared to do their best, and being overworked because of police details is counter to that goal.
if u want the extra patrol
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p>and u are unconcerned that a developer has to pay
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p>then why don’t we dispense with the flag routine – get flagmen and simply require have developers to use the savings to send patrols where they are most needed?
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p>my org is paying right now for a detail near BU. flagman could easily handle it.
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p>wouldn’t that cop do more good in Dot or Mattapan?
Michael agrees that having more officers in our neighborhoods and on our streets is always a benefit to public safety. Michael also understands what is best for Boston might not be the most efficient use of resources for state highways and suburban communities.
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p>Natasha Perez
Michael Flaherty for Mayor
I’m sorry, this is just silly. Several downtown construction sites have permanent details. There’s no crime in these areas. There’s not even a need for them traffic wise, as the construction companies have built jersey barriers. So they just yakk on their cell phones and drink coffee all day. There’s ZERO public safety benefit here.
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p>Indeed, I would wager that the highest crime areas of the city — i.e., the places where this argument might make some sense — are the places with the lowest level of construction details.
He’s doing it primarily get the political support of the police union, not because of some overriding noble interest in public safety.
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p>If the estimable Councillor really wants construction projects to pay for more police on the streets — the substantive effect of requiring more expensive officers to do the job of flaggers — he can suggest an increase in construction permit fees and, as others here have pointed out, send the cops where they are really needed.
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p>By the same logic, we should require that all security guards be full police officers. That will get more cops on the street too, at “no additional cost to taxpayers.”
It’s nice to get a voice of reason on this issue from a fellow progressive. I like the Governor’s plan for state roads, because it saves state taxpayer dollars, and because there really isn’t nearly as much need for a Statie to be out on a “beat” so to speak. But when it comes to a city like Boston, having extra cops on the street who can help in any of a number of situations in an emergency, at no extra expense to the taxpayer, is a no-brainer to me. There are very few cases of taxpayer funds paying for municipal details. But there are extensive cases of municipal detailed cops making a very real difference in fighting or preventing crime.
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p>Your second caveat is the important one. We can’t have exhausted cops, and the rules should be strict on that. I worry less about the costs to developers and utilities. They charge what they can, and they make plenty of money. I’m not really interested in adding to their profits, as there’s no evidence they will reduce prices if they were to get that savings.
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p>It’s easy to try to paint this as some kind of taxpayer savings. But there’s virtually no savings, and what little benefit there may be is far outweighed by the detriments.
at locations where street work is being done, not where crime statistics say more law enforcement is called for. It’s good that an officer might be on detail, paying attention to his work, and occasionally stop a crime from taking place. OTOH, how many are in locations that are not crime intensive? Perhaps a criterion for assigning an officer to a detail instead of a civilian flagger, should be the crime statistics of the location, and whether police leaders would like more manpower there. Also, when police officers are racking up OT hours on paid details with little real police need, the roster of officers who are not tired by all this extra detail work goes down, thus creating the situation of possibly needing additional police staffing for a public safety emergency, and only having tired officers to call on.
I support ending the details. If 49 other states can get by with flagmen, I think we could too.
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p>But in terms of savings to the taxpayers, well, it looks like they are going to be marginal. Because of Gov. Patrick’s supreme reluctance to upset any interest group (here, construction unions and probably the public employees’ unions too), state flagmen are getting something like $35/hr and are getting like an 8% raise next year. This is around what a police detail would cost (~$40/hr, IIRC). This is a joke. Crossing guards make around $10/hr. Flagmen in other states similarly get $10/hr. But not here. Awesome. Thanks guys.
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p>So the only real benefit is, to quote the president, to “spread the wealth around.” I think this is on balance positive, all things considered. We don’t need to further line the pockets of the police and their unions, who, progressives need to remember, are not our friends.
Police details are one of the most conspicuous displays of government sponsored waste. Most anyone I talk to who has given it any thought disapproves.
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p>So Menino goes for the easy labor pander, then stumbles into something that resonates viscerally with the electorate.
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p>I’m a Boston resident, and have generally been a Menino agnostic. He’s okay, I guess. However, this, and the multiple annoying push polls that I am getting from the Menino people, only serve to nudge me in the opposite direction.
I haven’t seen any empirical data about speeding and construction sites.
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p>Intuitively, speeding near a construction site is particularly dangerous. Heavy vehicles, people on foot, non-standard traffic patterns are all additional hazards.
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p>Intuitively, people slow down when they know a cop is camped out. This could be the standard speed trap, this could be when they see the cop car ahead, this could be construction sites.
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p>Question 1: is there more speeding through construction sites in the other 49 states relative to other speeding in those states?
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p>Question 2: are there more traffic accidents on roads near construction sites in those other 49 states relative to other accidents in those states?
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p>Question 3: are there more serious injury inducing accidents on roads near construction sites in those other 49 states relative to serious injury inducing accidents in those states?
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p>My hypothesis is that the police presence has a statistically significant impact on traffic safety near construction sites, but I have no data to back that assertion.
Having police visible does in fact deter crime from happening. That is why cops drive police cars and wear uniforms (generally) instead of all being dressed as police detectives.
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p>I understand that most police details are paid by private contractors but, does the detail pay get added into their retirement pay that the city DOES pay for?
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p>If the answer is yes then detail pay puts a large burden on legacy costs that are drying up city resources.
That may be true, but it’s only useful in the construction detail context if the construction projects happen to be going on in areas where crime needs deterring. If a cop is detailed to a construction project in front of One International Place, how much crime is likely to be deterred?
None at all.
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p>In fact, if you accept that theory then in your example the crimes would take place right under the nose of the uniformed officer.
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p>Case closed.
It is disappointing to have someone as knowledgeable as Councilor Flaherty put out incorrect information.
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p>The City of Boston, and by extension we the taxpayers, do pay for details. Whenever a road is repaved or patched by the City, whenever Boston Water and Sewer works on its infrastructure, whenever the Transportation Department works on their signal equipment, etc. and a police detail is assigned to the job, that increases the costs which directly increases the City Budget.
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p>It is true that contractors and developers (like me) have to hire police details and we don’t charge the City directly, but it does make housing costs higher, which makes the City more difficult for middle and lower income citizens to live in.
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p>A press release I put out a few weeks ago:
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p>Focusing Police Expertise on Fighting Crime
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p>According to the FBI, the rate of violent crime in Boston is twice the rate of violent crime in NYC, and the rate of violence against women in Boston is four times the rate in NYC. The number of shootings in Boston through June is above the levels of last year, despite the wet weather. The rate at which we are solving crimes, such as murder, in Boston is not acceptable. The Boston Phoenix concluded “Simply put, the BPD’s homicide unit has the worst track record of any big city police department in the country.”
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p>We understand in America that police work is a dangerous, stressful, professional job that requires qualified, committed individuals who are willing to stand on the front lines in protecting citizens. Each applicant to the Police Academy spends six months of intensive training learning how to serve and protect, becoming the finest public safety officers we can produce.
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p>While the City of Boston ordinances require 2,500 police officers to be on the police force, Menino refuses to obey and instead he short staffs the police department at the expense of the City’s safety. It makes sense that we maximize the limited staffing of the police force and the comprehensive training they receive by concentrating their efforts on crime prevention and enforcement. It is not logical to make a police officer work additional time doing detail work at road construction and other projects that can be done by less skilled members of our work force. To qualify to be a flagger in Massachusetts only requires four hours of training and a $175 fee to get certified. Clearly, our police officers are way over qualified for construction details. It is hard enough for our police force to fight crime as it is, without having to work additional hours directing traffic.
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p>If I am elected Mayor, I will stop the practice of requiring police officers to handle non-crucial detail work. Instead, I will hire and train Boston residents in accordance with the Boston Jobs Policy (at least 10 percent women and at least 25% minorities) to do this work. I would also like to make this work available to Police Cadets who have passed through the Police Academy but can’t be hired as police officers until positions become available.
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p>The benefits of this are many. We allow police officers to be at their best for their supremely important job of public safety. We help to lower the unemployment rate in Boston by hiring residents to fill these jobs. We lower taxes for Boston residents by lowering the costs of construction to our roads, bridges and buildings in the City of Boston. This can help lower the cost of building housing as well.
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p>Kevin McCrea says “We need to cut costs and find ways to make our streets safer. This does both.”