By Fox Butterfield, The New York Times
 David Richard/The New York Times Officer Jose Cora of the Cleveland police was assigned to a patrol car this year instead of community policing. |
CLEVELAND -- Many cities with budget shortfalls are cutting their police forces and closing innovative law enforcement units that helped reduce crime in the 1990’s, police chiefs and city officials say.
Nowhere is this more true than here in the Midwest. This year, Cleveland has laid off 250 police officers, 15 percent of its total force. Pittsburgh has lost one-quarter of its police officers over the last three years, and Saginaw, Mich., has lost almost a third in that time.
Elsewhere, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has let go 1,200 deputies in the last two years, leading it to close several jails and release a number of inmates early. In Houston, the police chief laid off 190 jail guards in July and assigned their duties to existing police officers.
In Cleveland, detectives have been assigned to patrol duties, specialized units like the gang and auto theft squads have been eliminated, and ministations spread around poor neighborhoods have been closed and the community police officers who worked at them have returned to patrol cars.
“It’s been very painful and emotional,” said Ed Lohn, Cleveland’s police chief, whose father was also a policeman here. “We’ve had to cut some successful programs and go back to an older style of policing, doing patrols and answering calls for service.”
Chief Lohn said it was too early to tell whether crime had risen, noting that crime rates often fluctuated for a complex set of reasons, including economic conditions. But the number of arrests is down sharply, with fewer officers on the job.
Merchants and residents in poorer neighborhoods say they see more young people loitering on the street and more drug deals, signs that may presage an increase in crime.
The cities cutting their police forces are struggling with financial problems that have persisted even as some states are beginning to report an increase in tax revenue after a few very lean years. The financial strain has been compounded by a decline in supplemental money from the federal government and the states.
Cleveland has long suffered from a declining industrial and population base and the resulting falloff in tax revenue. When Jane Campbell took office as mayor in 2002, she said she was surprised to find a budget deficit instead of a surplus. That year, Mayor Campbell raised fines and fees. But it was not enough. Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, lost about $20 million in payroll tax revenue from 2000 to 2003.
This year, facing a budget gap of $60 million, Cleveland turned to reductions in essential services.
Because the police force represents almost 30 percent of Cleveland’s budget, Mayor Campbell said, big cuts finally had to be made in law enforcement.
Further, she said, the state trimmed its aid for Cleveland’s police force by $4 million this year.
The federal cutbacks are even more notable. Since 1995, Cleveland has received $34 million for new police officers, Mayor Campbell said.
But this year it will receive only $498,000 from Washington for all police programs, and President Bush’s proposed budget would cut that figure in half.
The pressure on police departments has grown in some ways even as their budgets have fallen. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has greatly decreased its crime-fighting work, like investigating bank robberies and drug deals, to concentrate on counterterrorism operations.
And many of the nation’s 17,000 police forces have been ordered by the federal government to deploy more officers to combat terrorism, in tasks like guarding airports and water works. Cleveland spent $9 million on federally mandated counterterrorism operations last year, with little reimbursement from the federal government, Mayor Campbell said.
Donald Pussehl Jr., the police chief in Saginaw, summed up what many police officials are saying about the cuts and redeployments. “We are going backwards, and that’s really unfortunate,” Chief Pussehl said.
“We are having to discontinue many of the proactive strategies like community policing, which we developed in the 90’s, and just go back to basics like sitting in patrol cars waiting for calls for service after a crime has been committed,” he said.
Some police officials worry that the situation will worsen, if Mr. Bush succeeds in making further reductions in federal aid to the police, as proposed, in favor of contributions for domestic security.
“I think the cuts proposed by the White House for federal aid to police could be devastating to us,” said Joe Polisar, the police chief in Garden Grove, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles in Orange County, who is also the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “This is funding that helped us lower the crime rate and money we have come to rely on, and now the White House is proposing to cut it on top of our municipal budget cuts,” Chief Polisar said.
There are three main federal aid programs to local police departments, all administered by the Justice Department. They are the Community Oriented Policing Services Program, known as COPS; the Local Law Enforcement Block Grants Program; and the Byrne Memorial Grant Program.
The community policing program, which was begun by President Bill Clinton, added 118,000 officers across the country. Mr. Bush has proposed $97 million for the program in the next fiscal year, down 80 percent from $481 million this year.
The president has proposed reducing money for the other two programs to $508 million from $884 million this year.
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said much of the money would flow instead to the Department of Homeland Security. “In the post-9/11 world, where terrorism is one of our most critical concerns, resources that were formerly provided through the Department of Justice will now be provided through the Department of Homeland Security,” Mr. Kolton said.
But Chief Polisar said the programs being set up in the Department of Homeland Security would be less helpful to the police. “They are robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.
Officer Jose Cora of the Cleveland police said the reduction in services would probably persist until local economic conditions improved significantly.
Officer Cora was reassigned this year to drive a patrol car instead of working in a ministation on community policing. “I got to know people real well in the ministation, knew all the kids by their first names, and when something happened, they’d come by and tell us,” he said.
“We’d work on small things, to stop the big things from happening, like finding lawn mowers stolen from someone’s garage,” Officer Cora said. “We wouldn’t make an arrest, just tell the person who stole it to do some community service, and that would probably prevent some larger crime later.”
The owner of One Stop Foods, a convenience store on Cleveland’s southeast side, said there had been a noticeable increase in crimes since the police layoffs began in January.
“You got more drug dealing on the street and more kids stealing stuff from the store,” said the owner, who gave his name only as Junior.
Gil Kerlikowske, the Seattle police chief, said police executives across the country were apprehensive.
“Just a couple of years ago we were sitting back and saying how good a job we had done, reaching out to the communities and reducing crime to record lows,” Chief Kerlikowske said. “Now the money is drying up, and there is an uptick in crime, and I’m worried that a lot of our good work is going to disappear.”