Walpole Police Chief Surveys Changing Crime Scene
By Charles C. Bingaman, Contributing Writer
Thirteen-year Walpole Police Chief David G. Hewes has seen change and growth in law enforcement challenges in his town and looks forward to further significant change in the coming decade.
The Eagle-Times sat down with Hewes earlier this week to question him on trends in his department, his priorities in law enforcement, his growing budget and his takes on the future. Here, largely in his own words, are his answers…
ET: What are your priorities in Walpole law enforcement?
Hewes: “As complaints about speeding and other areas of traffic enforcement are the No. 1 area of complaints to our Selectmen, we’ve focused on them in 2005. We made more than 1,000 traffic stops in the year—up from 260 in 2004—issued more than 220 tickets and collected more than $16,000 in fines. While the annual report shows just $325 in fine revenue going to the town, over $16,000 went, as required by state law, into the state. Even at 1,000 traffic stops, we‘re far behind some comparable towns such as Chesterfield that made over 3,000 stops.”
“Our other priority is investigating and solving criminal cases, and Walpole has a higher than average number of criminal investigations than other towns our size. We opened 189 criminal investigations in 2005, up significantly from prior years, but it’s hard to compare year-to-year numbers of investigations because they’re all different and some take much more time than others.”
ET: What determines when someone who is stopped for a traffic infraction gets a warning or a ticket?
Hewes: “Basically, we look at the driver’s motor vehicle record and the seriousness of the offense. If he or she is going more than 20 miles per hour over the limit, we issue a ticket. If less than that but they have a poor driving record, they may get a ticket. And you have to remember that there are over 100 other traffic offenses that we enforce.”
ET: We note that Walpole has averaged 63 to 79 traffic accidents per year where your department was called in the past seven years. How are we doing in that area?
Hewes: “When I came in 1993, we had 144 traffic accidents reported. We have gradually cut that down through careful enforcement, building a reputation for enforcement and, I admit, a bit of luck. We went through six straight years with fewer that 70 accidents. Also, 2005 was our third straight year with no fatal accidents. Again, we were lucky in that respect, but I hope that our traffic enforcement focus also contributed to it.”
“And the amount of traffic that goes through Walpole on a daily basis has grown. People are commuting to Keene, buying houses Charlestown, Walpole, North Walpole, Acworth, and Rt. 12 is the main runway between Keen and those areas. We’re forced to deal with it.”
ET: How many officers and other staff do you have, and how do you use them?
Hewes: “We have three full-time officers and a secretary to cover our needs 24/7, year around. And I have a list of seven men who are available to work part-time when I need them. They all have full-time jobs. When I need help, I page all seven of them. If I get one or two to come out, if they’re available to come out, we’re lucky…. Umm…if not, we go with the people we’ve got which sometimes is very dangerous. Not a good way to do business. In small towns like we have, that’s how we have to operate.”
ET: What do you do when you need more people and your part-timers not available?
Hewes: “We can get backup from other town police departments providing they’re not tied up with something of their own. We have mutual aid agreements with all the surrounding towns, including Bellows Falls. We go over there quite frequently. They come over here quite frequently. However, there has been a time or two when Bellows Falls was tied up with a serious situation on their side of the river and they were unable to respond. With small towns, it’s getting’ so we need to depend on each other more than depending on other people.”
ET: Have you tried to expand beyond the seven part-timers you have?
Hewes: “In Walpole, it‘s taken me 12 years to get seven guys. I’m cautious with the budget, cautious with how many people I have on the roster because, unfortunately, whether you’re full-time or part-time, it costs approximately $3500 to outfit somebody for their duty. Bulletproof vest for $1,000, uniforms for roughly $100, belts, radios—if you add radios, that’s $3,500 apiece right there. We can’t discriminate between part-time and full-time; it costs me—actually the town—the same whether you’re part-time or full-time. And once we get somebody sometimes they’ll go to a bigger department [where they can get a full-time job] so it’s hard to keep them. A lot of your part-timers aspire to be full-time police officers. We only have three here, we don’t have a big turnover, so they go to Claremont or Keene or Charlestown. And then I’m right back with $3,500 of gear that’s not going to fit anybody else. It’s kinda unfortunate but that’s what I’m faced with.
ET: What crime trends have you seen in the past few years?
Hewes: “I’ve been here over 12 years and 2005 was the first year we did more than 100 arrests and they went from shoplifting all the way up to fist-degree assault. We had additional bad check cases in 2005 from Ocean State Job Lot and other stores, although those have dropped a bit recently. We deal with everything…
“The job has gotten much more dangerous, although none of our officers have had to use their weapons in the time I’ve been here. Last year, with the Selectmen’s support, we purchased rifles because they allow us to deal with situations from a greater distance for safety while also being more accurate than handguns. You’ll see in the budget that costs of weapons is up because we need to practice and to qualify annually in using them.”
ET: What if these new stores as proposed are built in and near North Meadow Plaza?
Hewes: “Between more vehicle accidents, more vehicle violations, bad check cases, uh, shoplifting cases, it’s just going to keep increasing. I can’t give you a figure. It would definitely burden this department. And not only my department. The ambulance and fire department would also see their calls go up. A town cannot grow and see its demand for services go up and still get the quality services unless you expand. You can keep the services the same but you’re going to see [the services’ quality go down.] You can’t dispute the fact that Walpole’s a growing town. It has definitely grown, it’s definitely getting busier, my department is getting’ busier and, you know, I haven’t asked for another full-time guy since ’97, nor do I have any intentions of doing that. But eventually it has to happen.”
ET: How do you decide when you need another full-time guy? Sounds to me like you could make an argument for another full-time guy now.
Hewes: I could. I could have many years ago. How I do it is when things get so bad that we’re not tracking the calls, we’re not getting quality work, we’re…there have been times when my desk is this high on cases that I just have to stick ‘em over in a corner and don’t even look at them. And if it gets to that point, we're either forced to hire another part-timer or a full-timer.
The state recommends a full-time police officer for every thousand residents of the town. And now I think it’s even less than that. I think it’s every 800 residents.
You know, when I took over, we didn’t even have a building. We had nothing. So… we built a beautiful building. We’ve come among way. I think that’s what happens. I get judged on…we got X amount of dollars the first year I took over and now we get X thousands of dollars.
People don’t realize how busy we are. They should spend an eight-hour shift with us and see all we do.”
ET: Is that an invitation for people to come in here and ride with an officer for a shift?
Hewes: Yes it is! We’d be glad to work it out.
ET: How much do full-time Walpole officers get paid and what are the benefits?
Hewes: “Our full-time officers have salaries in the low to mid-$30s, and I get, I think, $46,000. We have Blue-Cross/Blue Shield, and we have to pay part of that monthly premium. We are covered under a state retirement plan for police officers.”
“When we have opportunities to earn extra money for the town by handling special detail duty at road construction sites, I let my officers do it to earn extra pay but only after they have done their regular shift or on their day off. It’s their only chance to earn some extra money. They ordinarily get paid only for their 40 hours per week although they often do more than that on Walpole work. Part-timers also get their chances to do some special detail work.”
ET: I see that you’re proposing to raise the police operations budget from $308,988 in 2005 to $318,248 in 2006. What accounts for the increase?
Hewes: “We have had increases in health insurance costs, fuel costs, FICA, electricity and we are recommending 4.1% salaries increases—the same as for all town employees. Overall that’s about a 3% increase in that line for the year.”
ET: I also see that you’re asking for $36,947 in Warrant Article items. Can you explain them?
Hewes: “Sure. We need to replace one of our two cruisers that is getting very old and expensive to keep in daily use. Article 15 explains that total cost is $26,447 but the net will be around $10,000 after we use the $16,447 in the Police Vehicle Capital Reserve Fund. Warrant Article 16 is for $10,500 for three Motorola XTS digital portable radios for our officers to use when they’re in the field.”
“We’ll keep the old cruiser for special detail duty where all it has to do is drive to the location and run its light. So we’ll have to daily operations vehicles and two special duty vehicles.”
ET: $10,500 for three portable radios?
Hewes: “Yes. These are standard portables that police, fire departments and other kinds of emergency service personnel all over the country are using. The digital technologies are so far advanced over the analog radios that we have been using! We won’t have the blind spots, so to speak, in our communications. They have emergency buttons on them. If you’re in trouble, you push the button and it goes right to dispatch and it tells us that you need additional police officers to help deal with whatever situation you have [and it tells the dispatcher automatically where the calling officer is.] This new technology has been out there about five years now. It’s time that we update the department and get everybody that kind of equipment. Actually we got three of these radios through a grant from the state last year. Now we want to supply three more of our officer with them. And the price includes programming them for our frequencies and setting them up.”
ET: $3500 apiece??
Hewes: “Yep! They are!”
ET: Are they specifically for police? “No, fire departments have them. The old radios had six or seven channels. These have, probably, fifty frequencies that we can monitor and talk on. The other radios just didn’t have the technology. If someone were talking on our police channel, we’d have to wait. We couldn’t talk! And you’ve got to figure that they were being used for as many as 28 police departments in the area. So chances are someone was always on that frequency. Now, we will have all these channels that we can switch around and get through. The beauty of this is that I can be in Concord on business, key this off, and talk to Walpole. They have just that much more power, that much more range. I don’t understand the digital technology, but I know from what I started with 18 and a half years ago, it’s night and day.”
“Now it’s crazy for me to have four guys carrying analog portables. Sometimes there are entire areas of Walpole where we just cannot reach with our analog radios.”
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