Columbus City Council unanimously approved Tuesday night several changes in the police department’s policy that established a schedule for on-call officers at its criminal investigation division (CID) and articulated the chain of command and the no-drinking rule while on duty.
The changes are prompted by several incidents where officers who were not designated as “on call” were intoxicated or out of town and could not respond to calls when they were needed for additional assistance, Chief Fred Shelton told The Dispatch. The department will implement the revisions this week, he said.
Under the previous policy, only one CID officer would be on call each night with no backup officers, Shelton told The Dispatch. When the officer needed assistance for a major crime scene or had to respond to two scenes at the same time, the department had to scramble to find additional officers, he said.
“In April, we had two shootings. We had one on the Southside and we had one on the Northside. However, that one officer could not cover both of them … at the same time because they happened within 10 minutes of each other,” he said. “When we had a large crime scene and I needed more extra people, people are saying, ‘Well, I’m not on call so I’m not going to respond.'”
Instead, the new policy established a rotation schedule that would place one primary investigator on call and one to two officers on backup, according to a handout from Shelton. The backup officers will respond to calls if the on-call officer falls sick or has to deal with emergencies. It also clarifies the chain of command, with Capt. Rick Jones in charge, CID Sergeant Eric Lewis next in command and the senior investigator in command if both Jones and Lewis are absent.
The policy further articulates that on-call officers and their backups are considered “on-duty” when they are on shift but will only be paid if they actually respond to calls. While on duty or prior to coming to duty, they cannot be intoxicated and should be available for calls.
“You are only going to get paid for the time you are actually working,” he said. “I’m not going to pay you for 10 hours to sit at home waiting for something to happen.”
Additionally, all seven CID officers, along with patrol and other personnel at CPD, should consider themselves subject to call during emergencies, including disasters, riots and major crime scenes such as murders, according to the new policy. That does not mean all personnel must remain on duty, Shelton said. Instead, it means those who are subject to call but not on rotation may receive calls for assistance, but will not be punished for not responding to the calls, drinking or being out of town, he said.
“We don’t want … to get into regulating how much they should drink, when they should drink,” he said. “We are just saying you need a sense of duty and understand that as a police officer, you may be subject to emergency calls although you are not on the schedule.”
Under the previous policy, which Shelton said has not been updated since 2011, officers, especially those with fewer than three years of experience, were not clear as to when they were on duty.
“Investigators at CID now are younger people. There are issues arising about their duly position and how they pursue it,” Shelton said. “We haven’t updated our policy since 2011, so it’s time to do that.”
Ward 2 Councilman Joseph Mickens told The Dispatch there were at least two instances when an officer was written up for not being able to respond to calls for assistance.
“One of them didn’t come in because he said he had been drinking. He played it right. If you’ve been drinking you are not supposed to get in a PD car. … One of the guys was out of town and they wrote him up,” Mickens said. “They revamped that. They’ve done a good job.”
Ward 6 Councilman Bill Gavin told The Dispatch he thinks the old policy did not clarify which officers were off duty.
“The way it was written, they were always on duty,” he said. “They could be in trouble for getting out of town. That’s not right.”
Councilwoman Ethel Stewart of Ward 1 declined to comment. Council members Charlie Box of Ward 3, Pierre Beard of Ward 4 and Stephen Jones of Ward 5 could not be reached for comment by press time.
City refinances 2010 street bonds
Seeking a lower interest rate on the $8.9 million in general obligation bonds the city issued in 2010 for street paving, council members unanimously voted to refinance the remaining debt — $4.94 million — at a fixed interest rate of 1.98 percent.
State law allows a municipality to refinance a bond at a lower interest rate when the decision will result in a saving of at least 2 percent of the bond amount. The projected saving on the remaining debt of $4.94 million is roughly $310,000, bond attorney Steve Edds told the council. That represents a saving of more than 6 percent.
Under the previous pay schedule, the bond was scheduled to be paid off by 2030. The interest rate on the bond is about 4 percent this year and could rise to 4.5 percent by 2030, Mayor Robert Smith told The Dispatch.
Under a lower interest rate of 1.98 percent, however, the city will pay a total of almost $5.5 million and is expected to pay it off by March 2031, according to the new pay schedule. That represents a saving of $309,671.27, Smith said, which means the original amount due would have been about $5.8 million.
Smith said refinancing the debt is a wise decision because the interest rate is low during the pandemic.
“It’s a win-win,” he said. “If you check around, you don’t get 1.98-percent interest rates now.”
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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