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It's encouraging to see some discussion of a metro police force in the Jamestown area.
Mayor Eddie Sundquist has approached the town of Ellicott about creating a metro police division, citing the difficulty in recruiting new officers and the possibility of Ellicott saving money if it contracts with Jamestown for police services. Sundquist and Janet Bowman, Ellicott town supervisor, could meet after Labor Day to discuss the matter.
It's a small, but encouraging step.
But real leadership on this issue would hearken back 20 years to a true discussion of regional policing countywide led by former County Executive Mark Thomas, Dr. Peter Sinden, Dr. Leonard Faulk, both members of the State College at Fredonia's Center for Rural Regional Governance, and Mike Lyons, chairman of a Shared Services Committee that was meeting regularly at the time
Sinden's study of policing in Chautauqua County found cost savings in the cities of Dunkirk, Jamestown, villages of Fredonia and Lakewood and town of Silver Creek if all of the county's police departments merged into one unit with bureaus throughout the county. The town of Ellicott, back in those halcyon days of 2003, would have basically broken even under such a plan. Other towns and villages would have paid more, but in Sinden's view received better police protection for the increase in their property taxes.
There was much promise and excitement when the study was released.
"This is the next step that will, I believe, require my colleagues in elected office to come together," Thomas said at the time. "Now that we know what it costs, what the nature of service delivery is and how it varies across our communities, how can we design a better system of providing these services? How do we get there? This is fundamental, I believe, and it's now incumbent on us as a Shared Services group to take that to the next step."
The next step never came. There was a failed merger between the Jamestown Police Department and Chautauqua County Sheriff's Office in the mid-2010s and the 2012 closure of the Silver Creek Police Department, but otherwise the structure of policing looks the same now as it did 20 years ago.
While it's encouraging to see Ellicott and Jamestown talking about a possible partnership, that work doesn't do much to help other areas in the south county and doesn't involve the Lakewood-Busti Police Department, which has struggled over th eyears with many of the same issues facing the Ellicott Police Department.
It's time to consider Sinden's work again and update it for the issues facing the county's police agencies in 2023. As the county's population decreases and the nature of crime changes, it is our opinion the nature of the county's policing should change with it.
"The goal here is to get as good a service as possible," Sinden said regarding his 2003 study. "When you start thinking about just cutting cost without maintaining service, you've lost everything."
Sinden was right -- but rather than maintain service, let's see if we can make it better.