Bellingham gets creative to give police more time on the streets
Bellingham is hiring four non-sworn community service officers in the Police Department to handle some of the clerical work for detectives and patrol officers, freeing them for tasks that require a badge.
It’s another step that the city is taking to offset a shortage of officers that’s forced the department to staff only its patrol and investigations divisions amid a surge of crime and vandalism across the city.
There are 13 full-time police positions open out of 122 budgeted for 2022.
But there are 32 total vacancies — including officers who are injured, on military leave, or in training, Chief Rebecca Mertzig told the City Council in a Committee of the Whole hearing on Monday, Aug. 29.
“It’s all the duties that potentially could be required of a police officer but without that commissioned status,” Mertzig told the council.
Those community service positions were still being created, so a salary range wasn’t immediately available, said Janice Keller, the city’s communications director.
“We expect to have these positions created and ready to fill this fall,” Keller told The Bellingham Herald.
Funds to pay for the new positions will come initially from savings within the department because so many positions are vacant, said Forrest Longman, the city’s deputy finance director.
Like many police departments across Washington state and the nation, Bellingham is seeing a shortage of officers amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the “great resignation,” coupled with a loss of public support and demands for law-enforcement reforms that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
To help ease the workload of police and get more eyes on the street, the city and a business group called the Downtown Bellingham Partnership are operating a Downtown Ambassador program and have hired private security patrols for the area.
Bellingham Police, which is advertising online for both recruits and seasoned police officers, is no longer requiring applicants to have an associate’s degree, or 90 quarter hours/60 semester hours of course work at an accredited college or university, according to previous Bellingham Herald reporting.
A high school diploma will be the only education requirement.
Longman said the new community service officers could do “some of the leg work” for detectives.
“The addition of four community service officers will provide much-needed support in the Police Department, freeing up police officers by interacting with the public at the station, taking reports over the phone and performing other duties that do not require a uniformed officer,” Longman said in an Aug. 29 memo to Mayor Seth Fleetwood.
