Dean to Metro Police: ‘I’ll do what I can, but there are going to be cuts’

Mayor Karl Dean threw his support behind a Metro Police initiative to apply for a federal grant to put more officers on the street, but warned Chief Ronal Serpas during the department’s Thursday budget hearing that cuts are coming.

The federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program was created under the President Bill Clinton administration. The Department of Justice program gives federal dollars to local governments to hire more cops. In the case of the Metro Police Department, it would mean 120 additional officers over an 18 to 24 month span.

The grant pays the officers’ salaries and benefits for the first three years, then puts Metro on the hook after that. The grant award, if successful, would total nearly $21 million over a three-year period.

“I would ask you to go ahead and apply,” Dean told Serpas. “Obviously that is a process that begins us by making the application, we’ll see where that goes. I think right now we need to make the decision and I’m asking you to go ahead and apply.”

The chief said after the hearing he was appreciative of Dean’s support for applying for the COPS program and added the application was ready to be submitted.

“The important thing is he agreed and authorized us to apply for the COPS program to grow our department,” Serpas said.

But the news wasn’t completely positive, as Dean warned that the tight budget year meant Metro-wide cuts, including to police.

“My priorities are education and public safety,” Dean said. “I’ll do what I can but there are going to be cuts that every department is going to feel. And I will go about that in the most prudent and reasonable way I can, but this is in many ways a historic budget. We have to do what we have to do and I accept that responsibility when I ran and I’m going to do it.

“This is not going to be painless for anybody,” he said.

Serpas revealed during the budget hearing the need for additional Metro Police precinct headquarters and said the next precinct would likely go in south Davidson County to alleviate the pressure felt by crime in the Antioch area. The potential eighth precinct would go in the Madison area, Serpas said.

“It took us some time to get the information,” Serpas said on the decision to choose south Davidson County and the Madison area for the next precincts. “We’ve looked at five years worth of crime fighting, we’ve looked at five years worth of calls for service… we’ve looked at five years of every possibly thing we could look at.”

Currently the Police Department is fully staffed with about 1,315 officers. Serpas acknowledged cuts to his department could mean fewer officers on the streets.

Dean asked each department to submit budget proposals showing what a 10 percent reduction would look like. For Police, it would mean 200 fewer officers — 100 less through attrition and another 100 through immediate layoffs, Serpas said.

“I just don’t imagine that happening,” Serpas said.

The tough budget news comes on the heels of crime declining for five straight years in Nashville, with statistics through March showing crime down another 6.56 percent.