Hat tip to Fred Gregory at Word Up. Here’s the website and the Police and the Sheriff. Each looks pretty autonomous to me.
Get it done with 311.
Here’s the Proposed Study: Sheriff/Police Department Merger Report of the
1999-2000 San Francisco Civil Grand Jury. It indicates that Durham also consolidated.
From Consolidating Police Services: An IACP Planning Approach Executive Brief:
Since the 1950s, many forms of consolidation have occurred in communities ranging from small towns to large cities. Some of the more substantial consolidations involve larger cities: the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department began contract services to the adjoining city of Lakewood as early as 1954. The Las Vegas, Nevada, Police Department and the Clark County Sheriff’s Department went further, joining forces to establish the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 1973. Similarly, in 1957 13 separate Canadian police agencies varying in size from 13 to 1,400 personnel merged to create the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force. In Florida, the city of Jacksonville and Duval County went so far as to totally combine their governments to form a single agency under the name, the City of Jacksonville in 1968. More recently, in 1993 the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, combined with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Department to create the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.
If you’re serious about the conversation, this is required reading.
Chief Nowicki of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department was brought in from Chicago to oversee the new consolidation effort. The city and county felt that new, independent leadership would help ease the transition. He described how the communities of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County had gone through a well-designed planning and implementation process over a number of years, eventually consolidating in 1994.
Chief Nowicki described how both community governments strongly supported the merger. He believes that without across-the-board support, consolidation would have failed. Citizens’ input was sought early on. The majority of citizens in the city and county viewed consolidation as an effective way to provide law enforcement services. While there was some initial resistance to consolidation by law enforcement officers in both departments, ultimately they acclimated to the new agency. Upon arrival, Nowicki designed and carried out a survey of all officers. He asked for their concerns and advice, and invited those who cited serious concerns into his office to talk.
Under Chief Nowicki, the new department adopted a community-oriented policing model. This philosophy served as a foundation for change and growth within the new agency.
If the initial meeting leads to favorable consensus, the next step is a Comprehensive Feasibility Study.
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