The News Room [News Release]
Sheriff Contact: John Roach: 313-224-0615
Detroit Contact: 2nd Dep. Chief James Tate: 313-596-2200
Release Date: Monday, January 27, 2005
New Sheriff-Detroit Police partnership to keep more officers on the street --- Having deputies provide prisoner transport frees up more city patrols
Detroit residents will see up to an additional 13,000 hours of police patrols in their neighborhoods each year, thanks to a new prisoner transportation arrangement between the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and Detroit Police Department, Chief Ella Bully Cummings and Sheriff Warren Evans announced today.
Last month, sheriff’s deputies for the first time began transporting Detroit Police detainees from precincts to court and then to the jail. On average, DPD conducts 35 video felony arraignments from its precincts each day – more than 12,000 per year. Historically, it fell to DPD officers to bring those prisoners to the county jail, taking them away from their regular street patrol.
According to DPD estimates, the number of patrol hours it loses to prisoner transport is roughly 8,700 a year. In addition, Chief Cummings estimates that an additional 4,300 desk officer hours spent monitoring precinct prisoners will be freed up, allowing them to be redeployed to street patrol.
"One of the Department’s goals for 2005 is to increase police visibility. With officers being relieved of transporting prisoners to the Wayne County Jail, it allows for more time patrolling city neighborhoods," said Chief Bully-Cummings. "As a result, you have more officers on the street at no additional cost to taxpayers."
Evans offered the service to Detroit late last year, shortly after a shut down of his suburban prisoner transportation service was narrowly averted. For years, the Sheriff’s Office has provided prisoner transportation to the other suburban 42 police departments in Wayne County. No one knows for sure why Detroit was never a part of that arrangement, Evans said.
When county budget cuts late last year almost forced the elimination of the service, Sheriff Warren Evans, County Executive Robert Ficano and county commissioners came together to find the funding necessary to provide the prisoner transportation services to all communities, including Detroit.
"This was an inequity that needed to be fixed," Evans said. "Clearly, Detroit will be our biggest customer and deserves to be provided the same level of service as their suburban counterparts. Beyond that, the additional patrol hours were reason enough to justify the change."
"At a time when Detroit and other communities in the state are facing a real budget crunch, we must find creative ways do more with less," said Chief Bully-Cummings.
If sheriff’s deputies don’t provide that service, then it falls on the local departments to do so. That’s a burden that most municipal agencies are not able to absorb without a significant cut in other services.
"Everything about this arrangement makes sense," Evans said. "The sheriff’s office is providing the type of regionalized service it is best suited for and local police departments are able to keep more blue shirts out on the street."
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