Former Akron Police Chief Larry Givens has been named Akron's Safety Director, and will start working alongside Summit County Sheriff Drew Alexander .... investigating how to create a unit that's not a `merger' of departments - but could certainly be called a hybrid police force. The idea came from 20 year Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, who cites saving money and the elimination of duplication as goals.
{"We can get more police on the streets if we can better co-ordinate some of the other actions like the task force on drugs".}
The experiment would happen over the next 18 months, with a review in 2010. Plusquellic says he'd be willing to fight for whatever works in Summit County, for all of Ohio.
{"We would certainly take something to the state xgr and say look at this - here's why it makes sense - here's what we ask you to pass."}
While no critics have mounted organized opposition in Akron, the Police Union leadership emphatically stated that potential changes can't be allowed to conflict with current union contract rules. To that end - Mayor Plusquellic replies city officers would not be take on any tasks they don't already have.
{"We're not going to send our police officers out to an outlying community except in a very rare emergency basis. ...And on these task forces."}
There is precedent for such a collaboration, but nowhere in Ohio. Police departments in Miami, Las Vegas, and Charlotte have each sucessfully combined larger departments. Likely watching the experiment in Akron would be officials in Toledo, and in Cleveland, which each have talked merger more than once, with no resulting action.
Rick Jackson, 90.3.
