Tipp City wants to strengthen the police department so that officers have less paperwork

“Our agency needs a little help across the board,” Adkins said. “We (staff) are getting assigned more and more tasks.”

Today, the department has an officer who works the streets and performs office duties that a civilian employee could handle, such as court filing, declassifying records, redacting video cameras required to fulfill public records requests, and overseeing the department’s archives and evidence. Today, the department has one full-time and one part-time civilian records clerk. The proposed new position is titled “police specialist,” but would be paid the same as a records clerk.

Most police departments have a civilian in charge of these duties. Additionally, due to growing demands and caseloads, the deputy chief of department is taking on much of the work related to crime victims who fall under the state’s Marsy’s Law.

The department currently has 24.5 authorized positions: the chief, the deputy chief, 1.5 civilian archivists, five sergeants, and 16 police officers (including two school resource officers and the DARE officer who is retiring this fall).

A captain’s salary is about $90,000 a year plus benefits, while a civilian employee’s salary is $57,298 (top salary) plus benefits, said John Green, the city’s finance director.

Council members had no objections to the proposal. Council President Kathryn Huffman suggested the council wait until a new city manager is on board before moving forward with a plan to ensure the new manager has a say.

Councilman John Kessler said there was no reason for a delay. He advocated giving Adkins time to begin filling the positions because it could take until the fall to hire new staff.

“I want the staff to do what we expect of them,” Kessler said.

The council said Adkins can now move forward with the first necessary steps in the hiring process and the council will vote on the plan when the funding reallocations are made later this year.

The City Council is expected to hire a new city manager this month. Current City Manager Tim Eggleston is retiring on June 28.

“We are a service-oriented company. People expect us to provide them with that service,” Adkins said. “We want to do that, but we can’t do it at this rate.”

Contact this contributing author at [email protected]