# Marlborough Police are used to short staffs



## Crvtte65 (May 19, 2002)

*City police are used to short staffs
*By *Michelle Muellenberg*/ Daily News Staff
Friday, March 10, 2006

*M*ARLBOROUGH -- A study analyzing how the city compares to 20 other similar communities shows Marlborough behind in police staffing.
 The numbers, however, are not anything new for Police Chief Mark Leonard.
The department has been understaffed since July 2003 when the force endured the layoffs of six patrol officers.
Nearly three years later, Leonard is still working to get back to the 48 officers he had prior to the budget cuts. Along with the layoffs, Marlborough's department has been hammered with officers out on injuries, Leonard said.
"We are still playing catch-up," Leonard said.
Additional positions are in the city's coffers for fiscal 2006, however, getting them on the patrol is a painstaking process, he said.
"We are down to 42. We are slowly building back up to 48 officers," said Leonard, who said he expects two officers to be on board within the next month and five will enter the police academy in Weymouth on March 27.
The statistics came from Wakefield-based Municipal Benchmarking LLC, a company started by Tom Cronin and Bill Haylon after they became frustrated with the lack of information on which to base municipal spending decisions.
The company compared Marlborough to 20 other communities on variables such as per-capita income, population, median age and geography. Marlborough's peer group includes Attleboro, Beverly, Billerica, Chelmsford, Framingham, Franklin, Hudson, Mansfield, Marshfield, Milford, North Attleborough, Peabody, Quincy, Shrewsbury, Stoughton, Tewksbury, Waltham, Weymouth, Wilmington and Woburn.
Even with 48 patrol officers and 17 command officers -- the force he had prior to the 2003 layoffs -- Leonard said he is understaffed.
According to the census, the city's population is 36,000. However, many residents are undocumented and the number does not include the spike during the daytime.
"Our daytime population swells here with businesses," he said. "(The population) doubles or triples during the day."
The study indicates Marlborough ranks about even with its peer group for serious crimes in 2002. However, the city shows a spike in 2003.
Leonard attributes the city's increase over its peer group to the murders of Carmen Rudy and Betsy Montalvo, two Worcester prostitutes whose bodies were found in shallow graves in a wooded area behind the Hillside School. The bodies were found in the fall of 2003. In March 2004, the body of Dinelia Torres was found in Hudson. Authorities have said they believe the three deaths are the work of a serial killer.
While the number of serious crimes in Marlborough increased more than the peer group, the other communities also show an increase.
Leonard said the rise may be due to the slow economy.
"When the economy isn't doing well, you see some spikes in crime," he said.
Leonard said he does not know if there is a correlation between the city's understaffed force and the rise in serious crimes in 2003. It likely would not have prevented the murders of Rudy and Montalvo, he said.
"Whether that extra staff would have prevented those, probably not those crimes," he said.
The information from Municipal Benchmarking also indicates the city's police department has spent more than its peer group in years 2002, 2003 and 2004.
Leonard, however, said comparing budgets in different communities is hard to do.
"I think that it is a difficult thing to compare," he said. "You are never going to get two departments that have the same type of things in their budgets."
Marlborough's police budget includes $100,000 for animal control, money for crossing guards and funding for public dispatchers who also work for the Fire Department. Police overtime for working school events or public works details all come out of Leonard's budget.
Some communities have the animal control funding under the Board of Health budget and crossing guards under schools, Leonard said.
"All those things bump up our budget," he said. "I know there are some chiefs that don't have it in their budgets."
(Michelle Muellenberg can be reached at 508-490-7453 or [email protected].)


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