Does Traverse City need police and sheriff services?

Everyone is trying to find ways to work smarter and spend less, including local governments.

We've told you about the City of Cheboygan's discussions about possibly letting the county sheriff's office take over for the city police department.

That got a viewer wondering about law enforcement in Traverse City. She wondered the city needs both.

We take a closer look at the issue in tonight's Fact Finder report.

At the most basic level, both are required by law: the sheriff's department by the state constitution and the city police department under the city charter. The sheriff's office does have some specific duties like operating a jail and providing security for the court, but most of their day to day operations differ only by geography.

Grand Traverse Sheriff Tom Bensley says, "city officers patrol in the city and handle complaints and activities in the city and our officers are doing basically the same thing in the county."

And since they share the same basic job, sharing a the tools to make it happen is not out of the ordinary.

Traverse City Police Chief Michael Warren says "we have a common central dispatch, common central records, common evidence room, our detectives are all housed in the same wing of the building."

And it's been this way for more than 25 years. In 1983 Chief Warren says a confederation plan brought all of these things together, but stopped short of completely combining forces.

Chief Warren says, "there was an attempt at that point to integrate patrols, but citizens didn't support it, unions didn't support it."

Making that change today would be a big change. Sheriff Bensley says the two departments are not staffed proportionately. He says the city has more officers per capita than the county.

Sheriff Bensley says, "if the county wanted to staff the city at the same level as the county is, they'd lose about half of their police officers."

Chief Warren says staffing is the sticking point in any discussion to combine services. That includes the final report on law enforcement by the citizen's advisory panel COFAC.

"in his last statement when he presented his final report to the Traverse City Commission is that we do not intend to cut the number of officers patrolling Traverse City. He didn't differentiate whether those had to be county officers or city officers, but he did say the numbers within the city should remain the same."

But some people are asking for change. Last night at the city commission meeting there was renewed discussion about whether city residents are getting their fair share in county law enforcement services. Some argue that city residents pay more in taxes than they see in county officers. City commissioners are planning to ask the county to renegotiate the terms of their shared law enforcement agreement. But commissioners have tabled that official request until after the November election.

What do you think about this?  Is this the best way for the city to spend its law enforcement dollars?  Leave your comments below.