Council member questions and public comment at Tuesday night’s Bloomington city budget hearing revolved around one main sentiment: more police officers.
Initially, Bloomington Police Department Chief Mike Diekhoff presented the 2018 fiscal year budget. He explained the differences in this year’s proposed budget, which included a request for two more officers, six new dispatch positions and a new civilian employee position.
In addition to answering the city councilmembers’ questions about the requested budget items, he also explained how the department was working to be more effective with the resources they already had.
“We really focus on technology in the cars to allow officers to do more on the street,” Diekhoff said.
Despite their best efforts, he said the department’s dispatch was understaffed and BPD was down 11 positions in total. City Council President Susan Sandberg said she wanted to compliment the integrity of the department, but like other council members, also wanted to know why more officers couldn’t be hired. She asked whether negative portrayal of law enforcement made recruitment difficult.
Diekhoff said this portrayal of police did contribute to the issue but there were other factors at play, including low entry-level salaries for officers. He said the department raised its starting salary years ago to better match national standards.
Soon, the discussion turned to Bloomington’s growing homeless population. Diekhoff said addiction made the task of helping those who are homeless more complicated, but that recent drug distribution arrests and the presence of resource officers downtown were followed by a decrease in reports of aggressive behavior and other crimes.
Ultimately, Diekhoff said the downtown area was a better place now than the beginning of the summer. Then came time for public comment.
Bob Costello, a local business owner and president of the Kirkwood Community Association, read from a statement in which he thanked Diekhoff and the department for the work they had done improving conditions in Peoples Park and the surrounding area.
He said his group was not just there to express gratitude, but also to request more officers be hired and more be placed on duty in a single shift. His group suggested 130 officers in total, 34 more positions than BPD's current employment, in order to meet national standards.
Others echoed Costello’s statement. Gabe Coleman, another local business owner, said he saw nine years of escalation, but looked to the future. Police had disrupted the drug trade downtown, he said, and overdoses went down from June to July.
“When we come together to talk about this, we don’t call it a homeless problem,” Coleman said.
The term was divisive and he preferred to see it as an addiction and mental health issue, he said.
Some citizens who spoke said they lived by the Shalom Community Center on South Walnut Street and believed that the homeless population who moved off Kirkwood Avenue had inhabited their street. One person who said she owned property across the street from the center said the discussion wasn’t about being against any certain group, but rather that the neighbors felt threatened.
The father of a BPD officer spoke before the council went back to deliberating the budget. The man said his son worked overtime frequently. If the department could hire more officers, his son wouldn’t have to work so many shifts and would have more time time to be with his family.
Before the public comments, Diekhoff had told the council he understood there was only so much funding to go around and BPD was only a piece of the city’s budget. Most council members agreed with the sentiment that more officers were needed than the city had resources for.
Some questioned what the point of increased funding was if the department wasn’t able to hire more officers. Councilman Stephen Volan, who represents District 6, said they were more than willing to fund the hiring of more officers, something he said the council had been working on for years. Others concurred.
“There are only so many pieces of the pie we can distribute,” Sandberg said. “That said, this is a critical piece.”
