For more than a century, one of this town's proudest assets was its police department.
It was, Mayor JoAnn Seghini said, one of the ways Midvale -- population 30,000 -- asserted its civic identity from the looming shadow of Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County.
Tony Mason had been chief of the department for 4 years, a run that abruptly ended last summer when Midvale was forced to make a heart-wrenching decision.
Faced with mounting costs and declining revenue, the city grudgingly approved the dissolution of its 102-year-old police force and fire department in favor of an unusual merger with four other local police agencies and the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department.
"It was a very emotional thing for us to do," Seghini said. "In the end, though, I think it was the right thing to do."
The reluctant surrender of a municipal institution has not just been confined to Midvale. It's happening in cities and towns across the country where persistent budget problems are changing the way basic public services are delivered.
Until the recession, law enforcement was largely spared from budget tensions, but some communities, including Midvale, have reaped both financial savings and operational efficiencies following consolidations or mergers of their police functions. And there is evidence that local government officials are increasingly considering similar dramatic changes in pursuit of more affordable public safety options, according to local government records and law enforcement authorities.
In Pennsylvania, for example, the state police are taking on increasing patrol duties, following recent closures of town and village departments. Since 2010, at least 33 cities scattered throughout Pennsylvania have closed their agencies or scaled back law enforcement operations, according to state records.
Now, when residents of these communities dial 911, state troopers -- not local beat cops -- are making house calls.
"That's the way things are going in these places due to the financial strains," Pennsylvania State Police Sgt. Tony Manetta said, adding that the increasing demands are taxing the state agency.
As the economy continues to sputter, larger agencies, including Oakland, Detroit and Camden, N.J., have raised concerns about their ability to respond to routine residential burglaries, theft and public nuisance calls.
A 2011 Justice Department report addressing the impact of the economic downturn on law enforcement found that agencies are implementing a range of options -- from shared SWAT teams, crime laboratories, dispatchers and records units to wholesale mergers and regionalization -- that is changing the face of local law enforcement.
A 2011 survey of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the nation's largest association of top law enforcement officials, found that 77% of its members were providing some form of support for other agencies.
A separate report by the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a group representing the nation's 63 largest police forces, last year found that 70% were consolidating some law enforcement functions to compensate for recent budget cuts.
Bernard Melekian, director of the Justice Department's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) office which produced the Justice Department's analysis, described mergers as part of "a new reality in American policing," a trend that will likely continue through the next decade.
First reaction: 'Unthinkable'
Mason was not one of the original supporters of a city plan first floated last spring to dissolve the Midvale Police Department.
"Unthinkable," he said, recalling his first reaction. Mason had spent his entire law enforcement career -- three decades -- with Midvale, starting as a street cop before rising to the department's top job.
Of all municipal workers, police officers were perhaps the most visible. Yet there was no arguing with the city's balance sheet. At least $9million of the city's $19million budget was dedicated to some form of public safety, and those costs were rising. The aging patrol fleet needed repair. Overtime costs were necessary, partly to keep the department's one and only crime lab detective on call.
With no new sources of revenue and layoffs all but certain, City Manager Kane Loader said the proposal to merge the police and fire units into larger regional agencies took on increasing urgency. It also provoked considerable anxiety.
"It was nerve-racking," Mason said. "People were coming to me worried about their jobs. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know whether I would have a job."
Six months following the merger, in which Midvale joined a growing regional public safety consortium consisting of the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Department and four other small cities all within a few miles of each other --Taylorsville, Holladay, Riverton and Herriman -- Mason said life "couldn't be better" -- even though he is no longer chief of police.
Under the new structure, known as the Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake, the member cities are now "precincts," headed by the former chiefs. Salt Lake County Sheriff Jim Winder serves as the chief executive of the consortium, overseen by a council of elected officials drawn from participating cities and Salt Lake County.
The benefit, Loader and Mason said, is more simply defined. Members now share the expense of costly services, such as a centralized crime laboratory and patrol car fleet.
Merger paying dividends
For Midvale, the law enforcement savings amount to about $1 million so far. Taylorsville is projected to save about $2.1 million over the next four years. For the three other cities, consortium membership is expected to at least hold the line on existing costs.
Loader said the arrangement also is paying dividends in the form of shorter response times to police calls: an average 15 minutes per call before the merger to six minutes today, largely because the precinct can now draw from a combined force of more than 400 officers versus Midvale's prior 56-officer department.
Under the agreement, all of the former department's employees kept their jobs at roughly the same pay. More importantly, perhaps, the merger is getting passing grades on the street.
Tony Yapias, a local community activist, said the merger is "working very well." He said there is overall greater access to more services, including victim assistance.
There also is a clear sensitivity, he said, to the Hispanic community, with more bilingual officers available to serve the city in which Hispanics represent about 25% of the population.
"Initially, the idea that there was a new sheriff in town made a lot of people nervous," Yapias said. "My concern is that people be treated fairly. It seems to be working because if something was going bad, I would be one of the first to know it."
In Utah, not everybody is sold on the Salt Lake area law enforcement consortium, notably the Salt Lake City Police Department.
Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank is skeptical on many fronts. In such mergers, Burbank said, larger members "lose." Burbank said there is more potential for coverage to be "diluted," as officers are pulled from the city and dispatched to calls across the region.
"You lose accountability for crime," he said.
He said the consortium's managing board of local elected officials also poses problems.
"You get to the point where policing decisions are made by a political body," the chief said, describing it as "policing by politicians."
Winder said he's aware of Burbank's concerns, but the efficiencies of a regional operation far outweigh the chief's case for the status quo. In a bid to satisfy the chief's concerns about the possible dilution of city resources, Winder said he once offered to turn over the day-to-day operational duties of the consortium to Burbank, if the city would join.
"It's not about who runs the thing," Winder said. "I'm hopeful they (the city) will look at this."
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