Disarming and dissolving the department

Gathering Glocks. Sorting out equipment. Preparing to hand off cases to the Vermont State Police. Waterbury Police Chief Joby Feccia is presiding over the phase-out of his own police department.

It’s a little like organizing a yard sale for cops.

Waterbury has voted to dissolve virtually all of its village government, including the village police force; it will be out of commission before the end of December.

A few blocks up Main Street from the police station, a committee is studying the future of policing in Waterbury. The town select board appointed the Police Services Study Committee, which is looking at several options for police coverage in the town.

In a way, it’s designing Feccia’s replacement.

Town-village split

The police department has long been a stumbling block between the town and village governments.

The village had the banks, the retail stores, the restaurants, the busy downtown streets. It once had the state mental hospital, and then that massive complex was converted into offices for more than 1,000 state government employees.

The village was where the action was.

The village occupies less than 2 square miles of Waterbury’s 49.7 square miles. The rest of the community is under the town government; it’s much more rural than the village, much more spread out.

Several times, community leaders have organized votes to combine the town and village governments. Over the years, separate fire departments have merged; the two governments share a municipal manager and a community planner. But every time a town-village merger was proposed, the police department was a sticking point.

Town voters didn’t want to help pay for the police budget, which ran $300,000-plus a year.

The only way for villagers to rid themselves of the police department’s financial burden was to dissolve the village government. And so, earlier this year, village voters decided overwhelmingly to do just that. Many details still have to be buttoned up, and the Legislature’s approval is needed, but the village government is clearly winding down.

The town study

Police options being studied by the town government range from relying solely on Vermont State Police — which already covers the town outside the village limits — all the way up to setting up a townwide police force.

In between are contracting with state police for various levels of coverage, and setting up a two-officer police department for the whole town.

“We wanted to have options to consider when the village department stops,” said Marc Metayer, one of the town’s five select board members. “And we want no gap in coverage.”

With each option, the committee is figuring out “what, if any, financial cost” Waterbury would face, and tries to “assess the level of service provided at that point,” Metayer said.

The group plans to gather public opinion through a survey and a pair of informational meetings.

First, though, it’s looking at various aspects of policing — the demand for service, sources of money, cost-benefit ratios for various options — to give townspeople the information they need to evaluage each policing option.

The group will also evaluate the various levels of policing in comparable towns, and the tradeoffs those communities made.

The committee’s information-collecting will continue at meetings Aug. 30 and Sept. 12 at 6:30 p.m.

At the next meeting, the committee will firm up a survey of townspeople; it will be distributed both electronically and by mail. It will prepare presentations for a series of community informational meetings.

The committee hopes to reach a conclusion by late October, and make a recommendation to the select board for the next steps to take.

State police have made it very clear they cannot provide the level of service Waterbury has received from its village force. Troopers will respond to significant problems, but people will be on their own for the kinds of friction that village police routinely handle now.

Others wonder if the lack of a local police presence will lead to an erosion of the civil, safe atmosphere in the village.

Shrinking presence

At this point, the Waterbury Village Police Department is a shell of what it used to be. It once had four full-time officers and a cadre of active part-time officers.

Then came Tropical Storm Irene, which clobbered Waterbury, and the police department. The police station was ruined; police had to find new offices, obtain new equipment to replace what the floods took, and fight for financial survival.

Today, Waterbury has just two full-time officers: Feccia and Corporal Anthony Mazzilli. There are four part-time officers on extremely limited hours — the police budget only allocates $13,000 for all the part-timers, combined — and a part-time secretary.

Feccia and Mazzilli plan to stay until the end of the year, but part-time officers will be used sparingly. That cuts sharply into local police coverage, particularly on nights and weekends.

Waterbury has three major events left this calendar year — Halloween, the Leaf Peepers Half Marathon and A River of Light — that need police assistance with traffic control. Who will handle that work a year from now is anyone’s guess.

Feccia’s been a police officer for 21 years, and is nine years from a police retirement package. This fall, he’s starting an online master’s degree program in public administration, offered through Norwich University. He is also looking for another police job.

“I have had other jobs, but I worked here most of my adult life,” Feccia said; he joined the village police force 22 years ago. “This has been my only permanent job with benefits.”

Feccia says he’ll miss the community and the things a small-town police chief can accomplish. For instance, he loves being an Everybody Wins mentor at Thatcher Brook Primary School.

“It is nice for kids to see a police officer other than in crisis mode,” Feccia said.

These days, he’s also being buttonholed by residents who want to tell him they appreciate what he’s done.

“It is cool to know you have helped people,” Feccia said.

Though Feccia will not be working for the village, he knows what he’d like to see in Waterbury’s future: “I hope that, after all of this, the town decides they want a police department and want to staff it properly.”