Recently in Public Safety Category

Source: ANNETTE KINGSBURY, Morning Sun (MI) Monday, August 23, 2010

When students return to Rochester Community Schools' three high schools this fall, they will find uniformed security guards from a private firm on duty instead of the usual hall monitors.

In August, the board of education approved the outsourcing of the hall monitor positions, awarding a contract to D.M. Burr Security Services of Novi. The district expects to save about $62,000 per year and gain a professional, trained security service.

Source: Los Angeles Times (CA), July 14, 2010 | 12:33 pm

Los Angeles officials face opposition from organized labor and some City Council members over a proposal to contract out billing and collections for the fire department's emergency medical services.

 ....... The two-part proposal includes a $10-million, six-year contract with Scan Health Inc., better known as Sansio, for the computer system. Under a separate six-year contract, the city would pay Advanced Data Processing Inc. up to 5.5% of net collections revenue to handle billing and collections.

Source: American City & County, Jul 14, 2010 11:41 AM, By Autumn Giusti 
        
Last month, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department (LASD) took over policing for Maywood, Calif., seemingly overnight after the city's liability insurance was cancelled. It was nothing new for the sheriff's department, which has been providing contract law enforcement for more than 50 years and claims to have been the first county to do so.

Los Angeles County signed its first contract to provide police services to Lakewood, Calif., in 1954. Today, the county polices 42 of the 88 cities in its jurisdiction and has a division dedicated to contract law enforcement.

Source: American City & County, May 19, 2010 1:16 PM, By Autumn Giusti

........ Increasingly, new cities are either contracting or sharing city services, says Leonard Matarese, director of Public Safety Services for the International City/County Management Association. "Elected officials are coming to the understanding that we just can't afford to do business [in the traditional sense] any longer," Matarese says.

Source: GAO-10-614T April 14, 2010

FPS faces a number of challenges in managing its guard contractors that hamper its ability to protect federal facilities. FPS requires contractors to provide guards who have met training and certification requirements. FPS's guard contract also states that a contractor who does not comply with the contract is subject to enforcement action. GAO reviewed the official contract files for the seven contractors who, as GAO testified in July 2009, had guards performing on contracts with expired certification and training requirements to determine what action, if any, FPS had taken against these contractors for contract noncompliance.

source: Shaun Bishop, Daily News (CA) 03/08/2010 07:02:03 PM PST

State firefighters and San Mateo County sheriff's deputies would respond to emergencies in San Carlos under a budget scenario proposed by the city manager. Outsourcing police and fire protection services would save the city an estimated $3 million to $5.5 million, said City Manager Mark Weiss, who on late Friday released his "two paths" plan to close a $3.5 million deficit in the 2010-11 fiscal year budget.

By Arindrajit Dube and Ethan Kaplan, Industrial & Labor Relations Review,  Vol. 63, No. 2 (January 2010), pp. 287-306.

Abstract: Outsourcing of labor services grew substantially during the 1980s and 1990s and was associated with lower wages, fewer benefits, and lower rates of unionization. The authors focus on two occupations for which they can identify outsourcing in those two decades using industry and occupation codes: janitors and guards. Across a wide array of specifications, they find that the outsourcing wage penalty ranged from 4% to 7% for janitors and from 8% to 24% for guards. Their findings on health benefits mirror those on wages. Evidence suggests that the outsourcing penalty was not due to compensating differentials for higher benefits or lower hours, skill differences, or the types of industries that outsourced. Rather, outsourcing seems to have reduced labor market rents for workers, especially for those in the upper half of the occupational wage distribution. Industries with higher historical wage premia were more likely to outsource service work.

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Source:  BY S. BRADY CALHOUN, The News Herald (Panama City, Florida), November 16th, 2009

 A Panama City commissioner said Saturday the city might be able to save money by abolishing the Panama City Police Department and contracting with the Bay County Sheriff 's Office for law-enforcement services.

..... The suggestion of outsourcing police duties came while the city is in its first negotiation with Teamsters Local 991, the union that now represents Panama City Police officers. The union has nothing to do with Kady's suggestion, he said.

Source: By Joe Davidson, Washington Post, Wednesday, November 18, 2009

..... The GAO paints a scary picture of a federal agency that poorly supervises a security force largely composed of private guards. That supervision, or lack of it, is one point the House Committee on Homeland Security is set to take up at a Wednesday hearing on the FPS.

Another subject certain to arise is the overwhelming reliance on private contractors to protect federal facilities. There are about 15,000 private guards, compared with fewer than 1,000 federal law enforcement officers, in the FPS.

The appropriate balance of contract workers and federal employees is a matter of debate in many government venues. But clearly, there are times when protecting federal facilities is "inherently governmental" work -- the standard by which that balance should be judged.

Source: By JACKSON WEST, NBC Bay Area (CA), 2:47 AM PDT, Tue, Sep 29, 2009

The police department in cash-strapped Vallejo, Calif., may have found a way to save a little money.

The Police Department is now using a transcription service based in Tennessee -- Nashville-McLintock Transcription and Consulting Services -- to write up its police reports.

 .......The practice is less expensive than hiring new personnel and could possibly elicit more details from officers who might otherwise keep it brief if they had to do the typing themselves.