Kaplan chief dealing with headaches to run his department

By Chris Rosa

KAPLAN - It is not the rising cost of fuel that is causing one police chief headaches, but also the problem of keeping police officers on staff.

Kaplan Police Chief Steve Perry said the high cost of fuel is making him change the way his department patrols Kaplan.

“We are not cutting back on service,” Perry said. “We are, however, watching what we do.”

What he means by that is he, like many of us, is having his deputies conserve on fuel.

He is instructing his officers to turn off their engines when they get to a location instead of letting them run.

Finding a Kaplan police car patrolling the street may be harder than before. Instead of patrolling officers, many are parked with the engines off gunning for speeders or working traffic.

The chief is able to battle the rising fuel costs by cutting back on certain things, but there is one problem he can’t fix - police officers who quit the department within six months after being hired.

Perry could not give an accurate amount of people who have quit the Kaplan Police Department over the last six months, but last week, two more quit.

Each time one quits, it means the chief has to hire a new officer. When the city approves the hires, that person has be sent to the Police Academy for training. The city picks up the $1,000 price tag to send an officer to the academy.

If 10 people have been hired, trained and then quit over the last six months, then that is $10,000 the city has lost.

Perry, who is on his third term as police chief, said he has one officer who has been with the Kaplan police for six years.

“The hiring process is eating my lunch,” Perry said. “They beg me for a job, and I try to convince them to go else where for more money. But they want me to hire them.”

He takes a chance on them and most of the time it backfires because they quit and move on to the Sheriff’s Department or to a larger police department in south Louisiana.

“It is terrible,” he said. “We (Kaplan) are on the losing end.”

The shortage of officers is causing overtime problems. Officers are working overtime, which is eating his budget.

Perr said he has one officer who has been with the Kaplan police force for six years.

The reason many officers leave is for better pay. A Kaplan’s patrolman will make $15,600 in his first year. The next year, he’ll get a 2.5 percent pay raise from the city and the state will start paying him $425 a month, bringing his yearly salary up to $20,700 year.

The starting pay for the Sheriff’s Department is near $20,000 a year, not counting the state’s monthly stipend.

Perry does not blame the city’s administration because he knows they are doing the best they can with the money they have. There is no way Kaplan can afford to pass a tax for the police department because Kaplan’s tax is already at 9.25 percent, he said.

“There is no end in sight,” he said.

Other police departments are having to adjust their budgets for the rising cost of fuels.

The Sheriff’s Department budgeted $325,000 for fuel in 2007-2008. Sheriff Mike Couvillon amended the budget to $370,000 because of the high price of gas.

In next year’s 2008-2009 budget, the sheriff budgeted $400,000 for fuel. Ten years ago, the Sheriff’s budget for fuel was only $100,000.

Abbeville Police Chief Rick Coleman is not amending his budget because the city council projected a rise in fuel prices for the upcoming year.

He did say that if fuel goes above $4 a gallon and continues to rise, then he may have to amend the budget.

Coleman said there are about the same number of patrol units on the road as last year.

“We have not had to cut back on patrols,” said Coleman.