Police-Firefighting Merger Bid Ignites Debate : Oxnard: Mayor calls a press conference to try to calm matters. Firefighters make phone calls and go door-to-door in campaign to defeat proposal.

A proposal to merge the duties of Oxnard’s police officers and firefighters has driven a wedge between elected officials and prompted firefighters to embark on a desperate door-to-door campaign to kill the plan.

Under the proposal, which few cities as large as Oxnard have tried, firefighters would be trained to fight crime while police officers would be trained to fight fires.

The so-called public safety officers would then respond to all police calls, fires and medical emergencies.

Most fire stations would be staffed with a single cross-trained officer, who would drive equipment to a fire or emergency scene and be met by other officers driving squad cars.

But even though the proposal is still being developed and would take an estimated five years to implement, it already has met with intense opposition.

Opponents say the move could jeopardize public safety. Firefighters are making telephone calls and going door-to-door to whip up public support for their campaign, which started Friday.

So far, firefighters say they have collected more than 1,000 signatures of residents opposed to the merger.

The issue has become so heated that Oxnard Mayor Manuel Lopez called a press conference Tuesday to try to calm matters.

“I think the best thing we can do for this city is to put this issue to rest,” said Lopez, who opposes the merger. “I think if I would have waited another couple of weeks (to address the issue), who knows, there might have been a revolution.”

Lopez said he will move to kill the proposal when the council meets to consider the issue next Tuesday. But some of his fellow council members say it is too early to make that decision.

“We haven’t gotten to the point where we consider whether this proposal has merit or no merit,” Councilman Tom Holden said. “The emotional response has really prevented us from taking an educated look at this.”

The merger proposal sprang from a City Council decision in June to consolidate police and fire services into a joint public safety department. That move was part of an overall city reorganization aimed at saving $584,000 a year by eliminating five departments.

However, the council never publicly discussed cross-training firefighters and police officers--now a key element of the merger proposal.

Lopez and other city officials have said the merger initially would cost $1.5 to $2 million for training and equipment. The city would save $250,000 a year after recouping those start-up costs, officials said.

Under the proposal, most of the city’s 74 firefighters would be sent to police academies for 22 weeks of training, followed by about 20 weeks of field training. The city’s approximately 150 police officers would receive firefighting training in-house.

While cautioning that the cost figures are premature and final costs have not been calculated, Police Chief Harold Hurtt said the merger could save the city money in the long run and would enhance public safety by putting more people on the street to answer police and fire calls.

In addition, he said he believes that fire stations, remade as “public safety stations,” could increase community-based policing efforts in the city.

“I’m confident that the concept can work,” said Hurtt, who is spearheading a study of the plan and visited Kalamazoo, Mich., and Sunnyvale, Calif., this fall to study how those cities have successfully merged police and fire services.

But firefighters opposed to the proposal say they are not confident that the city ever would recoup its start-up costs. And they said they fear that police would dominate the merged department, and that fire and medical calls could suffer if more attention is given to police calls.

And, some firefighters say, they simply don’t like the idea of carrying a gun.

“At this time, we’re not in favor of any type of consolidation, not even management,” said Bill Gallaher, president of the firefighters association. “Where we had an open mind about that before, it has gradually closed shut.”

Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that studies law enforcement issues, said the cross-training has been tried by cities of varying sizes over the past 15 years.

It is almost always fought by police and fire unions, he said.

“When cities decide to merge the police and fire departments, they can expect an uphill battle against the employee representatives,” Williams said. “You have unions and people with rank. They have worked hard to become sergeants and lieutenants and captains. . . . You threaten their interests and positions by talking merger.”

The experience of two cities that merged police and fire departments differs widely.

In Durham, N.C., city leaders tried cross-training for 14 years before scrapping the plan in 1985 and reverting to separate departments.

Fire Chief Nathaniel L. Thompson said Durham’s public safety department failed because it was dominated by police managers and focused on answering police calls. Fire training and response time suffered, he said, and morale was low while turnover was high.

“The staff of both departments was never given equal footing,” Thompson said. “The police department had the upper hand in the supervisory roles and in the promotions. It just made for a bad beginning to start with.”

But in Kalamazoo, a decade-old program of cross-training fire and police has shown that differences between firefighters and police officers can be bridged.

The city of 80,000 merged its police and fire departments in 1983 after elected leaders realized that rising crime was outpacing the city’s police budget.

Since then, crime rates have dropped and the number of patrol cars on the street has tripled. Police calls have increased by 30,000, yet robberies have declined by 35% and burglaries have dropped 25%.

The department has also been able to start an anti-drug program in schools and add a community-based police unit, while operating with 65 fewer positions than when the two departments were separate.

“For us, it was a necessity to come up with a different way of delivering service,” said Edward P. Edwardson, Kalamazoo’s chief of public safety.

In Oxnard, too, there is talk of trying different ways of delivering service.

When the City Council voted to collapse 16 departments into 11 as a cost-cutting measure, council members ordered department managers to find ways to make their operations more efficient.

“I think any idea is worth pursuing,” said Councilman Michael Plisky. “If the council thinks it isn’t a good idea, then we will drop it. But I think to drop it before we review it is foolhardy and irresponsible.”

Added Holden: “We need to look for ways to improve our ability to provide public safety in Oxnard. I think it behooves residents to separate the emotion from the potential of this program.”

But firefighters say that as long as the council is considering the issue, they will continue to lobby against it. This weekend, they plan to resume their sidewalk campaign aimed at derailing the proposal.

“It’s our jobs, our lives, our life,” said Gallaher of the firefighters union. “It’s a desperate campaign with a very short time frame.”