An examination of newspaper archives shows that each Chattanooga police chief inaugurated in the 21st century has instituted his or her own command structure shortly after assuming office.
What appears to be a first this century with Chattanooga Police Chief Celeste Murphy is the need for additional city funds -- a lot of funds -- to complete that command structure.
The Times Free Press reported Sunday that the Chattanooga Police Department is proposing to add nearly a million dollars to its budget to accommodate new staff members who are not sworn officers as well as changes/promotions in various ranks of existing officers.
With the office rank changes/promotions, the number of sworn officers would remain at 477. The number of non-sworn personnel, including a new director of organizational development and training, development manager, director of public affairs and four intelligence analysts, would grow from 116 to 123.
The cost of the new personnel along with the rank changes/promotions is $565,000, which would come from contingency funds, it was reported. It's not clear how much of the nearly half million goes to the new personnel and how much to the changes/promotions.
An amount of $359,000 already in the city budget would be transferred to the police department budget to cover three social workers from the city's Office of Community Health and an employee from the Human Resources department.
The budgetary changes are expected to go before the Chattanooga City Council for approval on Sept. 13.
We have no problem with Murphy determining with whom she is most comfortable to work and how the structure of her staff should be.
For instance, her plan adds five majors and two executive chiefs, two positions which currently do not exist. But the rank of major has been used in the department before, and the rank of executive chief was bestowed for the first time under Chief Steve Parks -- according to newspaper archives -- on Freeman Cooper in 2004. Cooper went on to be chief of police from 2007 to 2010.
City officials said they increased Parks' salary when he was appointed chief in 2004 to be more in line with other top city leaders, and Parks said his new command structure would make the department more efficient, but no mention was made of the need for a huge increase in the budget.
When Cooper was appointed in 2007, one of his assistants noted that "reorganizing the police department and changing titles is nothing new. It's whatever the incoming chief is comfortable with." But the new chief himself said the captain slots vacated by two officers he appointed deputy chief and assistant chief would be on hold. "There'll be nothing done this budget year," he said.
The same scenario occurred with Chiefs Bobby Dodd in 2010, Fred Fletcher in 2014 and David Roddy in 2017. Command staffs were changed, but no additional outlay was requested.
Indeed, even the last Chattanooga police chief appointed in the 20th century, Jimmie Dotson, was on the job for four years, according to newspaper archives, before he announced any promotions.
Where we have some concerns with Murphy's request is the additional non-sworn personnel. With the number of sworn officers remaining the same, it's not clear why more bureaucracy needs be added to the department -- another level between the public and the chief -- and why jobs that apparently already were being done now must be done by someone else.
And since the city council will vote next month on the amount for the new personnel from contingency funds, will the funds be put in the police budget for the next fiscal year and every year thereafter, enshrining a handful of positions, their salaries and benefits in perpetuity?
We hope members of the city council next month will question Murphy about the need for the new positions and the money that goes along with them. For a good chunk of that nearly $1 million, after all, the city would not be getting a handful of new officers on the street to fight crime but a group of folks doing desk jobs.
If that works out a few years down the way in getting more bad guys off the street, drugs out of the hands of youngsters and keeps thugs from robbing houses and cars, so be it. If not, it's just another instance of enlarging government at taxpayers' expense.