Consulting is Not Policing

We’ve been talking for a few weeks now about former Philadelphia Chief of Police Charles Ramsey providing consulting services to the WPD. The NJ provides some detail on his $16,000/month contract — namely, that there is a very ill-defined SOW for Ramsey’s services, and that one of his Deputies from Philly is means to be on the ground here working. Working on what is still the question — which is the question for all of the consultants that the Williams Administration has hired for the WPD.

I’m a fan of Chief Ramsey. He has an interesting resume working for a number of tough cities and his approach to policing seems to have evolved to a fairly strong community approach along the way. So this isn’t about him — his expertise is badly needed here (even though I don’t believe for a minute that this Administration will listen to him). I’m also a fan of Dr. Jim Nolan — he is an ex-WPD officer who developed a Strong Neighborhoods program that provided a focused framework for community policing and was successfully piloted in Browntown. This program was meant to expand to other neighborhoods, but didn’t get off the ground for a number of reasons, but the biggest one was that the Community Policing Unit was withdrawn to implement Operation Disrupt. Dr. Nolan put together a great approach and had the rug yanked out from under him. Doug Iardella is a former colleague of Willams on the WPD who left the department on disability. It is really unclear what value he adds to the WPD, but he has frequently been at public meetings representing the WPD, when senior WPD (Inspectors) have been in the room and who were perfectly capable of speaking for their organization.

But here’s a recap of the Consultant Fees (yearly) as we know them:

Ramsey $192,000
Nolan $ 35,000
Iardella $ 65,000
TOTAL $292,000

Right? Back in July, the WPD was looking for $600K to hire two new Inspectors. That effort didn’t make it past the City Council, but all of these consultants amount to one Inspector hire. If they need additional leadership (and I do think they need a Deputy Chief still), they had the money for one of those hires. I doubt that additional Inspectors will make much difference (and promoting from within is likely more expensive than hiring a Deputy from outside), but if you think that there is some value from these consultants, then why not get your Inspector that is focusing on the kind of strategy that these consultants are doing?

It all goes back to the astonishing misuse of taxpayer funds by this Administration. They know how to spend money (and I should note here that the City has been told by Arbitration to pony up for a salary increase for WPD but so far no one has heard how they plan to get this done or pay for it), but they seem to have no idea how to get value from that spending. Consultants also don’t change command cultures, which is still a big need, which is why I’d think about whether taking these Consultant funds and getting a real Deputy Chief isn’t the better use of taxpayer funds.