LETTER TO THE EDITOR: 

From the Office of Councilman Brancatelli, Ward 12
 
I was surprised to read your editorial headline “Cleveland’s redrawing of police districts makes sense.”  As Councilman in the Historic Broadway community, I have had the pleasure of working with numerous Plain Dealer reporters, as well as reporters from around the globe, who have been covering the foreclosure crisis and crimes that have occurred in our neighborhood.  Most all of them have recognized our Broadway community as one and did not distinguish an artificial boundary between North and South Broadway, down Union Avenue. 
 
While this new safety plan has been under development for 18 months, the decision to divide the Broadway community and negatively impact the neighborhood was made last month.  In fact, such last minute changes are reflective of the crafting of the plan as a whole, with recommendations being reversed.  For example, first Chief McGrafth recommended closing the 5th District, then to close the 3rd District, then the plan was to keep officers in a Downtown Unit, and then to not shift the 2nd district into the Downtown area.
 
The idea of strictly dividing the city’s patrol cars and districts by SPAs (statistical planning areas) does not make sense.  Planners have long recognized SPAs as a tool for analysis; they are not 100% defined neighborhood areas and are census tract based.  The SPA maps that were used for this redeployment plan were crafted in the 70’s when our population was 750,000 and well before the thousands of new homes, new highways and new streets that have significantly changed our landscape.  There are hundreds of cases throughout the city where the SPA cuts off some neighborhoods and includes blocks of streets which are not connected to other neighborhoods. Police district maps, despite being originally crafted after WWII, were updated just 10 years ago by Chief Rocky Palutro, Planning Director Hunter Morrsion and Safety Director Bill Denihan with input from citizens.  At that time, as the current Safety Director, then Commander noted, the South Broadway SPA was taken out of the 4th district due to the large volume of calls for service.  Did the calls for service go down?  Did the geographic size of the City change in 10 years?
 
The current plan does not save significant dollars today, nor, with the compromised downtown services unit, does it get significantly more men on the street immediately.  Further, in light of the recent announcement that the Safety Director, in fact, needs to invest $950,000 in order to make the 5th District function, why not make necessary repairs to the facility prior to moving police officers into a building that the Chief previously recommended be closed?  Or, why not invest in the technology that adds truth to your statement that “today’s officers can get information in a few keystrokes” before redeploying cars?  Or, why not sit down with the incredibly professional City Planning Department staff and make the appropriate adjustments to the SPA maps, taking into consideration more appropriate neighborhood-based boundaries? 
 
I hope that the administration would re-consider dividing the Historic Broadway community and that technology and physical building improvements can occur before the re-deployment occurs, our men and women in blue deserve to go to work in a quality environment and with the latest technology.