Chief Corwin: No layoffs but KCPD will lose officers on the streets

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The Kansas City Police Department won’t be laying off officers — or grounding the helicopter — but the department will be losing officers on the street, Police Chief Jim Corwin wrote on his blog after the budget was approved yesterday. The cuts attempt to make up for a $15 million shortfall. 

The KCPD will lose officers to retirement in the next month and normal

turnover, Corwin wrote. The department is also under a hiring freeze

(down 21 officers from last year).
And the training of those 31 recruits in the police academy won’t be kept unless the department gets a

federal grant (and just about every department has applied for them).

“A loss of officers will be felt immediately on June 1 when we must

take 18 of them off the street to staff detention units at the patrol

division stations,” Corwin warned. “To cut overtime pay in the Headquarters Detention Unit, we have to pull all of the (civilian) detention officers downtown to Headquarters. We simply don’t have enough money to pay the overtime. As I had said would happen, cutting — in this case just freezing — civilian jobs will pull officers off the streets to do them.”

So what’s the KCPD cutting?