Mobile Substation for Police May Be Approved

Police said it is like chasing a bouncing ball.

Officers move into a problem area of gangs and drug dealers. Concentrated police presence and enforcement halts the illegal activity. But then the gangs and drug dealing move, popping up in another area of the city.

What to do?

“The answer is having a trailer and using it as a movable police substation,” said Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson. “Police have to be able to move to where the gangs and drugs problems are also moving.”

For several weeks, Moulton-Patterson has been lobbying her fellow council members to include funds in the 1992-93 budget for a mobile police substation. On Monday night she apparently won her battle.

The City Council informally agreed to such a budget amendment, pushed by Moulton-Patteron at the council’s Monday night study session of the budget. Although the council’s formal vote on the budget will not take place until next week, Moulton-Patterson said she is certain the police substation on wheels will pass.

“I think it will pass by an overwhelming majority,” Moulton-Patterson said Tuesday in an interview. She noted that no council member opposed the proposal when it was discussed Monday night.

The amended budget now calls for $276,000 to be spent next fiscal year for the mobile substation. The funds will include the hiring of three new police officers to staff the substation, said Lt. Ed McErlain, spokesman for the Police Department.

McErlain said two officers from the city’s force will also be attached to the mobile substation, for a total of five police officers.

“Mobility allows us to move into an area before it becomes a real problem,” McErlain said. “Something like this also lets us get closer to the people in a neighborhood.”

Moulton-Patterson said that if the amended budget is passed as expected next Monday night, the mobile substation will be in action by early fall.

The funding for the mobile substation and police staffing would come from the city’s narcotics seizure fund. That fund, which averages about $1 million a year, comes from assets seized from convicted drug dealers.

The city maintains two permanent police substations. One is in the downtown redevelopment area and the other in the predominantly Latino-immigrant Oakwood area. Police have said both substations have greatly cut down crime and are among reasons the city last year had an 11.1% reduction in major criminal offenses.