Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 9, 1990 TAG: 9007090263
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: VICTORIA RATCLIFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Those officers will continue to perform youth and family duties, however, Cease said. "The same service is going to be provided, it's just coming out of different chains of command . . . It's going to be streamlined," he said.
County Sheriff Mike Kavanaugh, whose law enforcement duties were taken away by voters in a referendum last November, campaigned three years ago on a promise to reinstate the Youth and Family Services Bureau that he headed as a captain during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Former Sheriff O.S. Foster had removed Kavanaugh as the bureau's supervisor in 1982. He abolished the bureau and placed youth and family services under the investigative division in 1985.
When Kavanaugh was elected sheriff, he re-established the bureau and placed it under the direction of a sergeant.
A woman who answered the telephone today in Kavanaugh's office said the sheriff is out of town all week and cannot be reached for comment about the reorganization.
But Cease said the organizational structure of the youth bureau wasn't efficient and needed to be fine-tuned.
Two investigators in the youth bureau will be reassigned to the criminal investigations division, the chief said.
"I don't want investigations fragmented," Cease said. "All investigations should be done in one place." Investigators don't share information if they are in different divisions simply because it is difficult logistically, he said.
"This way, there will be a better exchange of information."
Four youth officers, who currently teach the DARE drug awareness program in county schools, will continue that instruction on an "almost full-time" basis during the school year, he said. During the hours they're not teaching, those officers will be available to handle law enforcement problems in their assigned schools.
Those officers will be supervised by a lieutenant in the uniform division.
Moving those officers to the supervision of a lieutenant rather than a sergeant "should portray to the public our emphasis and continued commitment to the DARE program," Cease said.
"We are elevating that in the chain of command. It's a high-visibility program, a high-impact program, and I want it more directly accountable to the top chain of command."
Cease said his move in no way is meant to discredit the sergeant who supervised the youth bureau under the sheriff's direction. "It just deserves more importance in the chain of command," he said.
The sergeant who had supervised the youth bureau will move to the uniform division and become a patrol sergeant.
The school resource officer program, which called for DARE officers to make themselves available at county high schools during afternoons when they weren't teaching, will be eliminated, Cease said.
"Nobody seems to know what the school resource officer program is. There is nothing that anyone can find in writing or verbally that says `These are the responsibilities of a school resource officer.' It's just what people have wandered into over the years," Cease said. "I don't believe in having people determining for themselves what their job is."
The DARE officers will continue with the summer school program in the schools this year, but that function will be evaluated at the end of the summer and see if it is worthwhile.
If the summer school program is not deemed to be cost-effective, those officers will spend the summer months assigned to special projects and filling in on road patrol, he said.
"These officers need not forget they're police officers first. They need to have relevant, back-on-the-road experience to provide a line or a touchstone with the reality of being a police officer. The reason they command respect and attention in the classroom is the fact that they're recognized as a police officer. That's what holds the kids' attention and makes the kids believe," Cease said.
The youth officers will continue to have a great deal of input in the direction youth and family services will go, Cease said.
The youth bureau, which won a national award in 1982 for its success in preventing juvenile crime, was established in 1978 to handle domestic problems and crimes committed by or against juveniles.
But Foster said in 1985 that the program had not been cost-effective and had not achieved the results county officials were looking for. "This was a program that looked good on paper, but was impossible to achieve" due to the turnover of officers in the program. The bureau never operated at capacity because youth officers used their training under the program as a stepping stone to higher-paying jobs, Foster said then.
In other organizational moves, Cease has moved a patrol sergeant to the services division to work on the accreditation process and longterm research and planning projects for the deparment.
That officer will work in the next year on an assessment of what the department thinks its needs are and what the community thinks its law enforcement needs are, Cease said.
"We will probably do a community survey within the year of law enforcement needs and also a survey on the community's attitude toward the department."
by CNB