Transferring prisoners and investigating crimes may end up costing the Rochester Police Department more than it can handle in 2013 - in dollars and staff.

In May, the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Department informed Police Chief Paul Magee that the prisoner transfer program, known as Safe Keep, had been cut due to budget issues.

With the Safe Keep program, officers from the Sheriff’s Department pick up a prisoner in need of transfer, to be held overnight or on the weekends, without cost to Rochester.

Now, Magee is asking the Board of Selectmen for support on this matter by voting against the elimination of the two programs, and by writing state legislators for assistance.

Magee is also writing to the legislators for help, including State Senator Michael Rodrigues and State Representative William Straus.

“The legislators need to hear the impacts of funding cuts, and how important these programs are especially to a department my size,” he said.

In a letter to the Selectmen dated May 11, Magee said, “Even though the Rochester Police Station has cells and can hold prisoners, we lack sufficient staffing to do so. The elimination of this valuable program will make handling prisoners more difficult and costly.”

Currently, Rochester has 10 full-time and five part-time officers.

“Being a small department, it’s useful. We don’t have a lot of people to run prisoners up to Plymouth,” Magee said.

The department made 56 arrests in 2011, and while most prisoners were not held overnight, Magee said the program cuts are still enough to cause concern.

“We don’t have hundreds of arrests, and a lot of them don’t result in overnight custody, but we do have them,” he said. “Going forward there will be a greater cost.”

Under Massachusetts General Laws, male and female prisoners have to be kept in separate cells and transferred in separate vehicles.

To do so, Magee said he would have to send two officers out to make the transfer, resulting in inadequate shift coverage and overtime hours needed to cover those shifts.

Without being able to send prisoners to Plymouth, Magee said the department would send them to Marion to be held overnight.

The towns already have an agreement wherein Marion charges Rochester $50 per prisoner, per night.

That can add up, Magee said.

“If someone is arrested on a Friday and can’t make bail, then we are looking at having them held on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. That’s a $200 cost for us for a weekend,” he said.

Besides this cost, Magee said his department is also responsible for added expenditures, such as providing meals for the prisoner.

The additional costs could take a direct hit on the department’s already tight budget, Magee said.

The May Town Meeting approved a 2013 budget of $993,576, an increase over last year’s figure by $9,000 to meet with staff contractual obligations and capital needs.

Besides the Safe Keep program, the Sheriff’s Department also informed Magee that it is eliminating the Bureau of Criminal Investigation services, which was housed in Plymouth.

Of this program, Magee said, “This is an absolutely essential service for Rochester. If eliminated, this will be a huge issue for my town.”

The Rochester Police Department has no detectives on staff, he said.

When a crime such as a breaking and entering occurs, Magee called on the Bureau to process fingerprint analysis and crime scene photography.

Without this program, the Chief said  he is deeply concerned moving forward.
In his letter, Magee said, “This will cripple our investigative abilities.”

Magee said he is confident the board will support him.

“I know the board is certainly very concerned about this,” he said.