Chief weighs in on police defunding

In the last several weeks, heightened unrest has been seen in many areas of the country. The recent deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd at the hands of now former law enforcement personnel have drawn international attention and sparked protests—both peaceful and violent—across the United States. Each victim was African American, and each person accused of killing him or her was white. Arbery’s and Floyd’s murders were captured on film. The videos quickly went viral on social media and resulted in national outcries of racial profiling and police brutality. Ultimately, murder charges were brought against those who were responsible for the killings.

The result of it all led to disgust and hatred toward law officers and police departments in general; even those who had nothing to do with the discretions. Americans have not been shy about voicing or displaying their disdain. Most recently, the phrase, “Defund the police” has gained national attention and become somewhat of a slogan. Those people in favor of diverting funds from the budgets of police departments and reallocating them to other forms of public safety and to community support organizations instead are supporters of the movement.

The Houston Home Journal spoke candidly with Centerville Police Chief Chuck Hadden on Tuesday afternoon to discuss his personal and professional thoughts about how “defunding” the police might affect law enforcement, as we know it today.

“I personally think defunding is a horrible idea,” Hadden shared. “We already make due with so little now. We stretch everything we have so far just to pay for manpower, vehicles, maintenance and equipment. We don’t have any wiggle-room in our budget as it is,” he said, speaking specifically about his department in Centerville.

According to Hadden, due to the coronavirus pandemic, budget cuts have already been made to the Centerville Police Department (CPD), so there’s already the potential of a tightness of funds for the next fiscal year.

“If we made any more cuts, we’d end up cutting into manpower, and that would be horrible,” the chief expressed. “I saw on the news this morning that New York cut something like a billion dollars from their budget. That’s an incredible amount of money. We (CPD) only have like a $2 million budget, and that’s for a 25-man department. Everybody has cars and equipment in those cars. And then there’s overtime hours,” he added, noting how heavy the expense load could get. “Defunding would be very bad for us. We would end up having to lay people off if we have to cut our budget further.”

While many may have never heard of it until recent months, the idea of defunding the police is not a new one. Activists have supported it for decades. Proponents of the movement argue that putting the money in police departments has proven to be a failure and that a better solution would be to distribute those funds to areas that will serve better to correct the underlying factors that contribute to crimes—factors like education, public health, homelessness and poverty.

And while many tend to entirely dismiss the idea as whimsy and say that there’s no chance of it ever happening, the concept is actually gaining momentum and mainstream attention. On June 7, Minneapolis City Council announced its intent to actually disband the city’s police department with a veto-proof majority. If this happens, Minneapolis’ plan is to substitute the police department with what was called a “holistic model of public safety that actually keeps us safe.”

Chief Hadden mentioned that continued training among officers is needed in order to keep them prepared to appropriately handle any issues that may arise. “The state of Georgia has a requirement on how many hours you’ve got to have every year. We push our officers to get at least 100 hours a year. That includes de-escalation training, dealing with mentally ill or handicapped people, and other things like that. We also have briefings every day as far as what’s going on,” Hadden continued. “We talk about current events and how we can make small adjustments as far as how we do our job. We want to be sensitive to everything that’s going on around us right now.”

Noting that he was sure that he wasn’t the only Houston County department chief who would attest to this, Hadden said he tells his team of officers to treat everybody like family. “I tell them to imagine that’s their mother, their sister, their brother, their father. We don’t ever approach a situation with the intent to harm anybody. When we get a call for service, we don’t think, ‘Alright, it’s time to go hurt somebody.’ That’s just not how we think, and it’s certainly not how I allow my guys to do business. When we go to calls, we go to help people.”

Hadden is grateful that despite the contempt that so many police departments around the nation are feeling from their city residents in this time of unrest, Centerville Police Department as well as other police departments in Houston County, are still respected and backed by the population’s majority.

“I believe that working in Houston County and the middle Georgia area … we have a lot of support from the community. I certainly would not want to work somewhere where we didn’t have that. I wouldn’t want to have to look over my shoulder every time I went out because somebody hated what I did for a living. It’s almost a daily occurrence that we’re out in the public and somebody will come up to one of us and say, ‘Hey, thank you for what you do,’” Chief Hadden shared.

“We’re always thankful for the recognition. We appreciate it,” Hadden further expressed. “Sometimes we go to lunch and get to the counter and find out that somebody has already paid our bill. We get a lot of love here. We live in a military town, and that’s reciprocated around us. We always pay our respects to military people when we see them, and for civilians to do the same when they see us—that really means a lot. We take care of our citizens, and we feel like they take care of us too.”

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