NORTHAMPTON — When people take to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights, more often than not, the police are right alongside them.
The police response takes significant pre-planning and staffing to manage vehicle and pedestrian traffic as well as other issues that may arise. All that work costs money, and that money needs to be tracked.
For the last two months, the Northampton Police Department has been keeping track of its response to protests and demonstrations in a new way — a separate call code. Now, when officers provide details for such events the calls are coded as “DEMO.”
The new code now allows Chief Jody Kasper to run a quick search to find out the department’s response rather than wading through volumes of calls coded generally as “Public Service.”
“Without the new coding system, it would take many hours to sort through our existing log to identify what events were being covered,” Kasper said in an email.
Since its creation on June 8, the department has used it thrice, according to Capt. John Cartledge.
More protests and demonstrations in the city in the last year have fueled an increase in police overtime.
“With a controversial political climate and the rise in civic activism, we experienced an increase in public protests and heightened security needs at events. Therefore, overtime related to meeting these staffing demands increased,” Kasper wrote in the city’s FY18 budget proposal.
In fiscal 2016, Northampton Police used $193,456 of its $209,347 overtime budget. Figures from the fiscal year just ended are looking similar, according to the city’s budget report.
“The change in our political climate including issues related to women’s rights, health insurance, immigration, racism, GLBTQ communities, and war, have resulted in more protests and consequently more overtime expenditures for the police department,” Kasper said in an email.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.