'1st responder' shortage cited
Police, fire lack personnel to fight terror, chiefs say
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, towns and cities statewide have collectively shed 945 police officers and 798 firefighters because of layoffs or attrition, and 83 percent of police chiefs and 92 percent of fire chiefs say their departments are unprepared for a terror attack, according to a survey of the state's police and fire chiefs by a state Senate committee.
"This confirms our worst fears -- the loss of 1,700 first responders to any terrorist attack or other major disaster," said state Senator Marc R. Pacheco, chairman of the powerful Senate Post Audit and Oversight Committee. "These are the voices of the frontline responders, the police chiefs and fire chiefs, saying they don't have the resources they need."
Pacheco, a Taunton Democrat, blamed deep cuts in the amount of state money distributed to cities and towns for what he calculated to be a 5 percent drop statewide in the number of public safety officers in three years. He said the administration of Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican, insisted on those cuts while glossing over the impact on public safety preparedness.
"Quite frankly, we have received misinformation from the administration on this issue," he said. "We've been told the level of staffing is adequate. Wrong. Our survey tells us that."
State Public Safety Secretary Edward A. Flynn acknowledged in an interview that the loss of public safety personnel was "problematic," but said he was busy trying to stretch the existing personnel to do a better job.
"I don't blame the local police and fire chiefs for their concerns," he said. "Attrition is taking its toll. Nationwide, attrition is a problem, and there is a great deal of discussion about it on the national level. What I am trying to do is to compensate for the attrition with a shift in the way to do business."
Flynn said he wants local police and fire departments to approach homeland security on a regional level. Last March, he announced the creation of five regional public safety planning councils, saying federal and state grant money for homeland security will be funneled through them so communities can share expensive specialized equipment and specially trained personnel.
Pacheco said the survey contradicts a rosier picture presented by the Romney administration. Last September, the administration released a report card on its efforts on homeland security, including a "B+" on "basic first responder capabilities."
Further, a Romney spokeswoman told The Boston Herald in September that first-responder staffing levels statewide were within "1 or 2 percent" of pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels. Yesterday, Flynn said that figure took into account only layoffs, not attrition.
Pacheco said the "B+" and the modest estimate of job losses did not square with the number of telephone calls he has received in the past couple of years from officials warning of staffing levels that were becoming dangerously low.
He said his staff spent five months on the survey and received responses to questionnaires from 333 of the state's 339 police chiefs and 351 of the state's 365 fire chiefs, or 97 percent of the state's top local public safety officials.
An independent survey by the Massachusetts Municipal Association, a membership organization of the state's towns and cities, extrapolated very similar results on job losses based on a 38 percent sample of municipalities, said Geoffrey Beckwith, the association's executive director.
"This is an important report," Beckwith said of Pacheco's findings. "It points out that instead of speeding down the tax-cut highway, we need to invest and reinvest in police and fire personnel."
Pacheco released an interim report yesterday while calling for the establishment of a bipartisan task force "to address and resolve" questions of preparedness. Flynn said he had not seen the interim report, but he expected it will help in prioritizing state spending.
Lowell Fire Chief William J. Desrosiers said that because of state aid cuts, the city trimmed 14 firefighter slots last July, leaving 189. "We should be better prepared than we are, but we have made advances in the level of protection with the limited resources that we have," he said.
Sean P. Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com. 