GREENFIELD — Police Chief Robert Haigh wants an end to the Civil Service exam that governs who the police department can hire.
Haigh said this week that oftentimes Civil Service severely limits his ability to attract qualified officers, and can leave his department regularly short-staffed.
The chief informed the Greenfield Public Safety Commission this week of his hopes during a scheduled discussion of staffing. He also informed the commission, headed by Butch Hawkins, of the constant use of overtime to fill the current staffing shortages, which will come in as a significant, unbudgeted expense.
“Civil Service really hampers communities like ours,” Haigh said.
He said it often takes more than a year to hire someone based on the Civil Service lists and hiring process. Much of the time, he said, the qualified person up next on the list is from the Boston-area, and will not take a job in western Massachusetts.
Using the exam can also limit the city’s ability to diversify its police force, Haigh said.
“We’re not going to get that by using the Civil Service list,” Haigh said.
Currently, 41 percent of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts use the Civil Service exam to determine potential police officers for its departments. The only two communities in Franklin County’s 26 towns that use the Civil Service exam to find its police officers are Greenfield and Montague; additionally, Athol uses the exam.
Recently, the Montague Selectboard and its police department have debated whether to keep the Civil Service exam, but ultimately decided to stay with it. At a Selectboard meeting in July, the three-member board discussed the possibility of moving away from it, but didn’t want to be seen as interfering with the process of selecting its new police chief.
The Civil Service system is intended to provide a process for hiring and promoting well-qualified candidates without local political influence.
Greenfield’s staffing concerns will be brought to the Greenfield Committee Chairs meeting next week for further discussion, which could help move the plans forward.
Haigh is still looking into the exact process that needs to be taken to end Civil Service participation. In general, it has to go out the same way it came in, but when it came in 1970, it was through Town Meeting, the city’s form of government then. At the moment, Haigh is confident a citywide vote could end the exam, but he’s looking for further guidance on whether the City Council could vote it out.
He added that he hopes to work with the police department’s union and the department to make sure they are on the same page. Those who came into the department under Civil Service would remain grandfathered into a future system, Haigh said.
The chief said he is looking toward Amherst Police Department as a model.
The Civil Service mandates that officers live within 10 miles of the department for which they work. This has made it challenging for a place like Greenfield, at the center of the most rural county in the state, to find people to hire, because they will have to move to the area.
The Greenfield Police Department is about to function on a staff of 30 police officers, while a full staff would be considered 34, which will be the smallest staff since Haigh started at the department, he said.
“It’s an unsafe condition,” Haigh said. “Our patrol is our most valuable, and most used, function of our department. To short-end our patrol is a bad idea.”
You can reach Joshua Solomon at:
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