GILL – The Selectboard and Finance Committee met with Police Chief Christopher Redmond on Monday to continue to discuss the possible addition of a third, full-time police officer to the department. 

The meeting focused on examining data that Redmond provided about how many calls and the nature of the calls that Gill officers have responded to, and interpretations of these calls to help town officials make a decision on authorizing a third full-time officer position in the Police Department. 

Redmond explained the town’s model of relying on part-time officers to help staff the department is “quickly going by the wayside,” and said this was due to state law enforcement legislative changes.

In a follow up email, Redmond clarified the legislative change he referenced come from 2021 criminal justice reforms that requires all part-time peace officers to have the same training as a full-time officer. 

Selectboard Chair Greg Snedeker said the desire to add a third full-time officer is less about the number of officers per population of residents, and more about the expected difficulty of employing part-time officers in the future. 

“We’re really looking at this because of the state law changes, and we expect that we’re going to be hard pressed to find part-timers in the future,” Snedeker stated. “So we’re being proactive which I think is not a bad idea.” 

As the Selectboard and Finance Committee parsed through the call data, Redmond provided nuanced answers to help town officials understand the need for new officers based on the information available to him from state police data and Gill.

The department has operated with three part-time police officers who are employed in other law enforcement roles and first responder positions. Redmond and Police Sgt. John Richardson are the the town’s full-time officers. Additionally, Gill relies on a clinical support officer (CSO) for calls related to mental health. 

The outside commitments part-time officers have to other law enforcement departments and first responder positions has left both Redmond and Richardson to fill in the gaps when they aren’t available.

“Sometimes they're happy to come to Gill and work for less than their hourly rate, or sometimes they're mandated to work overtime or a more lucrative assignment, because everybody's facing some staffing shortages,” Redmond stated about the part-time staff.  “So we're basically at the whim of their availability.” 

Outside of responding to calls, Redmond and Richardson also are responsible for clerical work within the department that takes time to complete. 

The level of full-time police staffing within Gill is notably one of the lowest for the total population of residents in town compared to other Franklin County departments, and Redmond explained how state police response numbers to calls in Gill have increased as coverage needs to be provided. 

In the data provided by Redmond from state police, it was noted that there were 97 calls that the state police handled in 2023 — a decrease from 127 calls in 2022 but an increase from 2018 when there were 70 calls that year. The 2024 numbers only go up to Aug. 31 of this year, and it is expected around 103 calls will be handled by state police by the end of the year.

In many cases, calls taken by state police when Gill units cannot respond are not always relayed to the local department, and records requests are required to understand the nature of the calls received. This means that determining an increase or decrease in certain calls in Gill are hard to determine, Redmond explained, when asked if domestic violence, drug-related and mental health calls have increased. 

Although the idea of a regionalization of police clerical staff was floated at the meeting, Redmond said it would be a difficult as departments create payroll and other necessary paperwork differently.

Regionalization as a whole to include police departments from across Franklin County into one department was briefly discussed as well, with Snedeker stating that from his own personal experience with regionalization efforts in other areas, “The hard part is literally getting the conversations and the people to buy-in.” 

At the end of the discussion, both Selectboard and Finance Committee members chose to revisit the discussion once they have reviewed the call data from Redmond, and no motion was made to formalize the creation of a third full-time position. 

 Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.