“We have all this data now,” said Tinti. “We have the ability to use the stats and info we’ve collected on previous crimes to work proactively.”
Challenges ahead
Tinti will take over a department that has seen its manpower dwindle by 10 officers in the past three years and its overtime budget fall by half during the same period. The lack of cops and money, combined with a PBA contract which limits the ability to shuffle officers between assignments, has made it difficult to carry out the kind of proactive, community-oriented policing that citizens’ groups and every candidate in the race to be next mayor of Kingston have called for. Tinti said part of his task over the coming months would be to get input from the community about what they wanted from its police department and see what could be accomplished with the resources at hand.
“There are a number of things I would like to do. The key is finding that balance between what we can deliver and what the community wants,” said Tinti. “But I don’t treat that as a problem, I see it as an opportunity.”
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