Enforcers of the law at Somerville Housing Authority properties will be under the authority the city’s police chief in a new draft of a home rule petition headed to the state Legislature. And those special police officers won’t be excluded from union activities, the City Council were told Thursday before approving the petition.
The city’s old charter had a provision for the appointment of special police officers; the version approved by voters in November didn’t include the language. The city moved to fix the oversight, but the council held the petition at its April 9 meeting because members had too many questions and concerns about the first attempt.
A state special act remains in place to let the city bring in retired officers to work construction details. This new petition is “restricted purely to Somerville Housing Authority properties,” said Matt Sirigu, assistant city counselor and labor counsel for Somerville – though councilor JT Scott noted that this wasn’t like “the Dukes of Hazzard”: Police focused on SHA properties “don’t just stop at the edge of the property,” Scott said. “Even if they were driving from Clarendon into the Mystics and they saw something going down, they’d be able to intervene.”
Special police officers appointed under the proposed act are appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the council, and they can be removed by the mayor with the recommendation of the chief of police. The special officers have the same power to make arrests and perform other functions as traditional city police and operate under rules and regulations, policies, procedures and requirements at the chief’s “sole discretion,” according to the petition.
Putting SHA officers under the chief’s authority means “standards can be elevated and maintained,” Scott said, noting also that the act aligns special police with the job protections and practices of the city’s regular police.
“It was really important to me that this be very narrowly tailored so as not to create a separate, third class of police that would be outside of the civil service process [and the amended petition fixes an] exemption which would have excluded these officers from collective bargaining,” Scott said, “which was kind of a problem because they’re already in a union.”
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