Some law enforcement agencies joining forces, but regionalism not likely -

Some law enforcement agencies joining forces, but regionalism not likely -: "It's a quiet May morning and Tom Hinerman is making one of his last patrols as a Lakemore police officer in Summit County. In a month, he will be a Springfield Township cop, covering the same turf.

'Everybody's excited, but there's some anxiety,' he said. Later, he will say the same thing that Lakemore Mayor Mike Kolomichuk said a month ago: 'This should have been done years ago.'

Kolomichuk is referring to the recent merger of the two departments' police forces that puts them in step with a national trend in which a growing number of communities are sharing resources as they watch their tax revenues shrink."

By June 1, most of Lakemore's police force will be absorbed into the township's. The village will pay Springfield Township at least $400,000 a year for law enforcement service -- about half what Lakemore currently pays to have its own force of eight full-time officers and a few part-timers.

The consolidation puts the village and the township well ahead of most Cuyahoga County communities, where little collaboration is happening between law enforcement agencies. One exception is Chagrin Falls, which provides police protection to the township of the same name as well as fire protection for several nearby towns.

In Summit County, two other partnerships allow the village of Clinton and Boston Township to get police service from adjacent villages.

Also, four communities pay the Summit County Sheriff's Office about $500,000 apiece for protection by one of the largest, most seasoned and well-equipped law enforcement agencies in the county. Sheriff Drew Alexander has a diversity of assets, including his federally trained bomb squad, which serves nine Northeast Ohio counties.

Northfield Center, one of the townships that Alexander's department patrols, is looking for an alternative to those services. The trustees, unhappy with a recent $124,000 surcharge for dispatching during the next three years, have asked five nearby communities to submit sealed bids.

For now, Northfield Center pays about a third of what neighboring Sagamore Hills Township spends to have its own department. Each covers the same area, while Sagamore has twice the population.

John Kuntz / The Plain DealerLakemore police officer Tom Hinerman is on one of his last patrols with the department, which will become part of the larger Springfield Township force next month, saving the village hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In addition to the outside service provided by the sheriff's bomb squad, his SWAT unit serves four municipalities, and recently his detectives handled a murder-suicide in Sagamore Hills Township, which has had its own department for 28 years.

In Cuyahoga County, cash-strapped East Cleveland and North Randall receive some patrol service from the sheriff's office, but only on the late shift. The sheriff's office gave up patrolling years ago when most of the county's unincorporated land disappeared.

Bob Reid, Cuyahoga County's newly elected sheriff, said he's interested in increasing his deputies' patrol duties, but taking the place of existing police departments is unlikely in the foreseeable future.

"That's a sensitive issue because every community in Cuyahoga County has their own police department," Reid said Thursday, just five days into his new job.

His ability to expand the role of the sheriff's office is hampered, in part, by a projected $2.5 million budget deficit this year. Another impediment is that the department historically has not patrolled and instead has dedicated most of its human resources to running the county jail.

Reid, formerly Bedford's police chief, also echoed the sentiments of many mayors and local chiefs when he noted that there are advantages to small, locally focused police departments, including a familiarity that is valued by officers and residents alike.

East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer said he asked for the sheriff's help not because his city had money problems but because the money it had had been mismanaged.

He said that since deputies began supplementing his own police department's patrols, crime has dropped radically, and he has nearly doubled the number of officers he had, from 28 to the current 50.

Brewer also said regionalism is not the answer to his community's problems, or the county's. "I would say [regionalism] doesn't seem to be the will of any community in this area."

The East Cleveland mayor also said that there is no need for legal or organizational restructuring because the sheriff and his deputies already have the statutory authority to go into any community in the county, invited or not. But the sheriff's office does not have the numerical strength.

In fact, Summit County has 2-1/2 times the number of sworn peace officers that Cuyahoga has with 157. Summit's entire jail is staffed by sworn officers, not corrections officers with more-limited powers, who Cuyahoga uses. This provides a ready on-duty force that can be deployed anytime, anywhere.

The Summit County sheriff is negotiating with Akron and eight other municipalities to form one countywide drug-investigation unit -- roughly 50 detectives strong -- which Alexander says would make it the largest in the state.

His department would have operational command, though the individual officers would remain part of their respective police departments.

Akron Police Chief Craig Gilbride said his department and the sheriff's office continue to negotiate on the shared narcotics bureau and are exploring collaborations on computer forensics, crime-scene processing, purchasing and training.

"A stand-alone police department is probably not going to exist too much longer," Gilbride said, because of the cost to communities. "It only makes sense to combine or collaborate."

But Gilbride said that "when you start talking about police departments merging, people tend to be more parochial" than they might be on merging other departments, such as building. He said Akron already has handed off building inspections to Summit County and is exploring a similar move with its health department.

Summit has been taking incremental steps toward metropolitan government for decades, beginning with Ohio's first -- and to date, only -- home rule-chartered county that has an executive in place of three commissioners and a formal legislating council.

The sheriff said the county may have a metro force someday, "but not in my lifetime."

Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic, with a reputation as one of the state's most innovative city executives, is a bit more optimistic about some form of sharing.

"It is an idea certainly worth exploring," Plusquellic said. "If there are redundancies and inefficiencies that can be remedied, we have a responsibility to our citizens to address those areas. By working smarter, we improve public safety. It's as simple as that."