By John Saccenti, Staff Writer
PLAINSBORO — The Plainsboro Police Department could have a new system in which to evaluate officers’ productivity by Jan. 1.
Police Chief Richard Furda said the system would allow the department to evaluate an officer’s performance regularly, with an eye toward improving performance.
”We’re trying to resolve problems before they become problems,” said Chief Furda.
He said the current evaluation system is lengthy — 28 pages long — and takes a considerable amount of time to do. The new system would give the department indicators on performance on a regular basis.
The department has been working with the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association on ensuring the system is fair, he said.
Chief Furda said he is working on a final draft of the system and will submit it to the BPA for review. He said that if all goes well, it will be in place by the first of the year.
”We’ve been in ongoing discussions on this from the very beginning,” said. “When the first uproar occurred it was really just a rough draft. The unions met with their personnel and we’ve had three meetings and made adaptations to meet everyone’s needs.”
The plan had met with opposition from some officers, who said the system essentially institutes a quota system. Chief Furda said the plan is simply a way to evaluate officers, not encourage a quota system.
Under state law, police departments are banned from requiring officers to hand out a certain number of traffic tickets.
In February, officers in the department took a seminar to learn about the system, which was advertised as teaching police management how to establish and enforce (without establishing a quota-system, or violating state anti-quota laws) objective and fair productivity standards to ensure that every employee contributes his/her fair share of work productivity.
Under the system, officers’ time is divided into directed time, when responding to an accident, for example, and self-directed time, when on patrol. An index is created for each officer, which is calculated by dividing the number of self-directed hours by the number of contacts an officer is making. As originally proposed, officers were expected to fall within a 20 percent range of their own index. However, the department has since changed that to 30 percent, said Chief Furda.
Chief Furda said that with the number of officers with under two years experience on the force, a system like this is needed to maintain a consistent improvement. He said the system will allow the department to see which officers are doing well, which ones aren’t, and make appropriate adjustments when needed.
”There will be no punitive action. What we’re using this for is to help us identify when people are excelling or failing and why,” he said.
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