Car 6, Where Are You? Are You Answering The Phones Again Today?

From the start, there has been one and only one job posting on the city's website since the very difficult to locate JOBS & VOLUNTEERING page appeared about 9 months ago.  The fact that the posting is still there after 9 months, combined with what I saw today at HPD and yesterday in the 7th Street Park, should concern us all greatly. 

I walked into the HPD station on Union Street to inquire about something I had seen on Warren Street that required explanation.  The window to the dispatch office is difficult to see clearly through, computers block a large portion of the view, and the cheap phone that everyone must use to speak to the person on the other side of the glass and computers sounds like crap ("it's been broken a few times," I was told today).  Generally, it's not a welcoming or pleasant police station, and it never has been.  The fence along the sidewalk makes the place look like a fortress -- perhaps precisely what they were shooting for years ago when the station went up.  The message is:  "We really don't want you here.  We're fine on our own, thank you.  Stay away."

Yesterday in the 7th Street Park, 
I came across two benches occupied by two 
regulars taking their afternoon siestas.  One 
of them did not appreciate me taking his picture
and warned me that he was "going to call 
the police" if I didn't erase the picture. He also 
told me that "this is my home, man,
 I got nowhere else to go."

This morning, there were three HPD employees in the office on the other side of the window.  Not one of them was an official dispatcher.  The person sitting in the dispatcher's seat was officer Randy Strattman, fully suited up in his summer uniform.  He was reclining in his seat as if he were taking it easy and enjoying the break from his patrol car looking for law breakers or responding to problems all around town.  Can you blame him?  Over the broken phone I could hear him say to me that he was "going to be there all day."  He is today's dispatcher, not really a police officer doing important officer stuff that he was hired to do.

Standing behind officer Strattman's right shoulder, and seemingly doing nothing but socializing -- also not what she was hired to do -- was Officer Jennifer Keyser.  I couldn't tell if she was in uniform, but apparently she was on the clock.   Like Randy, Jennifer was not out engaged in law enforcement.

To my right, also standing and seemingly socializing, was detective John Merante.  This tiny city that feels more and more like a ghost town on weekdays has four detectives.  FOUR DETECTIVES and now two legal, and at least one illegal, marijuana shops.

This is the extent of speed enforcement in 
downtown Hudson along one of the
speediest stretches in the entire city,
along the entrance to a busy public park
at the bottom of two steep hills.

According to SeeThroughNY's 2023 payroll information for HPD, Randy Strattman took home $88,551, Jennifer Keyser took home $78,739, and John Merante took home $84,491.  Our Police Chief, Mishanda Franklin, took home $129,960.  The combined salaries of our four detectives last year was just over $402,000.

Also, according to those online records -- which, by the way, are much easier to access than the job posting for the HPD dispatcher -- Mishanda has been taking home over $100,000 a year since 2020. Meanwhile, she has been our Police Chief for over a year and she is having serious difficulty finding and hiring a police dispatcher or two to answer the phones at HPD. One wonders how much of her salary goes to finding dispatchers and parking enforcers, as well as signing every HPD Parking Permit that comes across her desk when a contractor wants to drop a dumpster in the street.

  

I have not heard Mishanda mention anything during recent council meetings about her troubles with hiring a dispatcher or how it is affecting what her trained officers can and cannot do in the meantime.  It is as if there is no problem at all, and perhaps that is true.  But it sure don't seem that way -- certainly not on the face of things.  Our police officers should not be paid to be dispatchers.  Ever.  Period.