Committee to suggest fate of Cicero Police Department

After four months of study, committee of residents will make recommendations Wednesday

View full sizeMichelle Gabel / The Post-StandardCicero Police Officer Mike Serafin talks to the driver of a vehicle that was speeding in a school zone earlier this summer on South Bay Road in front of Gillette Road Middle School. Serafin gave him a warning.

Cicero, NY - After four months of studying what to do with the Cicero Police Department, a committee of town residents will make its recommendations Wednesday to the town board.

The possibilities range from leaving the department as is to dissolving it completely to folding it into the county sheriff’s department.

The Town Board meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday at the South Bay Fire Department, at the corner of Cicero Center and Lakeshore roads in Cicero.

The Cicero Police Study Committee has met once a week since April to examine the police force’s structure, what services it provides and what its work load is — how many calls officers receive and how effective they are.

View full sizeCatie O'Toole / The Post-StandardLew Bersani, 65, of Lakeshore Road in Cicero, stood by a sign in June favoring a police merger in Cicero in front of his business, Bersani's Sport & Marine, on Lakeshore Road.

Committee members held three public listening sessions at which residents and business owners spoke for and against police services in the town. They met with representatives from the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office and Cicero Police Department, as well as contacted the state police. State troopers, sheriff’s deputies and Cicero police each answered a questionnaire about their services, committee chairman John Winters said.

Earlier this year, newly elected Cicero Deputy Supervisor Jessica Zambrano said she wanted to fulfill a campaign promise to look into the possibility of police consolidation.

Zambrano explained that many residents had raised the issue of whether to fold the police department into the Onondaga County sheriff’s force. Some residents suggested police consolidation as a way to save money, she said.

Councilor Jim Corl Jr., who attended the committee meetings as the town board liaison for the Cicero Police Department, said committee members looked at many different options.

View full sizeStephen D. Cannerelli / The Post-StandardFile photo of Angela Kleist, the Community Service Specialist for the Town of Cicero Police Department. She works with Cicero's e-policing system. Cicero Police Chief Joseph Snell has described his department as fiscally conservative and focused on the community.

Neither Corl nor Winters would say what the committee plans to recommend to the town board Wednesday. Supervisor Judy Boyke said she did not have details of the committee’s final report, which Winters said is about 70 pages. But Boyke said it will be up to the town board to accept the committee’s study and to make any decisions. A referendum would be required if the town board decides to dissolve its police department.

“I hope that when this is presented the town of Cicero residents will have a better understanding of their police department and their service and the costs,” Boyke said.

The following residents also served on the committee: Kevin Coyne, Don Haselmyer, John Muratore, Deborah Gardner, David Kirk, Bill West, Art Russell, Don Snyder and Tom Beaulieu.

Catie O’Toole can be reached at cotoole@syracuse.com or 470-2134.