Public Safety Department 6-Month Trial

The Town of Winslow will begin a 6-month trial of the Winslow Public Safety Department starting on January 01, 2023. 

This Public Safety Department will combine the administrative duties of the Police and Fire Chiefs into one Public Safety Director. The departments themselves still exist, and still have a Deputy overseeing operations that is fully certified and qualified in each discipline. This is not the merging of both departments operationally. Fire staff will not be trying to perform law enforcement duties, nor will Police staff be tasked with fighting fires or running ambulance calls. 


Some of the benefits to having a Public Safety Department versus separate Fire and Police Departments are:

• Police and Fire can share all of the common space. This would mean having dining and living spaces, locker rooms, training facilities, physical fitness space and meeting space shared, instead of building separate facilities for both departments. In turn, sharing space has been shown to promote cooperation and comradery between PD and Fire staff. In fact, this was experienced right here in Winslow when the Police Department was being renovated and the officers needed to share space in the Fire Department. Shared space also lends itself to coordinated training exercises between the departments, which is critical to disaster response efforts.
• There are more grant funding opportunities available to Public Safety departments than to either Police or Fire departments alone, which could save the Town money moving forward.
• There is a significant savings in having one administrator that oversees both the Fire and the Police departments. Click here to see Staffing/Salary Comparisons between the current structure versus the Public Safety Department Structure.

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Public Safety Department Public Engagement Meetings