The Aquinnah Select Board appointed Christopher P. Manning Thursday as a full-time officer, to ease the severe staffing shortage that has left the Island’s smallest town relying on costly help from the Dukes County Sheriff’s office. Aquinnah Chief of Police Randhi Belain also told The Times that Chilmark will not be assisting the short-staffed police force of its neighboring town.
Manning is a town resident and the most recent appointee to Aquinnah’s select board. He currently serves as a full-time police officer in Tisbury, and will transfer to his new role in Aquinnah by the end of December.
“It’s where I started out in law enforcement,” said Manning. “Aquinnah being my hometown and really being in dire need to keep those services functioning at a cost we can afford, it came time for me to put in my application up here and come back home.”
In a letter submitted to Aquinnah’s select board for the Dec. 18 meeting, Belain highlighted Manning’s past experience with Aquinnah police as a special officer as well as his qualifications as a former tribal ranger for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), a telecommunicator for the Dukes County Sheriff’s office, and an aviation structural mechanic in the United States Navy. Although Manning has not attended a Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC) recruit academy, he completed the reserve/intermittent officer course at MPTC’s Bridge Academy, and the required hours to be a certified police officer from the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission, the letter said.
“Mr. Manning is very qualified for this position, and the town of Aquinnah is very fortunate to be hiring him as a full-time police officer,” said Belain in his letter to the select board. “I look forward to him rejoining the department full-time, and working with him.”
Manning said as a resident of Aquinnah he hopes to be available to help offset the current strain on the department.
“With me coming on and being in town, a lot of those shifts that are being covered by outside agencies … I can pick up, and hopefully as we move forward we get a few more people on board to fill our ranks and get us back up to where we should be,” said Manning.
Manning’s appointment comes as the Aquinnah police staff has been dwindling, leaving Belain as the sole full-time officer in the department for the past couple months. The town has been paying Dukes County sheriff deputies to be on call in Aquinnah from midnight until 8 am, for as much as $700 a night.
Aquinnah recently made efforts to secure additional support from the neighboring Chilmark Police Department, in what could have been the first step in police department regionalization on the Island. At a Chilmark Select Board meeting earlier this month, Belain and Aquinnah Select Board member Tom Murphy requested assistance from Chilmark police with covering the overnight on-call shifts, but the Chilmark Patrol Officers Union denied the request earlier this month.
In a letter to the Aquinnah Select Board dated Dec. 14, the Chilmark Police Association said helping Aquinnah is “not in the best interest for the health and wellness of officers or for the continuation of public safety in Chilmark.
“Accordingly, Chilmark Local 194 asks the board to prioritize the continued level of public safety service in Chilmark as well as the health and wellness of its officers and respectfully decline the request for ‘On Call’ coverage at this time,” the letter said.
After hearing of the denial, Belain told The Times he was disappointed.
“We will go on and figure this out going forward … We fill the shifts, but I was just hoping they could come in and lessen the blow financially, and maybe start working together,” he said. “But it didn’t happen, and that’s okay. We move forward and go from there.”
At the Aquinnah Select Board meeting Thursday, Selectman Murphy said he’s happy with Manning’s appointment, and that it is not only helpful to overall costs, but is also a 50 percent increase to the police department’s staff.
“The town has been absorbing extraordinary expenses from the sheriff’s department and the state police in order to cover the on-call services that are required to cover our residents and provide safety for our people every evening,” said Murphy in the meeting. Belain told The Times that state police aren’t currently assisting in on-call overnight coverage.
“Having Chris here, who happens to live in Aquinnah, and is willing to cover the many of our on-call services, it is not only wonderful for the town because of his extraordinary background and service to our community and his certification and medical assistance, it’s really important to know that somebody is here all the time to help our citizens should they need [someone] to be there,” Murphy added.