Now the tough job begins. For the past few months, the chief, along with other city department heads, have been working on their respective budgets.
In the police department, the focus is on putting more officers on the streets. The chief is looking at a number of creative solutions. McClelland told Eyewitness News he's considering combining some divisions within the department to cut down on paperwork and perhaps free up more officers to be on the streets.
"Maybe aligning some divisions, combining some divisions, do more resource sharing so we don't have as many separate divisions that may be duplicating some things in the organization," Chief McClelland said.
McClelland didn't specify what kind of consolidation and reorganization will occur, but council members have some ideas. "Obviously, there are services that are provided by civil servicee, and not officers.. and sharing.. like IT.. if we can share IT within departments," Councilman Stephen Costello said. "I know that redoing juvenile crime is something that we can be looking at," Councilman Ed Gonzalez said. Whatever Chief McClelland decides in the next two months, college professor and Houstonian Elliot Glazer says he just wants our leaders to remember their priorities. "I think the first responsibility of a city is taking care of people against crime," he said.