The town of Winthrop has been using a Suffolk County sheriff sergeant to ramp up patrols of its waterways this past year, generating revenue and key safety improvements for the town, Police Chief John Goodwin said.

“From an operations standpoint, it’s been a huge success,” the chief said of the job filled by Sergeant Dennis DeCarney, the town’s deputy harbormaster.

Chief Goodwin spoke after a Boston Globe report questioned the DeCarney appointment, suggesting that such uses of sheriff funding marked a pattern of bad resource management in a county that regularly overspends its budget of state and local sources.

The employment of sheriff personnel by Winthrop and other towns also appears to exceed the general mandate in Massachusetts for the counties to focus on jail-related activities, the Globe reported.

Sheriff challenged

The report came at a time of stress for the Suffolk County sheriff’s office. The sheriff, Steven Tompkins, took medical leave late last year after pleading not guilty to federal extortion charges, and the Globe said that his department’s overtime rates have tripled to more than $30 million.

And in the past year, Chief Goodwin took direct control of the town harbormaster’s office in Winthrop, in response to recommendations from the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. The so-called Post Commission was created by the state legislature after the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, and one of its findings noted that harbormaster duties require legal enforcement powers and should therefore be brought under the control of police.

Among the realities the Winthrop police found in the takeover of the harbormaster’s office, Chief Goodwin said, is that the registration and annual fee that the town generally requires of boaters – $250 a year for residents and $300 for others – often was not being paid.

Complaints underlying the Globe investigation, Chief Goodwin said, appear to have originated with local boaters upset by the newfound emphasis on fee enforcement. But the results of enforcement, he said, include the issuance of more than 500 such violations this past year, up from fewer than three dozen. The greater attention also has meant extensive success against criminal activity involving the waterways, he said.

Budget excess

Sgt DeCarney is paid $105,000 per year by the county to work as Winthrop’s deputy harbormaster, and he got another $60,000 last year for overtime work at the county jail, the Globe reported. The Suffolk sheriff’s department last year exceeded its $130 million budget by almost 20 percent, and state lawmakers withheld more than $100 million requested by sheriff’s offices in Suffolk and other counties, it said.

County officials did not immediately respond to request for comment. But they told the Globe that their investment in tighter state-local connections is well worth the investment.

Chief Goodwin reiterated that perspective. Along with the deputy harbormaster, the Suffolk sheriff funds a detective who works in the Winthrop police department, he said. The Suffolk sheriff also pays for staffing in other agencies at the local and federal level, he said.

“I can’t speak for the sheriff’s department,” Chief Goodwin said. “But me, I have a very competent qualified guy,” he said of Sgt DeCarney, “who anybody would tell you handles a boat and handles rescues better than anybody around, and he’s working for me, and that’s a win.”