DETROIT (AP) — Fighting crime is a 24-hour job, but Detroit police stations will be sticking to business hours.

The department is rolling out a plan to close precincts and district headquarters to the public after 4 p.m. It’s an effort to put more officers on patrol, especially in the most besieged neighborhoods, without adding to the city’s $200 million budget deficit.

The policy took effect this week in an especially tough area on the city’s east side. Over the next month, the practice will spread to the six other stations.

At the first precinct to adopt the new system, Michael Morris stopped by to make an accident report. He said he would reserve judgment.

“Let’s see the response time on the street,” Morris said. Then he’ll be able to say if it’s working.

Officers are still inside the building around the clock, but at night public access is limited to a phone in the foyer linked to a 24-hour crime-reporting unit.

Smaller communities have adopted the same approach, but Detroit will be the largest American city to try it. Police Chief Ralph Godbee said the idea would “re-engineer” how the department operates.

Closing precincts to the public by late afternoon is not expected to save money. It just reassigns officers and their duties. Two clerks have typically staffed the midnight shift at each precinct, and a recent survey by the chief’s office showed they take an average of only two reports each night, Godbee said.

Like many police departments, Detroit’s force is under severe financial constraints. The city has about 2,700 officers, down from 4,000 a decade ago. Another 100 officers could be laid off by next month without federal grant money.

There are few areas to make cuts other than jobs, something the police chief and Mayor Dave Bing are loath to do, particularly in light of the city’s violent crime rate, one of the highest in the country, and a spike in murders.

Compounding matters is Detroit’s size: 139 square miles. Although the population has fallen from 1.8 million in 1950 to 700,000 today, officers must still patrol a large area.

“We have done a disservice to our community by spreading ourselves thin, giving citizens the belief that we will respond to things that are not an emergency,” Godbee said. The changes are mainly “for those brave men and women that are overtaxed out there” answering calls for service.

Godbee expects to put 100 to 150 officers more officers on patrol.

Restricted and light-duty officers are being moved to the 24-hour unit that will handle non-emergency calls that might normally have gone to the front desk at neighborhood precincts. That part of Detroit’s policy was gleaned from Milwaukee, which began a similar program in 2008. Milwaukee officers who in the past would have handled complaints in person can now be sent to areas with rising crime.

“If we don’t stay in public spaces, crime goes up and citizens lose heart,” Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said. But his department has not reduced the hours its seven precincts are open to the public.

Some smaller police departments, including in Detroit’s better-off suburbs, already close their front desks during slower evening hours. But Nancy Kolb, a senior program manager with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, has not heard of any city the size of Detroit adopting a similar policy.

A lot of agencies are turning to volunteers to work the front desks and using more social media.

“It’s not always possible for an officer to go to neighborhood watch meetings, but residents can use social media to engage with that officer,” Kolb said.

Bing, who is trying to keep Detroit from being taken over by an emergency financial manager, is cutting 1,000 city jobs in the next few weeks. Services like fixing lights and sidewalks and cutting grass are being reduced. The mayor is also seeking medical and pension concessions from city unions.

Other cities are reluctant to tinker with their police forces, even if doing so might save money.

Officials in Baltimore, which has a deficit of more than $50 million, have not considered cutting hours at their nine police precincts and headquarters, largely because such a step would close doors on community outreach.

“We have a lot of situations where people come into the districts to report crime,” police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. “It’s a big part of our community policing.”

In New Orleans, eight district offices are open around the clock. Most are staffed overnight by a desk sergeant and two officers.

“You have citizens who will still feel more comfortable reporting crime by coming into the districts,” New Orleans police spokesman Frank Robertson said.

In Detroit, the precincts have often been seen as islands of safety.

“I really don’t know how it’s going to work,” said Ardella Jackson, who also filed an accident report Tuesday at the precinct with shorter hours. “We don’t really like changes.”

Godbee has stressed that the precincts won’t be abandoned at night. And though there will be no access to front desk areas, a limited number of officers will be inside performing other duties. But he prefers people become familiar with the telephone reporting system for non-emergencies such as neighbor complaints, property damage reports and fender benders.

“If the situation calls for me to have an officer come to the station to deal with them,” he said, “I would rather do that than have that officer sitting there like the Maytag repair person.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Those cute mail-order chicks that wind up in children’s Easter baskets and backyard farms have been linked to more than 300 cases of salmonella in the U.S. — mostly in youngsters — since 2004.

An estimated 50 million live poultry are sold through the mail each year in the United States in a business that has been booming because of the growing popularity of backyard chicken farming as a hobby among people who like the idea of raising their own food.

But health officials are warning of a bacterial threat on the birds’ feet, feathers, beaks and eggs.

NEW YORK (AP) — Leo Dillon, the groundbreaking illustrator who collaborated with his wife, Diane, on dozens of books for kids and adults and became the first African-American to win the Caldecott Medal for children’s books, has died. He was 79.

Dillon died May 26 at Long Island College Hospital from complications after lung surgery, publisher Scholastic Inc. announced Wednesday. Harlan Ellison, a close friend, wrote on his website that “Half my soul for 50 years went with him.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is moving to impose stiff new tariffs on wind-energy towers made in China, the latest strike in an escalating trade war over clean energy.

The Commerce Department said in a preliminary decision Wednesday that Chinese companies have received government subsidies on steel wind towers ranging from about 14 percent to 26 percent. The decision could result in tariffs of those amounts being imposed on about a dozen Chinese companies that export large numbers of steel wind towers to the United States.

It follows a Commerce Department decision this month to impose tariffs averaging about 31 percent on solar cells and panels imported from China.

China has called the U.S. action on solar equipment unfair and warned that higher tariffs could hurt efforts to promote clean energy.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration added new sanctions on a Syrian bank Wednesday as a top White House official said the U.S. wants to economically throttle the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad and cut off salaries of pro-government thugs blamed for the grisly massacre in Houla.

The Treasury Department said the Syria International Islamic Bank has been acting as a front for other Syrian financial institutions seeking to circumvent sanctions. The new penalties will prohibit the SIIB from engaging in financial transactions in the U.S. and will freeze any assets under U.S. jurisdiction.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the price tag on proposed fixes to Montana’s Fort Peck Dam following major flooding along the Missouri River could top $225 million.

But with money short, Corps officials said Wednesday they will be able to afford only $46 million in interim fixes for now.

Record snowfalls and massive spring rains in Wyoming and Montana last year prompted the release of unprecedented volumes of water from the Corps’ six Missouri River dams.

The torrent damaged Fort Peck’s spillway gates and eroded areas downstream from the dam, located at the top of the Missouri River system.

Fort Peck Project Manager John Daggett says the planned repairs will ensure the spillway can be used to safely release water during future flooding.