The Mayor of Indianapolis has a Bold! New! Plan! to address what's shaping up to be a violent summer: he's taking cops out of Community Resource work and putting them in squad cars!
Yes, that right, the LEOs who have been doing the Officer Friendly bit, standing in for the beat-walking policemen of yore (which the city can no longer afford and hasn't had for years), are gonna be responding to crime now, showing up in a blaze of light with sirens screaming--
After the crime has been committed.
Okay, if this was a comic book or even a Sherlock Holmes story, we could expect the crime rate to get way better once Moriarty or the Joker had been rounded up. I'm not so sure applying a bigger bandage is gonna work here.
The city has no plans to hire more police; the policeman's union thinks they're nearly, oh, 700 patrol-persons short. They might be high -- no, numerically, I mean -- but they've got a point. You don't get more police by shuffling around the ones you already have.
And you sure don't get better or happier ones that way.
Hmm, for the crime rate Indy needs one Constable On Patrol for every 850 citizens, four and a fifth shifts a week. That is; 168 hours and 1 second a week.
ReplyDeleteIt appears a need for 700 more COP's is shy of reality by quite a bit.
But of course, the civil masters have other things to do with the money.
Stranger
Yet Ballard spends $6 million on a "sports park" so folks can play non-traditional sports like cricket.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems on the City-County Council are frothing at the mouth that he's not spending that money on more policemen. Now I know that the Dems on the CCC are only in it for the political capital, but this is one case where I agree that the $6 million could have been better spent.
More officers in squad cars is going to make crime go down?
ReplyDeleteThey're going to have to double arrests just to make up for the increase in DUIs.
BGM
I was reaching for the snark, but BGMiller takes it, I think.
ReplyDeleteTime to carry an extra magazine of Ammo, methinks. Could be even more of "Awhile" before the PoPo responds to 911.
ReplyDeleteThat's going in the WRONG direction... Again...
ReplyDeleteI've always been able to stretch my lumber by cutting two feet off one end and attaching it to the other end.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we can have Police League "Midnight Cricket" for at-risk youth, now? --Just wait 'til you see what the little hoodlums can do to one another with cricket bats!
ReplyDeletePossibly not a good plan.
It is not MORE policing that is the issue, it is the lack of quality in policing that is the problem. LEO's are so rapped up in being heroes that they cannot manage to do their jobs. If these useless cretins went back to being "peace officers" we would be far better off. ymemarr 2376
ReplyDeleteI would think that taking cops who were happily doing other things, tossing them back into the Blue Bag and having them patrol the streets only means that you end up with a lot of disgruntled cops on the street.
ReplyDeleteI don't see how that's going to end well.