Tick Tock - Memphis - Tick Tock I havent posted in awhile because most everything that needs to be said, has been said and I dont feel that it serves any purpose to just keep repeating the same things over, and over and over again. That being said, in my last post I wrote that I was estimating that five (5) Memphis police officers had resigned because of the finical burden the mayor, the city council seven (7) and the Chamber of Commerce have put the current and retired city employees under. Tonya McCoy was kind enough to post that the correct number of officers, who have resigned, is eight (8) with two (2) others officers about to resign. These shocking numbers reflect that this city is going to have lost ten (10) officers in the span of one (1) month. When this number is added to any additional officers that will be leaving our city to find work with other departments and those officers who are going to be retiring in the near future, this city is facing a workforce shortage that is going to devastate this city. The citizens of our city must understand that because this is national news, there are out of state criminals and gangs who will be moving into our city, in addition to the ones who are already here, to take advantage of the shortage of police officers. Our city officials must understand that any perspective business that may be or might have been considering moving to Memphis will also be taking note of this situation. In an article in The New York Times on Nov. 3, 2012 it was reported that a increase in crime in Sacramento, CA had occurred after deep cuts to the police force. The article states that back in 2008 the police department was bringing down crime rates, and then the city began to reduce overtime and the crime rates began to rise. The New York Times article further stated that the police budget was cut by twelve point 2 million ($12.2) dollars and crime began to skyrocket. That police department suffered a lost of over three hundred (300) officers and civilian workers between 2008 and 2012. The department had to start moving detectives from their bureaus and put them back in uniform patrol. With this step, the Sacramento P.D. had to eliminate their vice, narcotics, financial crimes and undercover gang squads and caused a thinning out of the auto theft, forensics and canine units. Their police officers were no longer able responded to burglaries, misdemeanors or minor traffic accidents. This reduction in crime and then a sharp increase in crime, due to overtime being cut, was the same situation that happened in Memphis when the overtime was reduced in the Blue Crush Unit. The number of our officers resigning also reminded me of a story written on 1/2/2014 in a San Jose, CA Police Officers Association publication, about how that city had thirty (30) officers, the Police Chief and the Assistant Chief of Police all resign within a sixty (60) day time period in 2013. This happened as their homicide rate exceeded a twenty (20) year high. The article further stated that seventy-three (73) officers had resigned from that department between the years of 2002 and 2006. The Police Chief drafted a memorandum, in 2006, to the City Manager and the City Council warning them of the impending shortage of police officers, which was ignored. The Police Chief also submitted, in 2006,at five (5) year plan to restaff his department with a warning that the cities crime rates would likely rise as the polices ability to respond was decreased. The mayor and city council also ignored this report and no action was taken. In addition to these developments, in 2010 the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury filed a report that the city had lost nearly thirty-five million ($35,000,000) dollars, between the years of 2003 and 2011, in tax revenue from a building project the city had completed. The report further stated that As those losses grew, talk continued about building a baseball stadium for the A’s and low cost land transfers occurred that subsidized multi-millionaires at the expense of basic city services. Officer staffing levels were ignored, employee benefits and compensation were reduced, and now our most experienced and well-trained officers are leaving for other jurisdictions. The San Jose Police Chiefs made a request in 2006 to bring his staff of sworn officers from it total of one thousand three hundred and thirty-four (1,334) officers to a staffing level of one thousand eight hundred and twenty-one (1,821) officers which was also ignored. When this article was written in 2012, the S.A.P.D. has one thousand and six (1,006) officers. However with fifty-one (51) officers on disability/medical leave and thirty-five (35) on modified duty, their department currently has nine hundred and twenty (920) sworn street ready police officer. All of the citizens of Memphis must begin to ask themselves, does any of this sound familiar. Once again, I apologize for the length of this post, but I felt the importance of the information within this post, was worth its length. Tick Tock - Memphis - Tick Tock
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 22:12:54 +0000