"You can't even get them to answer a call because normally they're writing tickets," said Thomas Martin, chief investigator for the Crittenden County Sheriff's Department. "They're not providing a service to the citizens."Yes, Jericho apparently didn't even have its own cops until a fed.gov grant in the "1990s" (I'm going to use my amazing Kreskin powers to guess "sometime after September 1994") financed a cop shop. Most grants of this nature run out after two years, but the newly-formed Jericho P.D. apparently found a way to keep the dough rolling in even after the federal teat was withdrawn: traffic fines.
Now the police chief has disbanded his force "until things calm down," a judge has voided all outstanding police-issued citations and sheriff's deputies are asking where all the money from the tickets went. With 174 residents, the city can keep seven police officers on its rolls but missed payments on police and fire department vehicles and saw its last business close its doors a few weeks ago.
The road agent scheme ran on for over a decade and is only in abeyance right now because, and I am not making this up, the cops shot the fire chief in the ass right there in the courtroom when he was contesting his second speeding ticket of the day.
Hey, did you know that the current stimulus schemes are financing police departments for little towns (and additional officers for large ones) all over America right now? Of course, the funding runs out after two years, but I'm sure they'll find a way to keep the new po-po on the payroll...
(H/T to Men Are Not Potatoes.)
JUst what amarica needs! More dihonest publis police! May the citizens fire them and take away all their funding. God help all they have tried to ruin with their malarky. Just shows what a farce all this fed money creates.
ReplyDeletefolks like these are ruining whatever might be left of the reputation of policing in the United States. They seem to have bet on their own power rather than drawing legitimacy from the consent of the governed. We' are seeing how that works out right now.
ReplyDeleteNobody to blame but the police for the reputation of the police.
Yep, and add Tenaha, Texas to that list.
ReplyDeleteRoughly 1 "cop" per 25 people. OK, 1 per 75 on a 24-hour 3-shift basis. Around here (suburb) that's 1 per 2 blocks: when I lived in the city five years ago, it would have been 2 or more per building!
ReplyDeleteOr, my High School graduating class would have had 16 cops patrolling us (52 for the 3-year school). Funny, I think the whole town did pretty well with about 60...
I'm going to use my amazing Kreskin powers to guess "sometime after September 1994
ReplyDeleteI snorfled right out loud, I did.
My small town has a $1.2 million federal grant to buy foreclosed properties. The town leaders are smart enough to know that they have no idea how to comply with the regulations. They'll have to spend a quarter of the grant on hiring experts to dot the Is and cross the Ts.
ReplyDeleteFederal money is a curse.
Samsam
Hrm. Sounds like time to found the Tam Snarkfest Police Dep't.
ReplyDeleteIn all probability, a portion of those 7 likely are not full-time coppers, but are reserves or part-timers. If they're not, then I'm particularly impressed by the brazeness.
ReplyDeleteRemember: if everyone on your side refuses to comment, the reporter will take the story to the people on the other side who will say something. And the way this story reads, the city of Jericho and its [former] PD have some egg on their face.
Here in Texas, the city can't keep revenues from tickets if they amount to more than 1/4 of the city budget. As a guy who frickin' refuses to be a revenue-generator, that makes sense to me.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteIn 2005, (late 2004?) the NJ State Police quit writing tickets in response to claims of "profiling". This went on for months. Then it became public that a lot of the cities and towns were going bankrupt. The fact that revenue from tickets was as much as 80%, or more, of their total income was a major shock to the people. (A side note: As is normal, the accident and fatality rates dropped.)
Eventually, everything went back to "business as usual".
"If they're not, then I'm particularly impressed by the brazeness. "
ReplyDeleteOh, they're out there, Matt, never doubt it.
There was the little town in Georgia that was bad enough that they were nearly single-handedly responsible for the state's anti-speed trap legislation. I recollect a city in Ohio that made it into the national press after they shifted the town boundary to include a primo slice of interstate...
Georgia's legislation mandated things like only using marked cars to do traffic enforcement (and clearly defining "marked car") as well as maintaining that radar/laser couldn't be used by county or municipal officers to write tickets for less than 10 over. Jurisdictions that ran afoul of the law got their radar/laser certs pulled for the year by the GSP.
That Ohio town is Linndale, which has a tiny stretch of I-71 going through it; 171 people an area of .1 square miles. It also has a jail, and Mayor's court five evenings a week, a drug dog, and no property taxes. The budget comes from I-71, and only I-71.
ReplyDeleteThat was it, I believe. They got a five page writeup in Car & Driver back in the late '80s or early '90s.
ReplyDelete(...and you gotta think "How bad does traffic enforcement have to be to make the Ohio government say "Hey, that's just outta control,"?")
ReplyDeleteAfter "9/11", after the Patriot Act was passed, the Feds went to work full press, to take over control of all local police depts using federal money as bribes, to demand control of future training, and to demand anything else they could get away with, from any woosey ass local Law Enforcement Officers, who would let them. This is Serious!!...and dangerous to our future.
ReplyDeletewhat I mean is this..the old days are gone, where local officers protected, respected the citizens. Thanks to the Feds..the new attitude and training is, "It's Us
ReplyDeleteAgainst Them". And that's a fact. That's the future of law enforcement, unless we get all over their asses and put a stop to it, in every single county, in every single town.
Am I the only one who ponders that the smallest incorproated town has to have a professional police force, but is satisfied with a volunteer fire department?
ReplyDeleteLet us also note that the city in question is within rock-throwing distance of Memphis.
ReplyDeleteThe citizens should have thrown those cops in the same cell, and send in one cheeseburger, one order of fries, and one shake for the whole damn lot of them, for a week and see if that would revise thier attitude. Damn, I hate bullies.
ReplyDeleteFar as I am concerned, the ENTIRE F@#$%^&* PROBLEM WITH THIS COUNTRY is that we have evolved a system that lets people be free from the consequences of their actions, from street thugs, to politicians and bankers, they pay no price for thier transgressions.