While I don't know how much the budget cuts affected various bureaucratic positions, narcotics-raidin' SWAT teams, DUI task forces, and various other revenue-generatin', federal-grant-money-grabbin' sections of the department, they sure have reduced the basic number of patrol officers on the streets.
Like the rural villas of the late Roman Empire, well-to-do neighborhood associations on the Near North Side have taken to hiring
To add to the whole decline-of-Rome flavor: Mounted patrols in Broad Ripple!
16 comments:
Let me know when the last centurion takes a barbarian wife.
They have been doing that since the end of WWII, spending more time on borders away from the homeland...
Maybe it's a hopeful sign. Usually these sort of cuts are proffered as the nasty alternative to local tax hikes, so perhaps the city solons have decided that gambit won't fly this time.
Are they making changes to how much police and city employees contribute for pensions and health insurance? In Miami, they changed the gambit a little bit, to force a choice between that or cutting the number of police officers, and the police union of course set up a howl against doing either one. But when forced to it, the union chose to cut officers and not cut contributions. Surprise surprise.
(And there'll be a second round this fall for next yeas budget.)
And mounted patrols? A friend of my mother, back when I was a kid, was part of Boston PD's mounted unit; I remember oohing and aahing and petting the horse when we saw him once on duty downtown. (He eventually got off the horse and behind a desk--rose to be the second in command of the police force).
I don't know how intimidating and authoritative a police officer on a bicycle might be (one would always wonder if said officer weren't trusted with a real car). Mounted on a well trained hor$e, though, is a proven success approach.
I wish them luck. The better the patrol effort, the more Broad Ripplians get home safely.
The depths we have sunken to are apparent in the mere fact that they refer to Velocipede equipped constabulary as " mounted patrol " .
The fact that police can be rented on overtime rather than assigned as part of their daily duties means that the daily duties are assigned.
In a properly organized IMPD there would be no off duty police to rent during peak hours. Rather, they would be all committed then.
But that wouldn't leave them the peak hours for drinking.
I remember when I was in Chattanooga, they had horse-mounted cops. I recall those same cops talking about how, aside from apprehending suspects, public relations worked a lot better too.
Farm.Dad,
"Velocipede equipped constabulary as " mounted patrol " ."
Real horsies, actually! :)
Hmmm...anybody know what happens when a 200 lb. drunk grabs a Police horse's bridle for support to keep from falling down?
" Real horsies, actually! :) " Well then ... Thats a road apple of a different color , and completely unexpected given My understanding of the demographics of Broad Ripple
Road Apples indeed! Think of it as a further gift from from government to it's adoring citizens. Think of it as free fertilizer.
Actually, Bobby Peel started the first real police force in the 1820's, predominantly for directing traffic. Until then, it was mostly "Hue and Cry", but that cost too much time lost in the London sweatshops.
The idea didn't really catch on worldwide until all the bomb tossers and revolutionaries started acting up in the 1840's.
Ancient cities had established "Watches", at least at night, but they were there to look for fires to fight or prevent.
They were uniformed to keep the armed citizens from assuming they were armed bands of thugs and attacking them, and armed to protect themselves from those same thugs.
One more nail in the coffin of actual police response times... the more you cut (fire, police, EMS) the more 'damage'. Any bets on how many got cut from adminstration???
AVE TAMMY !
in addition to Sir Edward Gibbon s
"Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
you should get a hold of a copy of the
Penguin Classics paperback edition of
"The Twelve Caesars" by Gaius Suetonius Tranquilicus translated from the Latin
by Robert Graves Suetonius had the goods on everyone as Hadrian s secretary
he had access to both the imperial and senate archives and is credited as being history s first muckraker ENJOY!
Did any tell the Well-To-Do that George Zimmerman is looking for a paying gig?
"Hmmm...anybody know what happens when a 200 lb. drunk grabs a Police horse's bridle for support to keep from falling down?
2:40 PM, August 12, 2012"
What I've seen, most horses, anybody drunk or sober grabs the bridle and the horse pulls back, rears, and/or lunges. It generally won't be pretty. In the drunks case, does he turn loose of the bridle? In a police horse's case, they're trained for crowd control purposes to press into people, usually in a more controlled manner. I can see a drunk ending up on the ground regardless.
Post a Comment