Internal IMPD Report Claims Indianapolis Short 685 Police Officers

Whenever the City of Indianapolis issues a report for anything, you know that a push for another tax increase is just around the corner. An internal IMPD report leaked out just ahead of an announcement by Mayor Greg Ballard of changes being made to reassign about 100 police officers to street duty claims that Indianapolis would need to hire 685 new police officers to its current force of 1,586 police officers to meet recommended national police staffing levels. The bottom line is that when Mayor Greg Ballard took office in 2008 right after the local income tax rate was hiked 65% to raise an additional $90 million annually for public safety we have fewer police on the streets than we did before that tax increase was enacted.

Year	Number of officers
2008	1,582
2009	1,617
2010	1,641
2011	1,626

Ballard's announcement is scheduled ahead of a vote at tonight's council meeting to override the mayor's veto of a council-passed plan to use $6 million from Rebuild Indy funds to pay for a new class of police recruits. Ballard said relying on one-time funding sources was not the proper way to fund the police department, although that's precisely what he did to fund about 50 police officer positions using a federal COPS grant. That's the only way Ballard was ever able to increase police staffing levels. The 100 new cops promised after passage of the 2007 tax increase never happened.

Over the next two months, you can bet there will be a big push for tax hikes to pay for public safety. Don't be fooled. The only reason there is a lack of funding to pay for public safety is because this administration deliberately diverted money intended for public safety to other uses. If more money is needed for public safety, then this administration's practice of handing out hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and subsidies to businesses that are stuffing money in his campaign coffers needs to be ended. Perhaps federal indictments are the only way the extent of these corrupt practices are going to be revealed since the media in this town is not the least bit concerned about the unseemly practices of this administration.