Friday, March 21, 2014
IMPD Staffing Commission Wants 500 New Police Officers Despite Claims That Crime Is Falling
The administration of Mayor Greg Ballard insists that crime rates for virtually all categories of crime other than homicide in Indianapolis are down sharply in recent years. Yet an IMPD Staffing Commission established by the City-County Council has just concluded that at least 500 more police officers need to be added to the police force over the next five years. This has nothing to do about public safety. What this represents is another scheme to raise taxes like they did in 2007 when they raised our local income taxes by 65%, or about $90 million a year a that time, supposedly for the purpose of hiring 100 more police officers and funding public safety agencies in general at appropriate levels. Not one additional police officer was added as a result of the 2007 public safety tax increase. The only new police officers hired to maintain current staffing levels was accomplished through a federal COPS grant earmarked for hiring 50 new police officers. Will you be fooled again by our lying public officials? They don't want more money for public safety; they want more money to pass out to their pay-to-play campaign contributors for their development projects that they believe you have a moral obligation to finance.
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6 comments:
Gary,
How then do you propose to add officers to the department. Ask an offcier in private about the shortage and you will be told some horror stories as to how the neighborhoods are being patroled. This is not a funny situation that has transpired in recent weeks. The police shortage has gone manifested for the last 25 years.
Frustrated, and what makes you think that this latest proposed tax increase of the Ballard administration would actually result in more officers on the street. We increased the local income tax in 2007 by 65% and ended up with fewer officers. The fact that the tax increase might be be earmarked for public safety means nothing. Money is fungible. All they have to do is to decrease other money going to public safety that is not earmarked.
We don't need a tax increase. We need to stop giving away our tax dollars in the form of corporate welfare. Just earlier this week the council voted to give away $23 million to a downtown developer. How many police officers could be hired with that sum?
We need Leadership!
Paul points out money is wasted on unnecessary capital projects like luxury condos. We also have bike lanes on 45 MPH streets that aren't used, bike lanes causing car crashes into the barriers on Shelby ST, bike lanes wreaking havoc in Broad Ripple, new stadiums for billionaire owners, a cricket field that damaged the wells of the neighborhood around it that nobody wants.
Let's get our priorities. Stop the unnecessary wasteful building and add more Public Safety! We need more police...it's at the lowest staffing ever due to neglect.
Paul. I respect your response. I really do. So..What is the answer? We are very short. Its not a fairly tale.Officers are over worked, can't get days off, going from run to run. The crime issue is real.The tax payer is getting shorted.
Police, like any army, seek only to increase their own ranks. There is no correlation between increased presence and reduced crime.
We should ask these advocates to prove to us that each additional $50K in policing results in a $50K reduction in crime.
IMPD is not currently configured to reduce crime but to obtain revenue and increased power. We don't need 500 more of them.
more officers would require more public defenders, more jails and more jail staffing. Judges and the list goes on and on. The tax payers only have so much money to take from them
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