By contrast, we had a police department here in Maywood mostly composed of officers from other jurisdictions. They took the cut in pay to get away from problems they had in their original job. Some worked out, because they tried to get away from political problems. Others were the problem officers from other jurisdictions and brought their problems here.
Happy ending! We eventually fired our local police department. We don’t have one. We pay the Sheriff for patrols. Our tiny (one sq mile) bedroom community fairly ethnically homogeneous (95% hispanic) doesn’t have to generate blotter traffic for some officer’s quota, and yet has access to the resources of the LA county sheriff in the event of anything big.
I wish I could say we did it because our politicians were smart, but no, we did it because the city ran out of money.
What worked for a small town will perhaps work one day for the country.
PJ O’Rourke pointed out some of this insanity in one of his books. In the tiny Vermont town he lives in, which hasn’t had a murder since the 60’s and where more property is returned as found, then is reported missing or stolen, has the same number of officers per capita as NYC.
Meanwhile in that town, where every home has a wood burning fireplace or stove, and the buildings are wooden and fires are a common occurrence they have an all volunteer fire department. Not exactly logical....