Posted on 03/23/2024 7:16:52 PM PDT by george76
I used to live near you in Mt Clemens.The smartest thing they did was close the police dept and have Macomb County Sheriff patrol the city.
Police tend to strongly take their cues from the top down, and you really could see it daily in how officers interacted with citizens. Sadly, he has retired since then, but he was a great chief, because he really did see himself and his officers as servants of the people, and that the citizens of the town were partnered with him and his crew. Andy Griffith really did exist in this former Republic.
Here are some numbers for you.
Average pay for a police officer even in small towns now days, $30 an hour. Let us assume no one gets more then that for the sake of simplicity.
That is $62,400 per officer per year without over time.
Times six officers means $374,640 just in straight time. Now add in insurance, taxes, Workman's comp and bonding. Times 1.5 is for normal employees, for police, fire and rescue it is slightly over 2 but lets go with 2.
$749,280 a year.
Now equipment and building, fuel and other such stuff. Generally double it.
That is $1,498,560 a year.
There are 1600 (rounded off for ease) in the area.
That is $936.60 per resident. Not tax payer. Resident. Just for the police. So they can find lost keys.
Most places of that size have a three officers at max. There is no full coverage because it is not needed. If you need the police outside of normal business hours you call the dispatcher (who often covers police, fire and rescue) and they will call at home who ever is needed.
City cops report to a city manager / county elected sheriffs report to the citizens. = big difference.
No, not enough information. But I watch a lot of videos about police/citizen encounters and I see a lot of what I’d call abuse of power involved even though the officers managed to lead into coming up with enough charges to arrest a detainee with. Interestingly enough a lot of those situations involve officers who were tatted-up pretty good on their arms and looked like they worked out on steriods.
So, until there is more information I am in watch mode.
Both are possible.
My only comment is that is an awful lot of police officers for such a small and quiet town.
Yes. Well, I realize Andy and Barney went home and were on call at night and on weekends, unless there was some event in town. Amos locked himself up at night. Is that how small towns operate?
I read here on FR that Pittsburgh is no longer responding to calls at night unless your life is in danger.
I just noticed your tagline. I love it...funny, clever and probably closer to the truth than we know.
My township is around 1,200 and we have three full time with three reserve in case something very bad should happen.
Down the road is a town of about 2500 and they have five full time with three reserve.
Occasionally you have a violent crime, an armed robbery, a rape or murder but that is something that happens maybe once a year if that. 54% of the counties in the US had no murders at all in the past year.
Baltimore is probably more dangerous than Afghanistan at this time.
I used to skydive in Ridgely many moons ago.
Have not been there for decades.
But a good portion of the country is just sleepy quiet places where the worst thing that happens is neighbors fighting (verbally) over who picked more then their share of the Morel patch.
I think it would be great to live in a small town. I learned something about small town policing. Thank you.
I’m not crazy, I’ve just adjusted my thinking to reflect the new reality. If the politicians suspend an entire police force, what is to prevent said politicians from being dropped from a helicopter?
And what would the existing police force have done to stop them from being dropped from said chopper vs the hired police force from next town over?
People are just going insane.
Its clear this suspension isn’t simply a Defund the Police nonsense... something pretty nasty has been alleged, and certainly appears to have some credibility.
Trying to spin this as some defund the police political act is not valid or relevant here...
You have your problems. Generally with entrenched power structures and people who have let "big frog, little pond" go to their head but you can often work around that much easier then you can in the cities.
For one thing 90% of the adult population is armed. So everyone needs to work out their problems peaceably.
Glad you like the tag line. :)
SSS
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