Uvalde intensifies doubts over whether tiny police agencies make sense - Wash Post

[Kanye Wyoming]

Behind paywall but this “gift” link should work for everyone. https://wapo.st/3OmVnfK A few excerpts:



The criticism heaped on a six-member school police force in Uvalde, Tex., after its response to a mass shooter this spring has drawn attention to a ubiquitous American institution: the tiny police department.

While supporters of such agencies say they provide a personal touch that bigger police departments can’t match, critics say they often lack the training, expertise and accountability expected in today’s world of heavily armed criminals and heightened scrutiny of officers.
. . . .

As the nation wrestles with what policing should look like in the 21st century, many question whether these smallest of police departments — which function in nearly every state, employ more than 20,000 officers nationwide and provide the first line of defense for millions of Americans — can adequately carry out their mission. Officials in some states have pushed to consolidate the smallest departments into larger, neighboring agencies, often triggering opposition.
One reason police reform is hard? So many small departments.

“The only reason they exist is because of politics, and they provide jobs for some individuals,” said Charles A. McClelland Jr., who led the Houston Police Department from 2010 to 2016. “Uvalde is a perfect example of what’s wrong with the disjointed law enforcement jurisdictions we have in this country. Even though it happened in Texas, it can happen anywhere.”
. . . .

“These agencies literally define community-oriented policing,” said Sean Marschke, who is chief of the 15-officer Sturtevant Police Department in Wisconsin and represents agencies with 15 or fewer officers on the board of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

“Many of these chiefs are the Little League coach. They also serve on the volunteer fire department. … So there’s this dedication to service and really knowing the people that you’re serving in those communities by first name.”
It’s difficult or impossible, however, for these departments to match the resources of bigger ones — resources that go into things like training, communications systems, body cameras and professional standards units.

McClelland said officers in many of Texas’s smallest agencies receive only the state minimum of 40 hours of ongoing training every two years, while those at bigger agencies often far exceed that. “The state requirements are very minimal, and it’s not adequate,” he said.

Thoughts?

[RoyGBiv]

I'm certain George Soros would support a National Police Force. We could outfit them all with brown and black shirts :rolleyes:
Godwin too soon?

Sarcasm aside, it's good to discuss and inform of pros and cons, but the choices should be made locally. I don't want city cops and city priorities applied to my security living in the country, nor vice versa.

[HeavyDuty]

McClelland sounds like a typical big city political chief. I am inclined to ignore him.

[JHC]

Behind paywall but this “gift” link should work for everyone. https://wapo.st/3OmVnfK A few excerpts:




Thoughts?

I think its a valid argument. Small towns aren't Mayberry anymore. Maybe the solution is much higher state mandated standards from physical condition through training and a transparent discipline process. Then the little town can choose to step up or defer the job to the next level up, likely the county. There's no reason the county's deputies can't coach little league.

[BehindBlueI's]

Without small police departments the vast majority of rural and small town America would have no police. Training requirements and capability vary wildly, as does equipment and even if 24 hour coverage is available. However, they handle the vast majority of routine policing and provide valuable local intel when something too big for them to handle pops off and other supporting departments/agencies roll in to help. Saying there should be no small departments is shutting down a 90% solution in favor of a 0% one. Some massive police department will not deploy 3 officers to Sleepytown that has a low level drug problem, some domestics, and the normal traffic crashes, shoplifters, property disputes, etc. They will send them to Shitsville with a murder rate. Sleepytown will now have zero police but will still be paying the taxes for them.

Where it may make less sense is tiny unincorporated areas that are also serviced by a large PD/SD. You see this were a big city has expanded and 'eaten' a small town decades or centuries ago but that small town still exists as a legal fiction. In my experience these are often financial devices and job creation programs and are more likely to suffer corruption. A rural 10 man department knows they are the actual police and the cavalry is a long way off so there is a lot riding on them. A unincorporated area knows the large PD is really the main PD, will take over anything serious, will respond when they have nobody working, etc. and often develops an identity crisis or struggles to justify their existence. Or they are a way for people who can't otherwise be the police (due to age, for example) to get a badge so they can work security as an off duty officer, etc by being a reserve.

[gtmtnbiker98]

Just here for the "expert" police commentary.

[octagon]

I think its a valid argument. Small towns aren't Mayberry anymore. Maybe the solution is much higher state mandated standards from physical condition through training and a transparent discipline process. Then the little town can choose to step up or defer the job to the next level up, likely the county. There's no reason the county's deputies can't coach little league.

This is close to what I have been suggesting for a number of years after moving from a mid size suburb to rural area. Have the higher state mandated standards for initial and in service training and have regional group or alliances to test and procure equipment while expanding training in budget, diversity and quality. However you can still have smaller agencies with local control if the community wants and can afford it. It would just be required to continue to meet the standards by connecting with regional law enforcement group if a small community couldn't otherwise meet higher standards. There also could be regional/metro/county level agencies that cover smaller towns and rural areas with assigned beats and span of control management and input. The larger the order the more the benefit of economy of scale when it comes to equipment purposes but also larger agency can have dedicated training officer(s) and staff and related facilities that many smaller or lower budgeted agencies can't. There is a way to leverage the power of the large with the service of the small while improving quality at the same time.

The problem comes from local mayors and police chiefs that want full control of "Their" police and they sell it to the populace as "we don't want big city policing us or we will be lost and forgotten if we don't have our own police"

[TGS]

Logistically, there's no reason a state police force could not function as the defacto policing institution in America. There's nothing logistically unique about America that prevents this from happening, and is a pretty standard policing model across the world. The only thing that prevents it from happening in America is the political game. It'll never happen on a widespread scale in America given that policing is a state's issue and cannot be dictated by the federal government, and most states have zero interest in going to this model and plenty of opposition to it from the various small towns and counties who want to safeguard their fiefdoms.

In the northeast, most of the state police agencies have their origins in serving as the primary policing for rural areas and small towns. My dad started with the NJ State Police in 1965, and I don't think they even picked up the highway/motor vehicles enforcement mission until the 70s when a distinctly separate agency responsible for such merged with them, along with the maritime police, capitol police, etc. Up until then, they were strictly a full service police agency for small towns and rural areas, with their barracks placement to reflect that. Even today, the NJ State Police provides primary policing to a significant chunk of NJ's landmass which has either no police department or a part time police department (extremely common, like where I grew up).

With that said, you'd need a complete re-write of a given state's constitution to mandate a state police force and get rid of local policing. Any town that can afford its own police will...especially affluent towns that want more police than a cop-to-crime ratio employed by a statewide agency would allow. You saw this in play when the city of Camden, NJ disbanded its police department to form a county police department. However, the city and county did not possess the statutory power or political leverage to force the other towns to disband their police departments and force their involvement into the county police, and so you ended up with the Camden County Police Department that serves only hte city of Camden. Ain't nobody else around Camden that is going to buy into a county police department just to see all the cops that previously patrolled their town slapped with a county badge and told to go into the city...the rest of Camden county would basically lose their police presence.

Besides that, I'm vehemently opposed to small police departments. The amount of corruption, incompetence, and waste involved in small municipal services is fucking staggering......as in, off the charts. I don't pretend to know what's right for Texas other than to let them secede so they can go do their annoying "huur durr hurr I'M A TEXAN" oogie-cookie circle jerk somewhere else, but municipal policing should be the exception and not the norm for the vast majority of America. I think county level policing is a happy middle ground.

[Wayne Dobbs]

None of these solutions matter if you keep losing viable to excellent officers worn out from the BS of this culture and replace them with flaccid, trepid husks that will run and hide when trouble shows up. Plus, what few are thinking about is that those replacements will be bosses and IACP stars in a few years.

And TGS, with regard to Texas reasserting itself as an independent nation, it appears there is a better than even chance we will hold a vote on that issue in November 2023. There was a 90% approval of the issue at the state Republican convention recently and strong across the political spectrum support for it in the past few weeks. Stand by and buckle up.

[jlw]

Here's something I put together a few years ago. I am providing it simply to give a statewide numerical reference.


As part of a panel discussion in which I have been involved, I began researching law enforcement agency sizes. I limited my research to GA alone as I have access to that data.
The gateway lists 1196 LE agencies in GA, but this number reflects every possible agency with some sort of POST-certified employee. For example, if a city has a POST-certified employee working as a one-person code enforcement agency, it counts as an agency.

I downloaded the list into a spreadsheet and went through it removing everything but Sheriff's Offices and county/municipal PDs with the exception of a few marshal's offices, such as DeKalb, which I know to be in the business of executing court orders and arrest warrants differentiating them from code enforcement agencies.

I mean no slight to campus agencies, state agencies, arson investigators, code enforcement, etc. Those agencies are beyond the scope of the discussion for which I was compiling the research. Please note that I rounded all averages to whole numbers.

Important note: The employee totals are for all agency employees and are not broken down by “sworn” and “non-sworn” (certified peace officer or not) as I have no way of ascertaining those figures. POST lists the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office as having 93 current employees. I know from our own internal numbers that 62 of those are “sworn”, but I don’t have access to that data for other agencies.

The grand total at which I arrived is 528 agencies at an average of 64 employees per agency.

As GA has 159 counties, each required by our state constitution to have the Office of the Sheriff, we have 369 other county/municipal legislatively created agencies.

138 (25%) agencies have 10 or fewer employees.

254 (48%) agencies have 20 or fewer employees.

74 (14%) agencies have more than 100 employees.

Removing the five core Metro-Atlanta counties of Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett, the average drops to 49.

Expand to the wider Metro area also removing Douglass, Fayette, Henry, and Rockdale Counties, the average drops to 46.

I did not work the numbers for also removing the Augusta-Richmond County, Athens-Clarke County Columbus-Muscogee County, Macon-Bibb County, or Savannah-Chatham County metro areas.

The average size of a Sheriff’s Office in GA is 112 employees. Glascock, Quitman, and Webster Counties tie for the smallest at six employees. Fulton County is the largest at 933.

107 of the 159 Sheriffs’ Offices have less than 100 employees. Twenty have 20 employees or less, and seven have 10 or less.

The average size of a PD in GA is 44 employees. Remove the Atlanta PD and it drops to 39.

130 (35%) of the 372 municipal/county PDs have 10 or fewer employees. 234 (63%) have 20 or fewer employees.

[TGS]

And TGS, with regard to Texas reasserting itself as an independent nation, it appears there is a better than even chance we will hold a vote on that issue in November 2023. There was a 90% approval of the issue at the state Republican convention recently and strong across the political spectrum support for it in the past few weeks. Stand by and buckle up.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvGAYuWSUA

[HCM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjvGAYuWSUA

Texans will eventually have our own planet:


https://youtu.be/izSZhops8iQ

[Jim Watson]

Always liked H. Beam Piper's stuff.

Other threads describe Big City Department Flight.
Do we not have competent, experienced men going to some of those small departments?

[blues]

Always liked H. Beam Piper's stuff.

Other threads describe Big City Department Flight.
Do we not have competent, experienced men going to some of those small departments?

They'll need to...as things continue ratcheting up.

This from our county paper. (County is about 30,000+ souls. Town, about 7,000.)


https://www.transylvaniatimes.com/news/twenty-charged-after-drug-task-force-investigation/article_377ad0b2-05fe-11ed-8589-2fd6b17d55f2.html



Twenty charged after drug task force investigation


In the early hours of Sunday, Operation “C.U.T.” (Clean Up Transylvania) brought an end to a drug investigation in and around Transylvania County, according to a news release from the Transylvania County Narcotics Task Force (TNT). This yearlong, multi-agency operation was conducted by TNT, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations to combat the sale and delivery of controlled substances in the county, the release said. TNT is comprised of law enforcement officers from the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office and the Brevard Police Department.

As a result of this investigation approximately $19,268.64 in currency, 17 weapons, 7.84 pounds of methamphetamine, nearly one-quarter of a pound of cocaine, 3.4 grams of heroin, nearly one-third of a pound of fentanyl and 197 grams of MDMA were seized in Transylvania and surrounding counties.

“Narcotics investigations by their very nature are often unseen by the public,” Sheriff David Mahoney said. “Today’s successful operation serves as a testimony to the unwavering commitment of the Transylvania County Narcotics Task Force, the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office and the City of Brevard Police Department in combating drugs in Transylvania County.”

Mahoney also thanked the partnering agencies for their assistance provided throughout these investigations.

It ain't Miami, but that's why I left there upon putting my papers in.

[TheNewbie]

A national police force is a terrible idea for a nation that purports to be liberty based. America has been the most free because we have be the anti-world follower. Now that we find ourselves changing for the worse, maybe a national police force would be more accepted.


Small town agencies have their place, but there are likely better solutions for many of them. In the case of Texas, the County Sheriff Office would most likely be the best solution. Texas DPS troopers are great at what they do, but answering county/municipal type calls on a regular basis would be outside the scope of their institutional experience (there are exceptions) and they would have to be trained/experienced to convert over to a traditional call answering agency. SOs here have the experience and mindset to do it.


That said, at what size should that happen? I think it depends on a lot of factors, the size of the city/agency being only one of them.


There is corruption in small departments, but there is corruption in all of them. The Feds and small towns seem to be the worst, with state and county being the best, or the least bad....however you want to look at it.


Texas will not secede from the country, but if California/DC/New York want to, they have my full support.

[JHC]

Logistically, there's no reason a state police force could not function as the defacto policing institution in America. There's nothing logistically unique about America that prevents this from happening, and is a pretty standard policing model across the world. The only thing that prevents it from happening in America is the political game. It'll never happen on a widespread scale in America given that policing is a state's issue and cannot be dictated by the federal government, and most states have zero interest in going to this model and plenty of opposition to it from the various small towns and counties who want to safeguard their fiefdoms.

In the northeast, most of the state police agencies have their origins in serving as the primary policing for rural areas and small towns. My dad started with the NJ State Police in 1965, and I don't think they even picked up the highway/motor vehicles enforcement mission until the 70s when a distinctly separate agency responsible for such merged with them, along with the maritime police, capitol police, etc. Up until then, they were strictly a full service police agency for small towns and rural areas, with their barracks placement to reflect that. Even today, the NJ State Police provides primary policing to a significant chunk of NJ's landmass which has either no police department or a part time police department (extremely common, like where I grew up).

With that said, you'd need a complete re-write of a given state's constitution to mandate a state police force and get rid of local policing. Any town that can afford its own police will...especially affluent towns that want more police than a cop-to-crime ratio employed by a statewide agency would allow. You saw this in play when the city of Camden, NJ disbanded its police department to form a county police department. However, the city and county did not possess the statutory power or political leverage to force the other towns to disband their police departments and force their involvement into the county police, and so you ended up with the Camden County Police Department that serves only hte city of Camden. Ain't nobody else around Camden that is going to buy into a county police department just to see all the cops that previously patrolled their town slapped with a county badge and told to go into the city...the rest of Camden county would basically lose their police presence.

Besides that, I'm vehemently opposed to small police departments. The amount of corruption, incompetence, and waste involved in small municipal services is fucking staggering......as in, off the charts. I don't pretend to know what's right for Texas other than to let them secede so they can go do their annoying "huur durr hurr I'M A TEXAN" oogie-cookie circle jerk somewhere else, but municipal policing should be the exception and not the norm for the vast majority of America. I think county level policing is a happy middle ground.


GD I love this post. There are reasons they want small town PD. They aren't virtuous ones in many cases I suspect.

And any western state that secedes will be a 3rd world shithole in a year. LOL

https://smartasset.com/data-studies/states-most-dependent-on-the-federal-government-2022

[Hambo]

Logistically, there's no reason a state police force could not function as the defacto policing institution in America.

No reason except the need to hire a thousands of officers.

[TheNewbie]

GD I love this post. There are reasons they want small town PD. They aren't virtuous ones in many cases I suspect.

And any western state that secedes will be a 3rd world shithole in a year. LOL

https://smartasset.com/data-studies/states-most-dependent-on-the-federal-government-2022


You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

[Shades]

In Orange County CA, where I'm from and still have family, many of the smaller municipalities have gotten rid of their PDs and contracted with the OCSO to provide police service. The patrol cars are marked as both OCSO and with the name of the community to which they're assigned, e.g. San Clemente, Dana Point, etc. It seems to have worked out reasonably well.

[JHC]

You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

yeah but not a WHOLE state! Well, outside of MS and WV maybe. ;) I'll get back to other points in a bit.

[TGS]

No reason except the need to hire a thousands of officers.

There's nothing unique about America that would prevent this from happening.

If a state were to change their constitution and institute a state police force as the primary and singular police agency for that state, the obvious answer to your post would be that all the cops in the state would get rolled over to the new state agency.


You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

You're making a lot of noise about a national police force, but nobody else really is....and there's not even a legal infrastructure to support the idea. It would require a constitutional amendment so substantial that it would in effect be a completely new constitution.

There will be no national police force. You're ok. The sun will rise tomorrow.

[feudist]

First of all if the WaPo is for it, it's antithetical to America.

A weird neurotic dynamic has developed in my area towards hiring from the local large ghetto training department. Everyone who works there despises the place, so when they retire and go to neighboring departments all they do is badmouth it. Many of the local chiefs were captains and lieutenants there, so they've been indoctrinated to hate the officers, especially the veterans who can't be intimidated.

The upshot has been to limit transfers and concentrate on hiring off the street. This is a sea change because local departments have essentially depended on these transfers to have any experienced officers at all. It is both difficult to do consistently due to the low number of applicants and the expense of paying for and scheduling academy training.

Even worse, bad guys have developed the ability to drive cars beyond the ghetto city limits, Section 8 housing has seeded second and third generations of thuglifers into formerly quiet bedroom communities, and index crimes across the board are rising so fast that no one wants to report on it.

One local community went bankrupt and the Sheriff took over answering calls. Unfortunately, the area is so awash in thugs that the Sheriff could not sufficiently man the shifts-he has severe manning problems in his jail- so he had to accept a bunch of retirement transfers from the ghetto department. This infuriated all the deputies who were stuck in the jail awaiting their deliverance from corrections.

This, along with his idiotic woke policies led to losing nearly 10% of his department over 2 years. The County jail is now using civilian females, known as control room operators-basically button pushers to answer the phones and open/close the doors-to man the floors by themselves...using one deputy to float between several floors.

The Sheriff is facing multiple lawsuits from inmates who were killed, crippled and/or raped due to manpower insufficiencies coupled with overcrowding. He's also got several deputies injured on duty who are suing him over his policies.

IOW, the whole bleeding metro area is a powderkeg, with the fuse lit.

I've taken to wearing 2 guns again.

[mmc45414]

Do we not have competent, experienced men going to some of those small departments?

Around here I believe they are, they are not going to Mayberry, they are just going to suburbs where they are more supported and appreciated.

I live in an area where I could go about a half a mile and have passed through three jurisdictions, in another mile or so I could hit another, and then make a turn and in a few more miles hit a fourth, and if I had headed off in the opposite direction would have been in a fifth in about the same distance. This is in a smaller MSA of only about 850k, but the core city is less than 140k, half of what it once was. It has been perpetually diminished by families like mine, that moved away because they didn't like the crime and schools. So then these people settled in townships and villages that started growing a tax base. They end up becoming small cities and they have attracted the people that can buy nicer houses that get assessed higher, and those people expect police coverage that reflects what they are paying. Most of the rates are a county thing, so it is not that the rates are lower, just the more valuable property is outside the city limits.

So now the small suburban departments have enough money to pay the same (or better), the retirement plan is a state thing so that transfers, and rather than being shat upon by a city government that embraces all of the typical malarkey they can go work in an area where people like them and appreciate them and want them to be there doing what they do. It really is probably unfortunate, because the tax base is not where the most police are needed the most, but I am supportive of things being the way they are.

[jlw]

I have a very, very strong preference for the elected sheriff model. It creates an entirely different relationship with the people than that of an appointed chief who answers to a board of commissioners, city council, etc. Working for an elected sheriff is MUCH less political than a police chief who is up for election each and every day. It also gives one person that the public can hold accountable versus that of indirect accountability.

A national police force would be run by the same people who are currently in charge of the border.

A state police chief would be run by the large metro area(s) in your state as that is who predominantly elects your statewide officials.

Linkage blindness exists no matter what the model.

[Erick Gelhaus]

In Orange County CA, where I'm from and still have family, many of the smaller municipalities have gotten rid of their PDs and contracted with the OCSO to provide police service. The patrol cars are marked as both OCSO and with the name of the community to which they're assigned, e.g. San Clemente, Dana Point, etc. It seems to have worked out reasonably well.

Coming from a good-sized Sheriff's Office (14th largest in CA, one of the 400 largest in the country) that had contract cities, I'm comfortable with & prefer this model. The city decides on the size & scope of the policing they get - with input. They get a Lt, how every many Sgts they need/want, and the same goes for the deputies. The cars & patches reflect the city by name, the badges et al. reflect the Office. The city gets all of the investigative & additional resources that they couldn't afford. In the event of injury, admin leave, etc, there is almost immediate backfill of people.

In CA, it doesn't seem that we have a history or tradition of a strong state police. Heck, the state police, which was more security than anything, rolled into the Calif Highway Patrol in the early 90s.

With the Sheriff being elected as a Constitutional office holder, it is likely a pretty reasonable system for local control and accountability.

[TheNewbie]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.


Any system will have issues, but the SO system is the best offered up so far. At least for smaller towns, though Uvalde is not small for a guy who grew up in a town that then had 600 people in it.

[JHC]

You can find third world shit holes in this country today. We are seeing the West secede from their traditional values (especially in the USA) and the results are obvious and not surprising.


How many people want bigger, and therefore more corrupt government, is disturbing. A national police force would be part of that corruption.


In general, even with all the associated problems, more local control is better. Be that state, county or municipal.


One thing that small town policing will teach a person is self reliance. When a person is the only officer on, they will be stopping cars , searching cars, making arrest, doing investigations, etc. all alone on a regular basis. Often with back up far enough away that it will only show up for the aftermath of an incident. There are a lot of issues with that, but it does have a benefit as well.


Again, small towns have issues and many would be better served by County Deputies patrolling the area. It would be a good balance of power between city councils who want ticket money and the County Sheriff who is less worried about ticket revenue, but concerned about providing quality police services to the community that holds him accountable.


There are no perfect solutions, but giving the federal government more power is among the worst of solutions.

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.


I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.

[blues]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.


Any system will have issues, but the SO system is the best offered up so far. At least for smaller towns, though Uvalde is not small for a guy who grew up in a town that then had 600 people in it.

I've grown fond of our local sheriff's office. The deputies I've met out and about, and at my LEOSA quals with them, have given me hope that all is not (yet) lost.

[TheNewbie]

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.


I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.


Support for more federal power is a possibility than can come out of these types of issues. It’s something we should be aware of, and stand against. Regardless of what our other views on issues are.


We have state standards now, and they are inadequate and not proper for the needs of the public and LE. When a review of TCOLE was sent out I responded that more focus is needed on arrest/search/seizure, defensive tactics, first aid, shooting/tactics, etc.


The problem is beyond the scope of having state standards because of the cultural issues going on. The state standards will fail you.


The SO model allows more resources, funding, and manpower to be spread out over the larger area. The standards would be more local to the policies and training of the SO, but those standards would be higher than what the state could come up with.


You’re right, we are not that far apart on wanting better policing.

[mmc45414]

Lots of support for the Sheriff model it seems. I’m glad to see it.

I've grown fond of our local sheriff's office.
In principal I would be supportive of a Sherrif's office having a broader responsibility and better resources, except:


A national police force would be run by the same people who are currently in charge of the border.
A state police chief would be run by the large metro area(s) in your state as that is who predominantly elects your statewide officials.

A centralized responsibility makes it more difficult to diffuse the shitty decisions.

Right now here there is a developing hoonigan street racing (car/dirt bike/ATV) culture that is growing to be out of control, and the pursuit policies of the city police department are undeniably a contributing factor. It is bad enough that they are actually planning a large construction project to alter a major street to make it more narrow and more difficult to navigate in order to slow the speeds of the street racers (that know the police will not chase them for "traffic" offenses). So like adding a chicane on a racetrack before a corner that became deadly they are going to spend money they don't have to dig up a street and make it smaller. Their distorted logic is that the street was built before half the residents moved out of the city, so now the road is too big. I am no angel when it comes to speed limits, but 100+ on surface streets while passing up through the center turn lane is not just boys being boys. The speeds have become so high, one recent single car crash involved a guy hitting a pole hard enough that 4/5 people in the car were DRT, on a surface street.

In another situation there was a swarm of the ATV gangsters that did their flash mob at a sand volleyball court, and in the melee one of the security guards got sucker punched from behind (by a guy on probation) hard enough that he hit his head when he fell and died. This peer group behavior grows out of the knowledge that if you run you can get away, and you can get away because the city PD will not run you down.

So now the work-around is formation of task forces, that bring in the sheriff's department and the highway patrol (many of the faster wider streets are state routes) and somehow do some kind of mutual aid to get help from surrounding community PDs, to go police some of the worst spots because they are not handcuffed by the decisions of the political leaders of the core city. And I do not want those people making shitty decisions that impact my neighboring community.

[HCM]

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.


I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.

What would your birthing person say…

There is just as much to be concerned about on the left.

[TGS]

More Federal power is not in the conversation. State standards are.

As far as local vs state level corruption . . . ain't nobody topping Uvalde anytime soon no matter how many hold their beers.

State standards, use it or lose it. Sounds like a reasonable balance.

Well, do keep in mind that the standards are already set by each individual state. Maybe in 2022 there's some states out there that don't (I can't think of any), but a state standard for police education and training is the norm. In general, a police officer working for Mayberry is still going to have to meet a state mandated standard, and that officer is usually attending a regional police academy built to that state mandated standard with recruits from all the other towns and sheriff's departments in the area who aren't large enough to afford their own academy....or, more commonly, staff their own individual classes/curriculum at a shared academy campus.

Where things fall apart is that most state standards are pretty weak and tailored to poor police departments in the state with little in the way of tax revenue who can't afford anything and run off federal grants as-is just to exist. This is why some agencies will have higher standards that exceed the state mandated minimum....funny enough, usually the state police agencies, since they're able to leverage a wider tax base as well as a wider applicant pool that they can typically be more selective with.

All the benefits I see with a county run service (or in the case of foreign countries, state/provincial run services) are 1) efficiency to include lower costs in personnel staffing, infrastructure and logistics, 2) More stable tax bases, 3) force of economy, such as being able to shift manpower seamlessly, whether it be for callouts, riots, or a crime suppression surge.

[msstate56]

yeah but not a WHOLE state! Well, outside of MS and WV maybe. ;) I'll get back to other points in a bit.

You just watch yourself mister.

Just because our largest metro city has the highest per capita homicide rate, lives under a constant boil water notice, and has a mayor/city council that can't even figure out how to pick up the trash, doesn't mean you can lump the rest of the state in with them.:cool:

[jlw]

Thought exercise:

Answer to yourself...

What's you local sheriff's name?

What's the name of your primary state law enforcement agency?

I'm willing to wager that more people know the name of their sheriff than know the name of their state guy.

[BehindBlueI's]

Always liked H. Beam Piper's stuff.

Other threads describe Big City Department Flight.
Do we not have competent, experienced men going to some of those small departments?

The small departments *generally* don't pay enough to attract the competent and experienced, although certain wealthy bedroom communities are exceptions. The guys leaving Big City PD locally who aren't going Fed are going to Medium City PD. Places with 40-ish to 100-ish sworn that can afford to pay a comparable benefit/pay package but not have as much stifling bureaucracy. Locally, they also tend to have better and newer equipment for road officers, but will lack resources for detectives. No in house crime lab, no federal liasons embedded with the toys they bring, etc.

Some have thrived, others have learned that those departments have their own issues. If you don't get along with supervisor X on Big City PD, you can probably transfer or wait it out. Hard to remove yourself when there's only 40 officers. There's a lot more opportunity for movement, specialized assignments, etc. if you want to be a detective, full time SWAT, etc. it's obviously easier on BCPD. The flip side is if you're a road officer you are very much *just* a first responder for most of your shift. You can run your own little projects and investigations but you'll spend most of your time humping runs. I never actually wrote a search warrant, other than filling out a template for blood draws for DUI, until I was a detective as an example. A slower pace at a smaller department and fewer detectives, probably no dedicated evidence techs, etc. means you'll be doing much more of your own investigatory work and can see more of your initial field investigations through to final disposition yourself. Assuming you're full time, remember a lot of small departments are heavily staffed with part-timers. Some of those may be officers elsewhere working a second job, but that's a rarity and it's usually positions like training sergeants or assistant chief sorts of positions than road officer.

[BehindBlueI's]

Working for an elected sheriff is MUCH less political than a police chief who is up for election each and every day. It also gives one person that the public can hold accountable versus that of indirect accountability.


I don't doubt your experience, but mine is the exact opposite. I've not seen a 'promotion via sufficient political donation' scheme on a PD. $5k to buy stripes, assuming your guy wins, is a good investment given the pay hike. I've never been told to unarrest a major donor on the PD. Never had to pay attention to a 'possee' card for special people with a PD. Sheriff's departments seem much more likely to accept dollars for head turning to me, because sheriff is a high paying job (in my state sheriffs get a percentage of commissary sales and one particular sheriff was closing in on half a million dollars a year in personal salary as a result) and political campaigning costs money.

[paherne]

Given the Bivens decision it is inearly impossible to hold a Federal officer accountable for a civil rights violation. Therefore, I am against a national police force.

[BehindBlueI's]

Well, do keep in mind that the standards are already set by each individual state. Maybe in 2022 there's some states out there that don't (I can't think of any), but a state standard for police education and training is the norm. In general, a police officer working for Mayberry is still going to have to meet a state mandated standard, and that officer is usually attending a regional police academy built to that state mandated standard with recruits from all the other towns and sheriff's departments in the area who aren't large enough to afford their own academy....or, more commonly, staff their own individual classes/curriculum at a shared academy campus.

While the state sets the standards, standards vary based on what tier an officer you are in my state. The training I have is state approved, but so is a special deputy working a jail, and they are not close to the same program.

You can be a police officer/deputy with a 40 hour pe-basic and work a year before ever attending the full academy.

Small towns can use the Town Marshal program, which is abbreviated.

Special Police (park rangers, for example) have lower training requirements.

Business Specials (a certain type of deputy who only has police powers while working at a given facility, basically security guards sponsored by a sheriff but paid by a business) have different standards.

Then there's the speciality agencies like Gaming Police (work casinos) that get a basic block but then get their own speciality based training. They don't get trained on traffic stops or the like because they don't do them. Same reason I don't get trained in alcohol/tobacco laws because Excise does that and I don't.

[HCM]

Well, do keep in mind that the standards are already set by each individual state. Maybe in 2022 there's some states out there that don't (I can't think of any), but a state standard for police education and training is the norm. In general, a police officer working for Mayberry is still going to have to meet a state mandated standard, and that officer is usually attending a regional police academy built to that state mandated standard with recruits from all the other towns and sheriff's departments in the area who aren't large enough to afford their own academy....or, more commonly, staff their own individual classes/curriculum at a shared academy campus.

Where things fall apart is that most state standards are pretty weak and tailored to poor police departments in the state with little in the way of tax revenue who can't afford anything and run off federal grants as-is just to exist. This is why some agencies will have higher standards that exceed the state mandated minimum....funny enough, usually the state police agencies, since they're able to leverage a wider tax base as well as a wider applicant pool that they can typically be more selective with.

All the benefits I see with a county run service (or in the case of foreign countries, state/provincial run services) are 1) efficiency to include lower costs in personnel staffing, infrastructure and logistics, 2) More stable tax bases, 3) force of economy, such as being able to shift manpower seamlessly, whether it be for callouts, riots, or a crime suppression surge.

In my experience the states do set the standard but the POST/TCOLE etc standard are the bare minimum and the bigger and /or better agencies far exceed the state standards.

In my area are local big city PD probably has the best standards and training. Followed by our sheriffs office which generally exceeds state standards. Smaller agencies are a bell curve ranging from barely meeting the minimum state standards to squared away departments that shoot every month and invest heavily in their people etc.

DPS is very competent but …. Different. In someways they are more paramilitary than other police agencies but in general they are just different. The best description is: there is the right way, the wrong way, and the DPS way.

I will say that in rural areas I’ve generally had better experiences with county sheriffs offices versus small town Police Departments.

Texas has one minimum standard for all Peace Officers and another for jailers. Locally it’s not uncommon for jailers to continue and get their peace officer license the most do it to be able to work off duty jobs while they continue working at the jail.

[TC215]

I don't doubt your experience, but mine is the exact opposite. I've not seen a 'promotion via sufficient political donation' scheme on a PD. $5k to buy stripes, assuming your guy wins, is a good investment given the pay hike. I've never been told to unarrest a major donor on the PD. Never had to pay attention to a 'possee' card for special people with a PD. Sheriff's departments seem much more likely to accept dollars for head turning to me, because sheriff is a high paying job (in my state sheriffs get a percentage of commissary sales and one particular sheriff was closing in on half a million dollars a year in personal salary as a result) and political campaigning costs money.

This.

[feudist]

I don't doubt your experience, but mine is the exact opposite. I've not seen a 'promotion via sufficient political donation' scheme on a PD. $5k to buy stripes, assuming your guy wins, is a good investment given the pay hike. I've never been told to unarrest a major donor on the PD. Never had to pay attention to a 'possee' card for special people with a PD. Sheriff's departments seem much more likely to accept dollars for head turning to me, because sheriff is a high paying job (in my state sheriffs get a percentage of commissary sales and one particular sheriff was closing in on half a million dollars a year in personal salary as a result) and political campaigning costs money.

Locally I've seen the worst from both camps.

On the City side, race and sex(putting out, not gender) were so out of control that black females were promoted 4x the rate of white males.

The County is a fiefdom, with much more fuckery about money(permits, feeding prisoners., facility maintenance and contracts) and rage demotions.

In view of the absolutely vile generational bad faith by both agencies, the fact that so many officers do a good job is... touching, to say the least.

[Le Français]

Given the Bivens decision it is inearly impossible to hold a Federal officer accountable for a civil rights violation. Therefore, I am against a national police force.

A national police force in the US would make absolutely no sense. The vast majority of criminal laws that matter to everyday Americans are state laws, in areas where the federal government couldn’t enact identical laws without violating the 10th Amendment.

That said, what’s your beef with Bivens? That decision made it possible to sue federal LEOs for constitutional violations.

[Le Français]

Having experienced tiny-town policing, I agree that it’s fraught with problems. It’s hard to keep officers there when they can go to a larger agency for more pay, more training, specialty assignments, and more variety in the work.

Having a larger agency (County PD, State Police, etc.) maintain contracts with individual towns is the answer, in my opinion, and is of course how things are done in many areas. This gives the municipalities the on-site, dedicated attention they want and are paying for, and it gives officers a chance to rotate out to other assignments over time if the small town thing doesn’t suit them, without the only answer being to find another job.

I am skeptical about how relevant this is to Uvalde, though.

On sheriffs: jlw is entitled to his opinion, but many are aware that the American sheriff à la Georgia (several states have a different approach, and others have no sheriffs at all) is a deeply troubled institution with lots of rot and corruption. The fact that many of them are high on their own supply is icing on the cake. Note that I’m not saying they’re all bad, but I would for damn sure not work for one.

[paherne]

A national police force in the US would make absolutely no sense. The vast majority of criminal laws that matter to everyday Americans are state laws, in areas where the federal government couldn’t enact identical laws without violating the 10th Amendment.

That said, what’s your beef with Bivens? That decision made it possible to sue federal LEOs for constitutional violations.

It is almost always a bar to suit because the threshold is set so high.

[jlw]

I don't doubt your experience, but mine is the exact opposite. I've not seen a 'promotion via sufficient political donation' scheme on a PD. $5k to buy stripes, assuming your guy wins, is a good investment given the pay hike. I've never been told to unarrest a major donor on the PD. Never had to pay attention to a 'possee' card for special people with a PD. Sheriff's departments seem much more likely to accept dollars for head turning to me, because sheriff is a high paying job (in my state sheriffs get a percentage of commissary sales and one particular sheriff was closing in on half a million dollars a year in personal salary as a result) and political campaigning costs money.


I've never been told to un-arrest by either a chief or a sheriff, but in my blue days, I was told a few times that I had better be absolutely perfect because of an individual's status, and I have experienced instances in which the chief received enormous pressure when word of particular suspects got out. Sometimes it was a race to get things done before powers external to the agency could exert themselves.

[jlw]

On sheriffs: @jlw (https://pistol-forum.com/member.php?u=136) is entitled to his opinion, but many are aware that the American sheriff à la Georgia (several states have a different approach, and others have no sheriffs at all) is a deeply troubled institution with lots of rot and corruption. The fact that many of them are high on their own supply is icing on the cake. Note that I’m not saying they’re all bad, but I would for damn sure not work for one.

I don't want to work for people who got enough votes from the garden club or who ran for office because they were mad about leaf and limb pickup in their city who think they know how to run a PD from their years of watching Benson & Stabler. Those folks don't go turn knobs at the sewer plant, but they sure think they know how to be cops.

[feudist]

I've never been told to un-arrest by either a chief or a sheriff, but in my blue days, I was told a few times that I had better be absolutely perfect because of an individual's status, and I have experienced instances in which the chief received enormous pressure when word of particular suspects got out. Sometimes it was a race to get things done before powers external to the agency could exert themselves.

Back in the 90s I arrested a woman with a common local name on outstanding warrants. When I cuffed her she informed me that she was the mayor's daughter. The Mayor was a Civil Rights icon, elected for life as Caesar. Years before, while I was in the academy, another of his spawn was arrested for drunk and disorderly, resisting and assaulting an officer. That officer ended up being hounded out of the department, and the Chief of Police had to retire over getting caught unarresting her.
Needless to say, I was thrilled.
Even my handwriting was perfect in that arrest report.
Everybody ribbed me for days about getting fired and finally the Captain called me into his office. I worked 11-7 so he made a special trip.
He proceeded to read me a letter stating what a valued member of the department I was and that there was no possibility of retaliation. It was signed by the whole chain of command.
It made my blood run cold.
I thought "Holy shit, they're gonna have me hit! This is plausible deniability"

[wvincent]

Texans will eventually have our own planet:


https://youtu.be/izSZhops8iQ

Will the planet come with 30.06 signs or will you put them up when you populate?
Cause you so free, Yo.

Every time the local SO does it's business inside the city limits here, the same few harpies start crying for their own PD. In a town of 819.
Umm, who's gonna pay for this? The more affluent folks won't mind paying their share and a little more, long as they are "their" cops.

[Coyotesfan97]

Thought exercise:

Answer to yourself...

What's you local sheriff's name?

What's the name of your primary state law enforcement agency?

I'm willing to wager that more people know the name of their sheriff than know the name of their state guy.

Penzone He’s a retired Phoenix Sergeant. He got $2 million from Soros when he ran. Just a red flag.

Arizona State Police. Frank Milstead changed it from AZ DPS.

Heston Silbert is the State Police Colonel now.

[HCM]

Will the planet come with 30.06 signs or will you put them up when you populate?
Cause you so free, Yo.

Every time the local SO does it's business inside the city limits here, the same few harpies start crying for their own PD. In a town of 819.
Umm, who's gonna pay for this? The more affluent folks won't mind paying their share and a little more, long as they are "their" cops.

30.06 signs are rare in my city.

30.05 and 30.07 mostly because open carry people are assholes with or without guns.

[DDTSGM]

Thought exercise:

Answer to yourself...

What's you local sheriff's name?

What's the name of your primary state law enforcement agency?

I'm willing to wager that more people know the name of their sheriff than know the name of their state guy.


Penzone He’s a retired Phoenix Sergeant. He got $2 million from Soros when he ran. Just a red flag.

Arizona State Police. Frank Milstead changed it from AZ DPS.

Heston Silbert is the State Police Colonel now.

I think he's asking that of folks who aren't in LE.

[DDTSGM]

Just saying, there are a lot of folks painting with pretty broad brushes about stuff they may think they know a lot about, but really don't.

There are a lot of generalizations being thrown around about things such as Sheriffs, small town policing, or metro area policing which aren't true across the board.

Across the mid-west there are a lot more smaller agencies - under 50 officers - than there are large agencies - 200+ - officers.

The level of training the officers receive, both large and small agencies, is dependent primarily on each states 'POST' regulations.

Some states set the number of hours for certification and provide a listing of subjects required to be covered. Other states set the number of hours and provide learning objectives which must be covered. Still others have a standardized curriculum complete with learning objectives and lesson plans.

Some states require training at a centralized state-run academy, some states have a centralized academy but allow larger agencies to train their own officers, so long as they follow the state trainng guidelines, still other states allow colleges (primarily junior colleges) to conduct academies. Based on my experiences I am a proponent of centralized, state-run residential academies.

State certification hours for basic law enforcement run the gamut with Hawaii at zero, Georgia at 408, and Connecticut at 1321 hours. The overall average was 652 hours.

In-service training per year varies by state - New Jersey and Hawaii apparently have no requirement, Minnesota has 48 hours, seven states have 40 hours yearly, fourteen states have less than 20 hours yearly. The overall average is 21 hours.

https://www.trainingreform.org/state-police-training-requirements (they aren't gathering this info to help LE the way we'd like it to be helped)

There ain't a one-size fits all solution. As an example, consolidated county-wide LE works well in densely populated counties where you cross from town to town without leaving the urban sprawl. OTOH, in a more rural setting consolidation generally means less police services for the citizens in smaller towns that are removed from the county's population center.

JMO

[rd62]

I agree. Just as you can't paint LEO with a broad brush you can't paint the departments either.

Size, equipment, and proficiency are all over the board.

All the training and equipment in the world won't get some folks to step through the door when needed and for others no lack of equipment or training will stop them.

I think small departments are not only relevant but necessary in many areas.

[fixer]

Allow me to be "that guy"...please ridicule as you please for instructive purposes.

Why has there not been a successful or seriously pursued volunteer PD system?


I live in small town in rural west Texas. You'd think that was repetitive phrase. I'm an hour+ from any town larger than 50,000 people in any direction.

Many if not most small to tiny towns have a volunteer FD. The one we have here is widely regarded by the locals as fantastic.

I'm curious to hear perspectives on why a volunteer PD system is logistically, legally, or technically unsound or totally off the table.

The town I'm in is part of the armed teacher program and it is fiercely supported by virtually everyone.

That said I think small towns in Texas may have a particularly hard time with school shootings. The towns can be extremely remote, small to tiny PD, lucrative careers with or without college credentials abound create a draw on potential personnel, to go along with other issues defined in this thread.

I have serious doubts my local PD could do much better than Uvalde.

[mmc45414]

The small departments *generally* don't pay enough to attract the competent and experienced, although certain wealthy bedroom communities are exceptions. The guys leaving Big City PD locally who aren't going Fed are going to Medium City PD. Places with 40-ish to 100-ish sworn that can afford to pay a comparable benefit/pay package but not have as much stifling bureaucracy.

Do I understand the Marion County merger correctly in that it merged the PD and SO, but do the small communities like Speedway still have PDs?

I couldn't find a good reference, but I did a search and I think in Montgomery County OH there are probably 30+ departments, and I think some of those are probably getting pretty big (Kettering, for example). Then just outside the county in Greene there are several more in the areas neighboring the base. I think some of them are able to attract people, and the officers get to work where people wave at them with all five fingers.

ETA: I think this discussion also touches on how communities get formed up over time in different areas. I did find this reference to populations in the area (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_metropolitan_area#Places_with_more_than_100 ,000_inhabitants), and pretty much all of the listed areas, down to the smallest townships, have separate police departments. One exception is Harrison, and this is the largest population area that is exclusively patrolled by the SO.

And for example the little areas that are clustered around where I live (that you enter one and exit the other at the same point, some nice, a couple not so nice) total over 100k, and the core city is only a little under 140k. And we do not even live on the popular side of town where all of the beautiful people live. But this has been a result of the perpetual flight from the city limits over decades, but the core city is still able to influence many of the shitty decisions (the jail is in their Sanctuary City...).

[feudist]

Allow me to be "that guy"...please ridicule as you please for instructive purposes.

Why has there not been a successful or seriously pursued volunteer PD system?


I live in small town in rural west Texas. You'd think that was repetitive phrase. I'm an hour+ from any town larger than 50,000 people in any direction.

Many if not most small to tiny towns have a volunteer FD. The one we have here is widely regarded by the locals as fantastic.

I'm curious to hear perspectives on why a volunteer PD system is logistically, legally, or technically unsound or totally off the table.

The town I'm in is part of the armed teacher program and it is fiercely supported by virtually everyone.

That said I think small towns in Texas may have a particularly hard time with school shootings. The towns can be extremely remote, small to tiny PD, lucrative careers with or without college credentials abound create a draw on potential personnel, to go along with other issues defined in this thread.

I have serious doubts my local PD could do much better than Uvalde.

My local Shire-Reeve runs a Reserve program. They attend a weekly evening Academy of abbreviated length and generally have to work under the supervision of another POST certified deputy. They are armed. I believe some retired and POST certified officers also do it and they are used like full timers. Participation runs in fits and spurts.
From my limited knowledge they are used to augment special events, man fixed posts and called upon in crises like manhunts, child searches or mass casualty events.

Birmingham ran a "Citizen's Police Academy" for a few years. It was mainly an outreach to the black community trying to quell their more ridiculous beliefs about what cops could do. A later chief expanded it into a "Citizens on Patrol" program, where they could check out a "COP" marked car and patrol-unarmed-as lookouts and witnesses. Nothing much ever went beyond the immediate media coverage.

BBI mentioned earlier that cops could be hired and used without academy certification as long as they went within their first year. My state did, maybe still does permit that.
One of the local small towns (probably all of them)ran a scam hiring officers, using them for that year and then dismissing them to avoid paying for the academy. I trained a rookie who got burned that way.

It's hard to see a satisfactory solution emerging from the current mess. Anyone wearing a badge or uniform is subject to being targeted for violence or screeching civil disobedience and carries a lot of liability. I can't think that using a less trained(than even anemic POST standards) person would thrill anyone but Plaintiff's counsel.

[OlongJohnson]

In CA, it doesn't seem that we have a history or tradition of a strong state police. Heck, the state police, which was more security than anything, rolled into the Calif Highway Patrol in the early 90s.

Pretty much everybody not LE-involved in CA regards CHP's primary reason for existence being randomized tax collection. If there's a crash, they'll come around and document it, but get back to writing tickets ASAP. When CHP came to Texas, we got Acevedo.



I don't think we're that far apart except in the ginormous area of "traditional values". I'm kinda concerned about what a lot folks on the right mean by that nowadays. But I'll note that as outside the scope of local small PDs discussion.

I've recently realized that a really big chunk of what's going on politically on the right happens in churches, not in media (social or otherwise). A lot of it may make the worst of Fox news seem completely rational. If you aren't in the churches, it's almost completely opaque.

[Jim Watson]

My county has a Reserve Deputy program.
Concerned citizens wear the same uniform, badge, and gun as the regulars but are not certified, therefore may only be the second man in the car. A number of years ago, a friend in the program had occasion to shoot an armed suspect.

[BehindBlueI's]

Do I understand the Marion County merger correctly in that it merged the PD and SO, but do the small communities like Speedway still have PDs?


Indianapolis Police Department and Marion County Sheriff's Department merged, creating Indianapolis Metro Police Department and Marion County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff's Office, vs Sheriff's Department, does not have a road patrol and does jail functions, court functions, warrant service, etc.

Speedway, Beech Grove, and Lawrence all still have their own PDs and are their own cities, though I think in terms of US policing they are medium sized. Their departments are staffed with all or mostly full time merit officers, have 24/7 coverage, do their own investigations including homicides, and are the primary police agency for their city. They are very much real and professional police departments.

Homecroft, Southport, Meridian Hills, Rocky Ripple, maybe some I'm forgetting have or had their own PD. I think Rocky Ripple is no more or just one officer. The others are staffed almost entirely with reserve (unpaid) non-merit officers. Manpower ebbs and flows, but none have enough to actually patrol 24/7, lack the resources for significant investigative work, etc.

[Borderland]

I think its a valid argument. Small towns aren't Mayberry anymore. Maybe the solution is much higher state mandated standards from physical condition through training and a transparent discipline process. Then the little town can choose to step up or defer the job to the next level up, likely the county. There's no reason the county's deputies can't coach little league.

I live 15 miles from a small town of about 15K. The county provides the police chief for the town. My neighbor had the position for a few years. He's a county sheriffs deputy, now a precinct commander in a county of about 750K.

[jnc36rcpd]

As much as the Washington Post is the information operations arm of the Democratic Socialists, I don't think the article was suggesting either a national police force nor even singular state police agencies.

County police departments are very common in the D.C. metropolitan area though some sheriff's offices still serve as the primary police agencies in their jurisdictions. This seems a much more efficient operating system than relying on every municipality to maintain a police department or expecting the state police to handle local matters.

There are municipal police agencies in most counties. Some probably exist for political purposes more than operational ones. In my county, four cities have municipal departments. One, on the border of both D.C. and the neighboring county, is pretty much independent and county police do not routinely enter for patrol or response to calls. My former department and a neighboring city are authorized sixty to seventy sworn and share patrol and investigative duties with the county. A smaller department of about fifteen has similar duties, but also does house checks and similar functions in that affluent community. There are, of course, various specialized uniform agencies with duties in the county.

In addition to county police, the neighboring county has a multitude of city agencies. Most share patrol duties with county police. Some are highly professional and capable departments while many are smaller departments what seem to have a multitude of issues. At one point, a fifteen mile stretch of roadway was within the jurisdiction of fifteen uniform agencies. The multitude of agencies makes this county something of an outlier.

I will remark that my former agency became more professional as it became larger and more capable. We had about twenty-six when I came on and running county-dispatched calls was a new and not well-received concept. It has been suggested that the city becoming first-due for county calls in the city drove many of the deadwood out. Unfortunately, when I was retired, we had officers whining that we shouldn't be first-due so we could "do community policing" which entails sitting in a park doing nothing in most cases. That said, given the current command and internal affairs culture of the agency, "community policing by parking" is probably a smart career move.

I will remark that my former chief long remembered our first meeting if which he asked what I saw as the purpose of the agency. My response was that we served as armed retainers in the livery of the city council. That was truer then than it was as the ageency evolved.

[jlw]

Several years ago, the one municipality in our county that has a PD fired its chief. They then formed a committee to decide what to do.

The sheriff’s office offered a contract to provide LE services at less than half of the budgeted amount for the PD.

Of the citizens who spoke against it, the main objection was not having patrol cars with the city’s name on the side…

One of the things that one learns in government is that there really is no such thing as “small government”; it’s just people wanting to get rid of only the thing a they don’t like. Ever notice how many special purpose sales tax measures actually get passed by the voters?

[TGS]

Allow me to be "that guy"...please ridicule as you please for instructive purposes.

Why has there not been a successful or seriously pursued volunteer PD system?

...

I'm curious to hear perspectives on why a volunteer PD system is logistically, legally, or technically unsound or totally off the table.


I think the premise of the question is flawed. There's been lots of seriously pursued volunteer police programs across the country. Both DC Metropolitan PD and NYPD have robust volunteer programs, for example.

1) You don't get enough volunteers that stay on to make it anything more than a token "helping hand" level of effort to the agency. You generally can't rely on volunteers to staff critical services at a police agency.

2) It generally takes a full police academy plus a 3 month field-training phase on a full-time work schedule to make a "full performance" police officer. Depending on where you go....some more, some less. Volunteers are usually incapable of allocating this time since it's not paying their bills....and so volunteers commonly have abbreviated training courses and commensurately abbreviated duties. Some top 3 irregularities that you might see compared to full performance officers are 1) Inability to carry a firearm/limited to less-lethal adjuncts 2) Lacking independent power of search, seizure and arrest, 3) restricted from patrolling on their own, even if armed. At NYPD, volunteers are heavily restricted from doing anything useful, really, and are just a glorified neighborhood watch with a uniform, OC spray, and baton. At DC Metro PD, the program is tiered and a volunteer officer can eventually get to armed status and taking hot calls on their own, indistinguishable from a full-time officer.......last I heard/read, the amount of volunteer officers in the entirety of Metro PD with this status can be counted on your fingers, as they must meet a comparable number of hours of training and FTO phase as a regular full-time officer.......which takes a long time to accrue as a volunteer.

3) The demands of policing mean it's not a great way to spend time volunteering. Volunteer fire departments and EMS squads have also died off as population centers expanded with increased workload and also the requirements for training increased, and generally are only found as the primary service in low density areas with low call volume or as a secondary/backup service to full-timers or staffing special event standbys. Volunteer FDs and EMS squads are as much a social activity as they are about volunteering; take away that social aspect, and you lose volunteers. Policing doesn't fit into that...there's not a staffing model in policing where you're going to hang around the station as a bunch of volunteers for Tuesday Movie Night and Saturday Steak Night, and maybe you get a call here and there. As a volunteer police officer, you're going to be running traffic, helping people fill out police reports at the station, and in general deal with the filth of society all the while everyone you see in public doesn't like you. EMS and FD's get treated well by the public whereas with the exception of a few localities or specific pro-police restaurants, anyone wearing a police uniform generally can't trust the food that was made for them to not contain piss, shit, semen, spit, etc.

[TheRoland]

That fact that nearly everyone here seems to have seen police corruption of some kind seems like a really bad sign for the health of a first-world country. Maybe the issue isn't training standards. Maybe the issue is that we're not a first-world country in some places.

[jlw]

That fact that nearly everyone here seems to have seen police corruption of some kind seems like a really bad sign for the health of a first-world country. Maybe the issue isn't training standards. Maybe the issue is that we're not a first-world country in some places.


First World simply means that a country was aligned with the U.S. and NATO.

Second World was the old communist bloc.

Third World was everyone else.

They are all Cold War terms.

[TGS]

That fact that nearly everyone here seems to have seen police corruption of some kind seems like a really bad sign for the health of a first-world country. Maybe the issue isn't training standards. Maybe the issue is that we're not a first-world country in some places.

Power corrupts. You'll find that everywhere. It's the reason we have a system of government that sets limitations on government instead of relying upon the good will of the man in charge. The vast majority of police corruption in the US is low-level, at that, and nowhere near even in the same universe as what you'll find in other countries.

A first world country does not lack police corruption; a first world country has a system that generally holds individuals accountable, either administratively, civilly, or criminally.


First World simply means that a country was aligned with the U.S. and NATO.

Second World was the old communist bloc.

Third World was everyone else.

They are all Cold War terms.

And, in the post cold-war era the terms of First World, Second World, and Third World are generally accepted by the foreign affairs/diplomatic community as well as international business community to be synonymous with Developed, Developing, and Undeveloped human development indices.

It's entirely correct in the year 2022 to use the term in the manner that Roland has.

[HCM]

That fact that nearly everyone here seems to have seen police corruption of some kind seems like a really bad sign for the health of a first-world country. Maybe the issue isn't training standards. Maybe the issue is that we're not a first-world country in some places.

Any population is a bell curve. You will never have zero corruption.,you can just minimize it.

How much experience do you have with third world police ? Because I have a fair amount of interaction with them and compared to them US cops are like a bunch of Mormon Boy Scouts.

[JHC]

You just watch yourself mister.

Just because our largest metro city has the highest per capita homicide rate, lives under a constant boil water notice, and has a mayor/city council that can't even figure out how to pick up the trash, doesn't mean you can lump the rest of the state in with them.:cool:

Man, I'm in a glass house chuckin' rocks. GA's maternal mortality and infant mortality rate are a disgrace.

[Le Français]

Sheriff's Office, vs Sheriff's Department, does not have a road patrol and does jail functions, court functions, warrant service, etc.

Is that a statewide thing in Indiana? In Florida and Texas (and others), a sheriff’s office does it all including road patrol.

[jnc36rcpd]

I can't speak for Indiana. The "metropolitan counties" in Maryland (basically between D.C. and Baltimore) have county police departments and possible corrections departments. Sheriff's offices are restricted to court-related functions and possibly corrections. A similar set-up exists in Northern Virginia though I think those SO's have corrections. I'm also aware of county police departments in Georgia and New York State.

This is not to denigrate the work of these sheriff's offices. I have the highest regard for our sheriff's office who handle many emergency petitions, protective orders, and circuit court-originated felony warrants. Our most recent OIS several days ago was a deputy sheriff assigned to the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force.

[jlw]

I can't speak for Indiana. The "metropolitan counties" in Maryland (basically between D.C. and Baltimore) have county police departments and possible corrections departments. Sheriff's offices are restricted to court-related functions and possibly corrections. A similar set-up exists in Northern Virginia though I think those SO's have corrections. I'm also aware of county police departments in Georgia and New York State.

This is not to denigrate the work of these sheriff's offices. I have the highest regard for our sheriff's office who handle many emergency petitions, protective orders, and circuit court-originated felony warrants. Our most recent OIS several days ago was a deputy sheriff assigned to the U.S. Marshals fugitive task force.

GA has 159 counties with each having an Office of the Sheriff as required by the state constitution. Twelve of the counties have county PDs.

All 12 of those county PDs were created prior to a change in state law requiring it to be a ballot measure rather than the commissioners just doing it.

The state recently provided legislation concerning a method for dissolving those county PDs if the voters choose to do so.

[BehindBlueI's]

Is that a statewide thing in Indiana? In Florida and Texas (and others), a sheriff’s office does it all including road patrol.

No, every other county has a full service sheriff's dept.

[Le Français]

No, every other county has a full service sheriff's dept.

I meant the distinction you drew between sheriff’s office and sheriff’s department. I don’t think that distinction applies anywhere outside of Indiana, and I was wondering if it’s across the state or just in the Indianapolis area.

[BehindBlueI's]

I meant the distinction you drew between sheriff’s office and sheriff’s department. I don’t think that distinction applies anywhere outside of Indiana, and I was wondering if it’s across the state or just in the Indianapolis area.

There is only one "sheriff's office" in the state, Marion County Sheriff's Office. I don't know that it's a legal distinction or just a name change to differentiate it from the pre-merger entity.

[BehindBlueI's]

That fact that nearly everyone here seems to have seen police corruption of some kind seems like a really bad sign for the health of a first-world country. Maybe the issue isn't training standards. Maybe the issue is that we're not a first-world country in some places.

Name an occupation that has access to any level of money or power that does not have some level of corruption. Public or private. A certain level of corruption is inevitable, from sales clerks to senators, doctors to dog walkers.

[jnc36rcpd]

I meant the distinction you drew between sheriff’s office and sheriff’s department. I don’t think that distinction applies anywhere outside of Indiana, and I was wondering if it’s across the state or just in the Indianapolis area.

I have read the argument that elected sheriffs are constitutional offices rather than departments of county government. This seems to be important to some and perhaps is.

[willie]

Behind paywall but this “gift” link should work for everyone. https://wapo.st/3OmVnfK A few excerpts:




Thoughts?

The author described the police department in my former school district.

[CraigS]

For discussion's sake let's take a state w/ 10 large cities, each having a large PD. There are also 30 counties, towns, or jurisdictions w/ each having it's own PD/Sheriff w/ 30 officers. The decision is made to disband the 30 PDs because ?????? Do the 900 officers from those 30 PDs now work for one of the large city PDs? Do they keep living in the same place or do they have to move to one of the 10 cities? I live in X-town 50 miles from the nearest large city and call 911. Who will respond? Do they have to drive 50 miles to get to me?

[jlw]

I have read the argument that elected sheriffs are constitutional offices rather than departments of county government. This seems to be important to some and perhaps is.


It is a very important distinction in the places in which it applies.

[jlw]

For discussion's sake let's take a state w/ 10 large cities, each having a large PD. There are also 30 counties, towns, or jurisdictions w/ each having it's own PD/Sheriff w/ 30 officers. The decision is made to disband the 30 PDs because ?????? Do the 900 officers from those 30 PDs now work for one of the large city PDs? Do they keep living in the same place or do they have to move to one of the 10 cities? I live in X-town 50 miles from the nearest large city and call 911. Who will respond? Do they have to drive 50 miles to get to me?

I think the argument is that you wouldn't have the individual agencies. They would all work under a single umbrella.

[fatdog]

The sheriff’s office offered a contract to provide LE services at less than half of the budgeted amount for the PD.

Of the citizens who spoke against it, the main objection was not having patrol cars with the city’s name on the side…

One of the fastest growing cities in the county where I live has never had a department, their population exploded, and they indeed contracted in a similar way with the SO to provide those services in lieu of forming a department, as part of the deal, those patrol vehicles assigned to the city now not only bear the SO's branding but also have the city's name in large letters under the SO's decals.

Our legislature in this year's session took a major step forward to begin to address one of our long term shameful problems in AL, the small town local PD's that are nothing more than speed trap revenue generators for the cities they are in. We had a major scandal with one of these speed trap only PD's, Brookside, that finally prompted the action. Now any city may not derive more than 10% of their total revenue from traffic fines.

There are a gazillion of these tiny departments that provide north of 40% of the tiny incorporated town's revenue in AL. It is a thing that has been in place since the 60's and 70's and those departments have no meaningful investigative or crime fighting capabilities, they rely on the county for their dispatch, and they don't even offer 24 hour service. When a serious crime happens they call in the SO or the state (ALEA) because they cannot handle a robbery or homicide investigation on their own. Their patrols are focused on setting up to ticket moving violations. Most of these towns have set the stage on their major highway with quick step down speed limits that catch the unaware out of towners. They simply do not need to exist and never did. Hopefully these funding rules will finally choke some of them out of existing.

[Erick Gelhaus]

Our legislature in this year's session took a major step forward to begin to address one of our long term shameful problems in AL, the small town local PD's that are nothing more than speed trap revenue generators for the cities they are in. We had a major scandal with one of these speed trap only PD's, Brookside, that finally prompted the action. Now any city may not derive more than 10% of their total revenue from traffic fines.

One of the fascinating take-aways from a real good de-brief on Summer 2014 events in Ferguson, MO was just how much of that went on in StL County and how egregious it was. That crap never got near enough coverage.

[vcdgrips]

As someone who lives on the other side of the state, I thought the Kansas bedroom communities just outside of KCMO proper were zealous until i saw similar debriefs re the STL area.

Routinely, municipalities were deriving 20% + of their unrestricted budgets from municipal code violations of all types. You overlay that with demographic shifts that had many of these areas majority black (Ferguson was 70+ black ) being policed and governed by 80% whites, it was a recipe for significant issues.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/05/missouri-driving-while-black-st-louis

https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-addicted-to-fines.html

[DpdG]

I’m in NH, which has a strong tradition of municipal PD’s being the primary LE providers in most communities, down to towns with few to no full time officers serving populations of sub 1k. Often these agencies will not have 24hr coverage and rely on State Police for after hour emergency coverage. Sheriffs offices are present but their duties vary greatly- each county is required to do court security, prisoner transports, and civil services, but proactive work varies drastically county to county and it is rare that they are a primary call-taker.

One of the positives for small PDs is they (through the Chief) answer to the town’s select board and/or town meeting. This means there is a great deal of local control, often more than the sheriff’s office. My county’s sheriff’s office is political- a new sheriff means significant turnover in personnel. The last sheriff was was a smooth talker and active with the Rotary/Masons/Loyal order of the Moose, but in the profession he was notorious for questionable hires of people who failed/had poor reputations in local PDs and subsequent perceived meritless promotions. My perception is that the elected sheriffs are much more concerned about getting reelected than they are with moral/ethical righteousness.

One thing our state does well is traffic citations- all fines go through the state coffers with a portion going to our version of POST. None goes to the municipality that wrote the citation.

As with so much in LE, it’s extremely regional.

[jlw]

One of the fastest growing cities in the county where I live has never had a department, their population exploded, and they indeed contracted in a similar way with the SO to provide those services in lieu of forming a department, as part of the deal, those patrol vehicles assigned to the city now not only bear the SO's branding but also have the city's name in large letters under the SO's decals.

Our legislature in this year's session took a major step forward to begin to address one of our long term shameful problems in AL, the small town local PD's that are nothing more than speed trap revenue generators for the cities they are in. We had a major scandal with one of these speed trap only PD's, Brookside, that finally prompted the action. Now any city may not derive more than 10% of their total revenue from traffic fines.

There are a gazillion of these tiny departments that provide north of 40% of the tiny incorporated town's revenue in AL. It is a thing that has been in place since the 60's and 70's and those departments have no meaningful investigative or crime fighting capabilities, they rely on the county for their dispatch, and they don't even offer 24 hour service. When a serious crime happens they call in the SO or the state (ALEA) because they cannot handle a robbery or homicide investigation on their own. Their patrols are focused on setting up to ticket moving violations. Most of these towns have set the stage on their major highway with quick step down speed limits that catch the unaware out of towners. They simply do not need to exist and never did. Hopefully these funding rules will finally choke some of them out of existing.


Notes On Speed Detection (https://thatweemsguy.com/2010/09/20/notes-on-speed-detection/)

[Totem Polar]

Since we are now into a speed zone tangent, an anecdote:

I once got a ticket for going 70 in a 70 zone. The deal is: the limit on the N/S road going to a population center in the middle of the state had just changed from 55 up to 70, and had been reported in the papers as such, etc. The change was new enough that the old speed limit signs were all down, but the new ones were not yet up. Evidently, the long-time trooper who pulled me over had not received the memo.

OK, cool, I’ll just set a court date, and make a day of it. So the time comes to drive back down for my court date, and I take my little folder with my copy of the ticket, a news paper clipping of the “road news” update, and—get this—an old school polaroid camera—with which I took pics of several of the new speed limit signs noting that the road was 70mph all the way down.

So I get to court, and the trooper is a no-show. I’m thinking that this is a slam dunk.

The judge listens to my side of the deal, and then says: I grew up around here, and I’ve seen a lot of accidents on that road. It should still be 55. The ticket stands.

So I had to pay the ticket.

About a decade later, I have the chance to do my thing on an outdoor stage at the city’s big riverside park for their yearly music festival, so I told the story over the mic to a couple thousand people.

Afterwards, as Mrs T and I are selling CDs off stage, a pile of people—and by “pile” I mean 7 or 8 couples, come up to tell us “We all know that judge. He’s always been an asshole.”

Anyways, carry on.
:)

[TheNewbie]

Since we are now into a speed zone tangent, an anecdote:

I once got a ticket for going 70 in a 70 zone. The deal is: the limit on the N/S road going to a population center in the middle of the state had just changed from 55 up to 70, and had been reported in the papers as such, etc. The change was new enough that the old speed limit signs were all down, but the new ones were not yet up. Evidently, the long-time trooper who pulled me over had not received the memo.

OK, cool, I’ll just set a court date, and make a day of it. So the time comes to drive back down for my court date, and I take my little folder with my copy of the ticket, a news paper clipping of the “road news” update, and—get this—an old school polaroid camera—with which I took pics of several of the new speed limit signs noting that the road was 70mph all the way down.

So I get to court, and the trooper is a no-show. I’m thinking that this is a slam dunk.

The judge listens to my side of the deal, and then says: I grew up around here, and I’ve seen a lot of accidents on that road. It should still be 55. The ticket stands.

So I had to pay the ticket.

About a decade later, I have the chance to do my thing on an outdoor stage at the city’s big riverside park for their yearly music festival, so I told the story over the mic to a couple thousand people.

Afterwards, as Mrs T and I are selling CDs off stage, a pile of people—and by “pile” I mean 7 or 8 couples, come up to tell us “We all know that judge. He’s always been an asshole.”

Anyways, carry on.
:)


Awesome but annoying story? That’s crazy, but I have the inverse of that. You’ll understand where I got my argumentative independent streak from.

When seat belt laws came into existence in Texas, or when DPS, really started enforcing them, my dad got a ticket for no seat belt. He argued with the troopers about how it shouldn’t be a law (my dad was pro wearing a seat belt in general) but they gave him a ticket, which is to be expected.


My dad took it to traffic court and the judge said he didn’t think it should be a law either, so he dismissed it.


Neat that it happened that way for him, but I think your story is more common.

[CraigS]

I think the argument is that you wouldn't have the individual agencies. They would all work under a single umbrella.
I can see how that would work. I know it is different but most businesses who are nation wide have National headquarters, Regional headquarters, and maybe District headquarters. I see an advantage in most every aspect of the business. It can be a pain for the local people who can easily get the feeling that all policies are made up by people so far up the chain that they have no idea of the real world. I know I have felt that way at times. But it is easier for the large company to afford better training facilities and better instructors and policies are the same country wide. How to make that happen will be tough because first the local police, sheriffs etc. will need to be forced into it which they won't like at all.

[TheNewbie]

There is no one size fits all answer here.

While a Sheriff Office is likely the best option for many smaller towns, specifically tiny towns, seeing a Sheriff being in total control of a counties (counties with multiple towns, not talking rural counties with 2k total population) LE services would be not be good either. Division of power has a quality unto itself.


Many larger agencies would have performed poorly in this situation too. Though there is some amount of overlap, small town police forces vs larger agencies and the response in Uvalde each need their own specific discussion to address the issues. I don’t mean here at PF, but in society.

[BehindBlueI's]

For discussion's sake let's take a state w/ 10 large cities, each having a large PD. There are also 30 counties, towns, or jurisdictions w/ each having it's own PD/Sheriff w/ 30 officers. The decision is made to disband the 30 PDs because ?????? Do the 900 officers from those 30 PDs now work for one of the large city PDs? Do they keep living in the same place or do they have to move to one of the 10 cities? I live in X-town 50 miles from the nearest large city and call 911. Who will respond? Do they have to drive 50 miles to get to me?

It will never work. It is a giant pain in the ass to merge two peer/near peer agencies with similar policies and training requirements. it's a Herculean task to combine multiple departments, all with different levels of pay, different levels of seniorty required to be a detective or supervisor, different equipment, etc. City cops are often city cops because they wanted to work for that city or didn't want to be moved around the state, region, or country. Tiny town cops are often tiny town cops because they can't get hired at bigger cities. They are too old to be a merit officer, so they end up as a reserve. They have a career they don't want to leave and only police part time. They couldn't hack it, had discipline problems, or whatever at a larger department. For various reasons you will lose a lot of officers with any sort of merge, you'll spend an enormous amount of time and money to retrain and equip everyone (you're going to all wear the same uniform, right? Mark the cars the same? Are your radios compatible? Who's approved weapons list do you go with? Do you issue approved guns to those who have now disapproved guns?) Is everyone on the same pension plan? Are some even on a pension plan? What about reserves and special police? What stops Tiny Town PD from making all of their officers captains the day before the merge? Do existing personnel have to reapply for their rank and position?

It would be chaos for years, if not decades.

[TheNewbie]

Given the totality of the situation, Uvalde is big enough to justify having their own city police. When I talk about small towns being taken over by the SO, I’m speaking of places with less than 2000 people.



I knew of a town with around 700 people, but a pretty rough spot non the less, that paid off duty deputies for patrol. Basically the same as an off duty job at a mall, but the deputy is patrolling a small town instead.



Centralized control of LE is not a good idea, and every tiny speck in the road having their own police force is not a good idea either. As with many things, a balance of some sort is better.


BBI is also right about cops wanting to be different types of cops. County vs City vs State, etc.

[DDTSGM]

I meant the distinction you drew between sheriff’s office and sheriff’s department. I don’t think that distinction applies anywhere outside of Indiana, and I was wondering if it’s across the state or just in the Indianapolis area.

In our state, Kansas, it is just a matter of what someone at some point in time preferred. I honestly didn't keep track if the designation changed in some counties when a new Sheriff took office. Kansas has 105 counties, with 104 Sheriff's Departments. To my knowledge all 104 SO's have a patrol function as well as civil process.

At least one agency that I know of, the Shawnee County Sheriff, divested itself of the corrections aspect of the office, forming the Shawnee County Department of Corrections.

The one county that doesn't have a Sheriff is Riley County, they have the Riley County Police Department, and by statute the office of Riley County Sheriff ceased to exist when they consolidate LE.

[jlw]

It will never work. It is a giant pain in the ass to merge two peer/near peer agencies with similar policies and training requirements. it's a Herculean task to combine multiple departments, all with different levels of pay, different levels of seniorty required to be a detective or supervisor, different equipment, etc. City cops are often city cops because they wanted to work for that city or didn't want to be moved around the state, region, or country. Tiny town cops are often tiny town cops because they can't get hired at bigger cities. They are too old to be a merit officer, so they end up as a reserve. They have a career they don't want to leave and only police part time. They couldn't hack it, had discipline problems, or whatever at a larger department. For various reasons you will lose a lot of officers with any sort of merge, you'll spend an enormous amount of time and money to retrain and equip everyone (you're going to all wear the same uniform, right? Mark the cars the same? Are your radios compatible? Who's approved weapons list do you go with? Do you issue approved guns to those who have now disapproved guns?) Is everyone on the same pension plan? Are some even on a pension plan? What about reserves and special police? What stops Tiny Town PD from making all of their officers captains the day before the merge? Do existing personnel have to reapply for their rank and position?

It would be chaos for years, if not decades.

Stating that a cop works for a small agency because they couldn't get hired by a big on as blanket statement simply isn't accurate. It may be true in some cases, but it fails to take into account life choices and family considerations such as a guy/gal choosing to stay in their hometown versus moving to the big city.

[BehindBlueI's]

Stating that a cop works for a small agency because they couldn't get hired by a big on as blanket statement simply isn't accurate.

Agreed, but not what I was talking about. Earlier in the thread I talked about the tiny towns that only exist as legal fictions and have departments that are mostly made up of reserves. Guys who have no merit protection, are not paid, and are either retirees or have a day job elsewhere (or use their reserve job to get a badge and work security as an 'off duty officer' gig. That's what I mean by tiny town, not the full time paid merit officers/deputies working on small departments. In this context, I stand by my statement that the majority of tiny town officers can't get on with bigger agencies, either due to age, desire, history, or ability and if you were to merge them you'd just lose them.

As far as working for a smaller department due to desire, I think that falls under my statement that people often pick their PD because they don't want to be moved elsewhere. Merge them into a conglomerate where they may be reassigned across state and you'll lose them as well. We're in agreement, except perhaps on terminology.

[TheNewbie]

Agreed, but not what I was talking about. Earlier in the thread I talked about the tiny towns that only exist as legal fictions and have departments that are mostly made up of reserves. Guys who have no merit protection, are not paid, and are either retirees or have a day job elsewhere (or use their reserve job to get a badge and work security as an 'off duty officer' gig. That's what I mean by tiny town, not the full time paid merit officers/deputies working on small departments. In this context, I stand by my statement that the majority of tiny town officers can't get on with bigger agencies, either due to age, desire, history, or ability and if you were to merge them you'd just lose them.

As far as working for a smaller department due to desire, I think that falls under my statement that people often pick their PD because they don't want to be moved elsewhere. Merge them into a conglomerate where they may be reassigned across state and you'll lose them as well. We're in agreement, except perhaps on terminology.


Can reserve officers work security in Indiana without a security/PI type license? In Texas, in the vast majority of cases, on must work 32 hours or more a week, and be benefit eligible to work off duty security as a peace officer.

[willie]

We see many small departments because most counties have a hodge lodge of smalltowns. Budget constraints affect quality of small departments. Training funds, salaries, and minimal equipment purchase--not character flaws--are limiting factors. When I travel, I turn on my radar detector. I wish not to interact with one agency after the other because I'm never sure what I might encounter informal policy wise due to poor leadership. I drive the speed limit and reduce speed when the buzzer sounds. Big agencies are not immune to bullshit either.

Despite the hype, Texas can't secede even if 100% voted to do so. That's beer joint malarkey.

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Despite the hype, Texas can't secede even if 100% voted to do so. That's beer joint malarkey.

This ! I used to hear it all the time. 45% of the state votes Democratic. I do have to say that a sheriff from whatever agency is around Van Horn let poor ol' me go with a warning after tooling down I-10 at 95 mph. Told me to watch out for the state guys down the road. Perhaps my CHL, old fart configuration and my wife next to me, let him be merciful. The Bexar county sheriff also gave me a warning but SAPD gave me a ticket in a speed trap off an exit.

[TGS]

It will never work. It is a giant pain in the ass to merge two peer/near peer agencies with similar policies and training requirements. it's a Herculean task to combine multiple departments, all with different levels of pay, different levels of seniorty required to be a detective or supervisor, different equipment, etc. City cops are often city cops because they wanted to work for that city or didn't want to be moved around the state, region, or country. Tiny town cops are often tiny town cops because they can't get hired at bigger cities. They are too old to be a merit officer, so they end up as a reserve. They have a career they don't want to leave and only police part time. They couldn't hack it, had discipline problems, or whatever at a larger department. For various reasons you will lose a lot of officers with any sort of merge, you'll spend an enormous amount of time and money to retrain and equip everyone (you're going to all wear the same uniform, right? Mark the cars the same? Are your radios compatible? Who's approved weapons list do you go with? Do you issue approved guns to those who have now disapproved guns?) Is everyone on the same pension plan? Are some even on a pension plan? What about reserves and special police? What stops Tiny Town PD from making all of their officers captains the day before the merge? Do existing personnel have to reapply for their rank and position?

It would be chaos for years, if not decades.

As for the manpower issues/personnel issues.....there's nothing unique about that compared to mergers in any other industry, and it's been done before in LE and isn't half the problem you're making it out to be.

As for the logistical issues.....most of the things you wrote there are reasons it should happen....not a good excuse to just keep kicking the can down the road in a dysfunctional hodge-podge system. There's zero legitimate reason that any of that needs to be an issue in 2022, and the only reason it's an issue is because of hyper-localized political fiefdoms and their dumb bullshit.

I think saying it would be chaos for decades is being a bit dramatic, as well. There's zero reason that any of the things you listed should be inconsistent beyond a couple years. Your statement is inconsistent with the last 20 years of history, and the merger/reorganization of exponentially larger and more complex federal law enforcement organizations in the post-9/11 fallout. Your statement is also inconsistent with local/state police agency mergers that have occurred.

[BehindBlueI's]

As for the manpower issues/personnel issues.....there's nothing unique about that compared to mergers in any other industry, and it's been done before in LE and isn't half the problem you're making it out to be.

As for the logistical issues.....most of the things you wrote there are reasons it should happen....not a good excuse to just keep kicking the can down the road in a dysfunctional hodge-podge system. There's zero legitimate reason that any of that needs to be an issue in 2022, and the only reason it's an issue is because of hyper-localized political fiefdoms and their dumb bullshit.

I think saying it would be chaos for decades is being a bit dramatic, as well. There's zero reason that any of the things you listed should be inconsistent beyond a couple years. Your statement is inconsistent with the last 20 years of history, and the merger/reorganization of exponentially larger and more complex federal law enforcement organizations in the post-9/11 fallout. Your statement is also inconsistent with local/state police agency mergers that have occurred.

I'm pretty confident in my opinion based on actual experience with one and significant second hand intel on another LE merger. I've also been through a corporate merger, an acquisition, and a spin-off.
The notion disparate local LE mergers are like corporate mergers is laughable. Literally, I'm still chuckling. Like to the point I immediately don't put any faith in the rest of your assessment because it's something only an appointed rank or an outsider could believe. Right up there with 'this merger will save us money' and 'this merger will reduce administrative costs'. Federal is probably significantly simpler since you already have the same ultimate employer, same pay scales, budgets that local LE can only fantasize about, one political structure to answer to, etc. but since that's actually your world I leave that to you.

[TGS]

I'm pretty confident in my opinion based on actual experience with one and significant second hand intel on another LE merger. I've also been through a corporate merger, an acquisition, and a spin-off.
The notion disparate local LE mergers are like corporate mergers is laughable. Literally, I'm still chuckling. Like to the point I immediately don't put any faith in the rest of your assessment because it's something only an appointed rank or an outsider could believe. Right up there with 'this merger will save us money' and 'this merger will reduce administrative costs'. Federal is probably significantly simpler since you already have the same ultimate employer, same pay scales, budgets that local LE can only fantasize about, one political structure to answer to, etc. but since that's actually your world I leave that to you.

Well, did IMPD actually see decades worth of trouble over this? That's not the norm. When looking at the nation as a whole, LE agencies eating each other up isn't uncommon, and it's not anywhere near as bad as you just made it sound....regardless of the fact that your merger may have been an absolute nightmare.

[jlw]

GA allows for the county government to merge with one or more of the municipalities within it. These are called consolidated governments.

The neighboring county to me consolidated in 1991 or 1992. That county had an existing county PD. The city PD and the county PD merged. When I went to the academy in 1999, that agency was still struggling from the merger and issue still popup from time to time. It's only faded from being an issue as the old heads are now steadily retiring.

[TGS]

GA allows for the county government to merge with one or more of the municipalities within it. These are called consolidated governments.

The neighboring county to me consolidated in 1991 or 1992. That county had an existing county PD. The city PD and the county PD merged. When I went to the academy in 1999, that agency was still struggling from the merger and issue still popup from time to time. It's only faded from being an issue as the old heads are now steadily retiring.

The culture clash is something that will always happen; my bad if I gave the impression that particular aspect isn't an issue. Using my prior reference to federal reorganization, we saw this with Customs vs INS special agents within HSI, as a prime example, where for a long time the legacy Customs guys openly looked down on the INS guys and treated them/their programs as chopped liver.

I think what I'm trying to get at more is that the logistical issues (different cars/radios/guns/vests/uniforms etc) and HR issues (like, say, pay grades) aren't as big an issue for most mergers as BBI's is making it out to be...especially since lots of mergers/reformations are accompanied with union breaks, giving carte-blanche to rewrite the HR issues.

No doubt there's always going to be culture clashes as people hold on to allegiances of their prior department/personnel, though.

[TheNewbie]

This ! I used to hear it all the time. 45% of the state votes Democratic. I do have to say that a sheriff from whatever agency is around Van Horn let poor ol' me go with a warning after tooling down I-10 at 95 mph. Told me to watch out for the state guys down the road. Perhaps my CHL, old fart configuration and my wife next to me, let him be merciful. The Bexar county sheriff also gave me a warning but SAPD gave me a ticket in a speed trap off an exit.

Van Horn has the best, and most affordable, hotel I’ve found in West Texas. I’ve spent a lot of time out there, and I believe it to be one of the best deals in lodging period, if you don’t mind bare bones.


Out west, you often only have an SO for LE services due to how rural the county is and the limited population.

[BehindBlueI's]

Well, did IMPD actually see decades worth of trouble over this? That's not the norm. When looking at the nation as a whole, LE agencies eating each other up isn't uncommon, and it's not anywhere near as bad as you just made it sound....regardless of the fact that your merger may have been an absolute nightmare.

Given this is a publicly viewable portion of the forum, I will simply say that there were and are ongoing challenges in both Indianapolis and Louisville and that much of the promised benefits have not materialized for those officers or communities, particularly in terms of costs, top heavy rank structures, and police coverage. And these were near peer agencies in the same geographic area with similar hiring requirements and training levels merging with only one other department, as ideal a situation as you can have for organizations of that size.

In a hypothetical circumstance, if I lived in a reasonably affluent area with a low violent crime rate, I would vehemently oppose my police merging with any other police. In very short order what you will have is fewer police but the same or higher tax burden to support police who are now working elsewhere. One can also see the effect in places like Atlanta, where Buckhead is fighting a legal battle to be allowed to become it's own city so they can have their own police.

[jlw]

I should add that Savannah and Chatham County merged their PDs via contract only to split them apart several years later.

[jnc36rcpd]

Consolidation of agencies can work. Most would agree Las Vegas Metro was a successful merger of a city police department with a county sheriff's office. The LVMPD website details the story of this consolidation and mentions many of the problems incurred in the merger and mentions that initial savings did not immediately occur. The Nashville Metropolitan Police is another merger that, as far as I can tell, seems to be working. Pennsylvania, which has the issue of multiple "tiny" police forces, has over thirty regional departments. The state government even has a manual on its website discussing the how-to of this endeavor.

That said, consolidation often involves an outside agency taking over the functions of a smaller department. This seems to work more smoothly if they are at the same level of government, but it still may have some issues, Examples are the merger of the NYPD merging the Transit Police and Housing Police in the 1990's and Los Angeles County Sheriff absorbing the county police, harbor patrol, marshals, and community college police.

Maryland had the idea of merging state law enforcement agencies some years ago. This led to the Maryland State Police absorbing the Toll Facilities Police, the Airport Police, the Port Administration Police, and the Fire Marshal. I had the impression that the Troopers wanted the toll roads and tolerated the airport ,but wanted nothing to do with foot posts in the tunnels. Airport officers could become Troopers, but had to complete the MSP Academy. Otherwise, they were given Trooper uniforms with an airport rocker on the sleeve, but could never leave the airport. Some years later, the Maryland Transportation Authority Police were formed to handle the toll facilities, the airport, and the port, The FM's remain part of MSP, but their career path is not that of a Trooper.

The state also opted to merge the law enforcement functions of the Maryland Park Service into the Maryland Natural Resources Police. I believe the marriage eventually worked, but there were issues of the different cultures of the beat cops of the Ranger service and the lone hunters of NRP.

[BehindBlueI's]

I think what I'm trying to get at more is that the logistical issues (different cars/radios/guns/vests/uniforms etc) and HR issues (like, say, pay grades) aren't as big an issue for most mergers as BBI's is making it out to be...especially since lots of mergers/reformations are accompanied with union breaks, giving carte-blanche to rewrite the HR issues.


From a federal perspective that's likely true. It is much less true, again laughably untrue, on the budget of most local and county departments. Something as simple as a stripe package that costs $500 more can be very significant for fleet management costs and when a fleet is already on the edge due to budget concerns that becomes problematic. When you now have multiple types of vehicles to support, meaning you have to either farm it out or train mechanics on more models, stock more spare parts, stock different grades of oil, different tires, etc. those costs add up.

It's a very different world when your boss can't borrow a couple trillion dollars or just print more. Things like reissuing uniforms, striping cars, standardizing radios, etc. adds up in a way that's irrelevant to your budget but back breaking to many localitys that are already struggling. Pay grades?

My home town has an annual budget of $6.7 million. The next largest city in the county has a budget of $1.8 million. That's not for the police, that's for the entire city budget. They have something like 25 and 10 officers, respectively. A lieutenant on the bigger department makes 50% more than the *chief* of the smaller town makes, and a lieutenant on my department makes over double what that chief makes... Do you think it would be burdensome for them to raise their pay rates to parity with the bigger department in their county, let alone my department? A back of the envelope figuring puts the smaller city at something like $350k if everyone but the chief gets to keep their rank. Out of a budget of $1.8 million for the entire city. Who's paying that? Or does a merger to one big department not include parity of pay?

Seriously, you've no idea what you don't know here because you are looking at it through a lense that does not apply. I've no interest in arguing it further.

[TGS]

From a federal perspective that's likely true. It is much less true, again laughably untrue, on the budget of most local and county departments. Something as simple as a stripe package that costs $500 more can be very significant for fleet management costs and when a fleet is already on the edge due to budget concerns that becomes problematic. When you now have multiple types of vehicles to support, meaning you have to either farm it out or train mechanics on more models, stock more spare parts, stock different grades of oil, different tires, etc. those costs add up.

It's a very different world when your boss can't borrow a couple trillion dollars or just print more. Things like reissuing uniforms, striping cars, standardizing radios, etc. adds up in a way that's irrelevant to your budget but back breaking to many localitys that are already struggling. Pay grades?

My home town has an annual budget of $6.7 million. The next largest city in the county has a budget of $1.8 million. That's not for the police, that's for the entire city budget. They have something like 25 and 10 officers, respectively. A lieutenant on the bigger department makes 50% more than the *chief* of the smaller town makes, and a lieutenant on my department makes over double what that chief makes... Do you think it would be burdensome for them to raise their pay rates to parity with the bigger department in their county, let alone my department? A back of the envelope figuring puts the smaller city at something like $350k if everyone but the chief gets to keep their rank. Out of a budget of $1.8 million for the entire city. Who's paying that? Or does a merger to one big department not include parity of pay?

Seriously, you've no idea what you don't know here because you are looking at it through a lense that does not apply. I've no interest in arguing it further.

Well, I'm not arguing it further with you either, so I'm not sure why your knickers are in a twist.

Signed,

The guy who wasn't born into the federal government and previously worked as a municipal employee

[CraigS]

Wow, there are lots of experiences here that paint consolidation as a nearly impossible situation. But also experiences where it more or less worked out. It just struck me though that the whole discussion came out of the Uvalde mess and, it seems to me, that about 95% of the fault there lies w/ one person. Would working in a larger department w/ more training budget have helped? Or would he still have been worthless? Or perhaps his shortcomings would have been more obvious and he would have been gone before that fateful day. And then there is another question, if he were either better or been replaced, would all those other officers have been any better or any more willing to do their job?

[jlw]

Here’s the thing:

More than enough badges showed up at Uvalde to deal with that problem.

The problem wasn’t the size or scope of the agencies involved.

[EMC]

If we consolidate all the departments then by default they must wear full face helmets right? [emoji38]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20220724/754eb8ac9f1f1f12fb5c1d3d9a60a9a6.jpg

[TGS]

If we consolidate all the departments then by default they must wear full face helmets right?

https://c.tenor.com/U4WcJVnU0sEAAAAC/dredd-burn.gif

[Wendell]

Where many counties and most provinces have contracted out policing to a national force, it isn't all that, and frankly, many wish they hadn't.

Which would you prefer, a force that is accountable to local government, or a force that is unaccountable to anyone?

<https://www.nighttimepodcast.com/nova-scotia-rampage>

[ssb]

I live and work in an area dominated by those small town PDs upon which doubt is apparently being cast. I am not the cops, but I am adjacent to them. Some musings, biased by my own experience:

A small town police chief is accountable to the city council and, ostensibly, the voters that elect their council members. That accountability (and responsiveness) is only as good as the council. I have seen… some stuff… aired in council meetings that had little to do with law enforcement and lots to do with who was who in the local good ole boys network. But, the police chief was responsive to the council: to wit, he was fired.

Small town PDs often cannot pay well. I regularly encounter officers who make, hourly, what fast food employees make. You get the people you pay for. Your go-getters either have something else tying them to the agency/locality (home being the most common) or they’re on to bigger and better things once the opportunity presents itself.

What I’ve observed is something of a revolving door amongst some of the local departments, where officers lateral to a neighboring PD every year or two. Sometimes it’s work environment, but more often than not, they’re lateraling for another dollar or two an hour. It’s their way of getting a raise in a land full of towns with stagnant (and in some cases dwindling) tax bases that haven’t given a raise in years. It’s hell for stability and institutional knowledge. The one or two guys who are constants (at least as long as they can tolerate the chief/local politics) at the department end up starting over every other year. I know a guy who is a captain, the #2 at the agency; he has barely six years of experience (that’s not to denigrate him at all - he is a motivated officer who learned well, attended good training, and does good case work). He’s on his third “generation” of cops at his department.

Speaking of pay, in most of these places the only sure way to increase your pay is to promote. It encourages people who perhaps ought not to be in positions of leadership or specialized slots to continuously apply. In the land of high turnover, eventually your number comes up. Or, better yet, you promote because of who you are. I can think of somebody who just made detective who made himself internet famous less than a year ago (not necessarily an integrity/honesty thing, but the sort of thing that in normal earth people land would be a career ender for a police officer in 2022). Every case he is involved with, he’s going to have to answer questions about his conduct and have his actions second-guessed. But, he’s tight with his boss.

A dark side of small town policing is that problematic officers are at times tolerated out of necessity. It’s doubly true in this day and age, where there simply isn’t a long line of people waiting to replace you. Due to whatever you’d like to attribute it to, both hiring and retention are difficult today. Standards seem awfully low at times. An officer will get in trouble at Department A, resign, and within a month or two be working down the road at Department B. It’s almost like nobody’s inquiring with previous employers - or the new employers simply don’t care.

An unintended consequence of all this department hopping is that officers sometimes don’t stick around long enough for their cases to make it to trial. They leave the jurisdiction, stop responding to phone calls, stop cooperating to the point where their old cases get dismissed, and so on and so forth. From an officer experience standpoint, this means many haven’t had to see how their case work held up in court - if they care about such things.

Others more qualified than me have spoken about inappropriate allocation of training resources and low standards in law enforcement. All I’ll say is that training costs, and the above paragraphs shouldn’t paint a rosy picture of a small town department’s ability to fund training beyond the state minimums (and that’s done on a shoestring).

Equipment: what pistol they’re armed with is the least of the issues (though I did see a guy rocking an HK45 in court the other day and smiled a little). Cars and cameras are where I see the gaps.

I recently obtained a conviction at trial on a murder. Four officers responded to the scene initially. Only three were issued body cams. Two were malfunctioning (one simply was not working despite appearing to be activated on the other officers’ video footage, and the other had video but no audio). One worked as intended. These were known issues to the officers - they knew their stuff worked sometimes, other times it didn’t. Of the car cameras, only two of the four vehicles had car camera footage; one video would have been utterly useless had it been pointed in a direction with anything to record, it was such poor quality. The other camera, everything seemed to indicate it was assigned to another unit (it had been switched between cars - nobody seemed to know when, leading to questions about who was on scene).

Gaps in coverage like the cameras are low hanging fruit for defense attorneys, who regularly note how awfully convenient it is for an officer’s camera to be malfunctioning on one case, working on the next, and no officers with cameras present on the third.

It’s a weird dichotomy: on the one hand, policing almost universally represents the largest line item in a municipal budget around here - at times to the detriment of other, necessary services (you haven’t lived until you’ve watched a commission decide to skip buying new tires for the ambulances). On the other, in many instances the citizens are not getting the police they think they’re paying for - in training, experience, equipment, knowledge, or capability.

None of this should be taken as me taking a side, but just adding a bit of perspective from a community that’s probably not too dissimilar to Uvalde.

[TAZ]

Having spent my formative years with a national police force, I can honestly say that its not all that we think it is. Its generally worse because the officers there have ZERO ties to the community. Uvalde wasn't a failure because they were a small department in a small town. It was a failure because small men were lead by even smaller men. Location and size and budget won't change that. If that was the root cause of said failure NYC, Chicago, Houston, LA... would all be crime free utopic cities. Yet they are not. You see that year round and you saw it in very dramatic sense during the summer of love that was 2020. Large departments standing about with their thumbs up their butts while cities burned and prosecutors let thugs roam free because once again small men doing the leading.

Until you address the issue of prosecutors not putting criminals behind bars. Cities running busses over cops even when they are in the right for the sake of political correctness. Departments more interested in social workers than actual cops. A society that has no respect for its own laws. A society that thinks LEO are the solution to all their issues (from my kid won't do his homework to there is a guy shooting up a school). You won't solve the issues facing law enforcement as a profession.

Federalizing LEO will do nothing but kick the can up the road. Is BP doing an efficient job of keeping people from entering this country illegally? Is INS doing a great job of dealing with illegals? They are a strong federal force with leadership that has no will to allow them to do their jobs. Incredibly similar to the issues local departments face across this nation.

Where we could have some federal help, would be in standardizing training and standards. One set of objective standards for what a LEo should be could very much be useful. Except given the governments history of political correctness run amok, they would probably screw them up royally and offer little to no way to fix it cause 1 vote out go 400MM is not much impact. At least at the local level, one could in theory enact change faster as 1 vote out of 250K is much more meaningful.

[TGS]

Having spent my formative years with a national police force, I can honestly say that its not all that we think it is. Its generally worse because the officers there have ZERO ties to the community.

To be fair, many cops in the US don't live where they patrol, either....and back before hiring and retention went to shit, it was common for the more prolific local departments to hire from all across the US.

Agree with a lot of the other stuff you wrote, though. It's of note to me that you mention national police services, community policing, and people relying on the police for all sorts of shit that shouldn't be police issues. Most other police agencies other countries, particularly those with national police services, don't pretend to do the touchy-feely community policing like we are playing with here in the US. They don't have to pretend that everything is their problem.

Just as an aside, not totally relevant...one of the weirdest systems I've seen is India. They have state police as their primary law enforcement service, but their leadership structure (what we would call Lieutenants, Captains, etc) are from the federal Indian Police Service that are then detailed to a specific state police force. The idea being that the federal government can enforce the standards and control they want across all of India, while the state police force still maintains its cultural relevance to the people being policed. If you join the police as a constable (what we call a patrolman/trooper/officer), the highest you can go in the rank structure is Sergeant.

[Borderland]

One of the fastest growing cities in the county where I live has never had a department, their population exploded, and they indeed contracted in a similar way with the SO to provide those services in lieu of forming a department, as part of the deal, those patrol vehicles assigned to the city now not only bear the SO's branding but also have the city's name in large letters under the SO's decals.

Our legislature in this year's session took a major step forward to begin to address one of our long term shameful problems in AL, the small town local PD's that are nothing more than speed trap revenue generators for the cities they are in. We had a major scandal with one of these speed trap only PD's, Brookside, that finally prompted the action. Now any city may not derive more than 10% of their total revenue from traffic fines.

There are a gazillion of these tiny departments that provide north of 40% of the tiny incorporated town's revenue in AL. It is a thing that has been in place since the 60's and 70's and those departments have no meaningful investigative or crime fighting capabilities, they rely on the county for their dispatch, and they don't even offer 24 hour service. When a serious crime happens they call in the SO or the state (ALEA) because they cannot handle a robbery or homicide investigation on their own. Their patrols are focused on setting up to ticket moving violations. Most of these towns have set the stage on their major highway with quick step down speed limits that catch the unaware out of towners. They simply do not need to exist and never did. Hopefully these funding rules will finally choke some of them out of existing.

I wish the sheriff here would enforce the posted speed limit. I routinely see people going by our private drive doing 10-15 over the speed limit. I've ask the sheriff to write a few tickets but so far no enforcement. I voted his ass down the road a few days ago.

[MandoWookie]

To be fair, many cops in the US don't live where they patrol, either....and back before hiring and retention went to shit, it was common for the more prolific local departments to hire from all across the US.

Agree with a lot of the other stuff you wrote, though. It's of note to me that you mention national police services, community policing, and people relying on the police for all sorts of shit that shouldn't be police issues. Most other police agencies other countries, particularly those with national police services, don't pretend to do the touchy-feely community policing like we are playing with here in the US. They don't have to pretend that everything is their problem.

Just as an aside, not totally relevant...one of the weirdest systems I've seen is India. They have state police as their primary law enforcement service, but their leadership structure (what we would call Lieutenants, Captains, etc) are from the federal Indian Police Service that are then detailed to a specific state police force. The idea being that the federal government can enforce the standards and control they want across all of India, while the state police force still maintains its cultural relevance to the people being policed. If you join the police as a constable (what we call a patrolman/trooper/officer), the highest you can go in the rank structure is Sergeant.


The India arrangement is probably rooted in the colonial era, where a similar arrangement was done with first East India officers over local troops then the system was carried over for direct British control.

[Ed4032]

Hey it works when schools are consolidated to one district. It makes it harder for parents or the local citizens to have a voice in local policy. It’s a feature not a bug.

[DDTSGM]

I live and work in an area dominated by those small town PDs upon which doubt is apparently being cast. I am not the cops, but I am adjacent to them. Some musings, biased by my own experience:

A small town police chief is accountable to the city council and, ostensibly, the voters that elect their council members.

What do you considered small towns? I ask because in most cities the Chief is accountable to, you guessed it, the Mayor or City Council.

Small town PDs often cannot pay well. I regularly encounter officers who make, hourly, what fast food employees make. You get the people you pay for. Your go-getters either have something else tying them to the agency/locality (home being the most common) or they’re on to bigger and better things once the opportunity presents itself.

This is mostly true. Often small-town officers make less than a good solid blue-collar job in the area. But then again, often city officers make less than workers in good solid blue-collar jobs in their area. While it is often true that small-town officers have a vested interest in the community, they or their significant other may be from the area, there are also other reasons for becoming a small town officer - location being a prime one. Also, while wages may be less in a rural area, the wage usually spreads further.


I know a guy who is a captain, the #2 at the agency; he has barely six years of experience (that’s not to denigrate him at all - he is a motivated officer who learned well, attended good training, and does good case work). He’s on his third “generation” of cops at his department.

I started at what most would consider a small agency, we ran 5 officers per shift when I started. I was running a patrol shift with 8 officers per shift when I left, so the Department grew a little. What I found out was that I had done a fuck-ton more real police work as a patrol officer than the 'big city' officers I later worked with. Largely because I had to do pretty much everything. I quickly learned the difference between a preliminary investigative report taken by a guy who does follow-up and a preliminary report (notice I left out investigative) taken by a guy who just fills in the blanks so the detectives know where to start over on the investigation.

Where the rubber hits the road, it's people who make the difference, not the size of agency they work for.

Speaking of pay, in most of these places the only sure way to increase your pay is to promote. It encourages people who perhaps ought not to be in positions of leadership or specialized slots to continuously apply. In the land of high turnover, eventually your number comes up.

Or, better yet, you promote because of who you are. But, he’s tight with his boss.

As far as I know, most places have service requirements for promotion, and most places, large or small, have folks who apply for ever position they can as soon as they are eligible. Additionally, most large agencies have more 'legacy' cops than small agencies and every agency, large or small, likely has someone stuck to someones backside like a remora fish. These traits certainly aren't limited to small agencies.

A dark side of small town policing is that problematic officers are at times tolerated out of necessity. It’s doubly true in this day and age, where there simply isn’t a long line of people waiting to replace you. Due to whatever you’d like to attribute it to, both hiring and retention are difficult today. Standards seem awfully low at times. An officer will get in trouble at Department A, resign, and within a month or two be working down the road at Department B. It’s almost like nobody’s inquiring with previous employers - or the new employers simply don’t care.

Problematic officers are all too often tolerated at all agencies. Mayb because of unions, maybe because of connections, maybe because it's simply less hassle to tolerate them. Here is an example:

Fifteen years ago, after the Rodney King beating, the Los Angeles Police Department was in crisis. It was accused of racial insensitivity and ill discipline and violence, and the assumption was that those problems had spread broadly throughout the rank and file. In the language of statisticians, it was thought that L.A.P.D.’s troubles had a “normal” distribution—that if you graphed them the result would look like a bell curve, with a small number of officers at one end of the curve, a small number at the other end, and the bulk of the problem situated in the middle. The bell-curve assumption has become so much a part of our mental architecture that we tend to use it to organize experience automatically.

But when the L.A.P.D. was investigated by a special commission headed by Warren Christopher, a very different picture emerged. Between 1986 and 1990, allegations of excessive force or improper tactics were made against eighteen hundred of the eighty-five hundred officers in the L.A.P.D. The broad middle had scarcely been accused of anything. Furthermore, more than fourteen hundred officers had only one or two allegations made against them—and bear in mind that these were not proven charges, that they happened in a four-year period, and that allegations of excessive force are an inevitable feature of urban police work. (The N.Y.P.D. receives about three thousand such complaints a year.)

A hundred and eighty-three officers, however, had four or more complaints against them, forty-four officers had six or more complaints, sixteen had eight or more, and one had sixteen complaints. If you were to graph the troubles of the L.A.P.D., it wouldn’t look like a bell curve. It would look more like a hockey stick. It would follow what statisticians call a “power law” distribution—where all the activity is not in the middle but at one extreme.

The Christopher Commission’s report repeatedly comes back to what it describes as the extreme concentration of problematic officers. One officer had been the subject of thirteen allegations of
excessive use of force, five other complaints, twenty-eight “use of force reports” (that is, documented, internal accounts of inappropriate behavior), and one shooting. Another had six excessive-force
complaints, nineteen other complaints, ten use-of-force reports, and three shootings. A third had twenty-seven use-of-force reports, and a fourth had thirty-five. Another had a file full of complaints for doing things like “striking an arrestee on the back of the neck with the butt of a shotgun for no apparent reason while the arrestee was kneeling and handcuffed,” beating up a thirteen-year-old juvenile,and throwing an arrestee from his chair and kicking him in the back and side of the head while he was handcuffed and lying on his stomach.

The report gives the strong impression that if you fired those forty-four cops the L.A.P.D. would suddenly become a pretty well-functioning police department.

But the report also suggests that the problem is tougher than it seems, because those forty-four bad cops were so bad that the institutional mechanisms in place to get rid of bad apples clearly weren’t working. If you made the mistake of assuming that the department’s troubles fell into a normal distribution, you’d propose solutions that would raise the performance of the middle—like better training or better hiring—when the middle didn’t need help. For those hard-core few who did need help, meanwhile, the medicine that helped the middle wouldn’t be nearly strong enough. (Miilion Dollar Murray, Malcolm Gladwell)

An unintended consequence of all this department hopping is that officers sometimes don’t stick around long enough for their cases to make it to trial. They leave the jurisdiction, stop responding to phone calls, stop cooperating to the point where their old cases get dismissed, and so on and so forth. From an officer experience standpoint, this means many haven’t had to see how their case work held up in court - if they care about such things.

This may be an issue that is more prevalent in your area than other areas. Granted, turnover is a problem with all agencies. In Kansas one small town Chief (15 officers) explained it this way - my guys need to live, if their wife doesn't teach or work at the hospital, they are looking to move east to Hays, and after Hays to Salina. His council understood that and after he did a little work comparing wages and work load with other agencies, he got his guys a significant raise.

It’s a weird dichotomy: on the one hand, policing almost universally represents the largest line item in a municipal budget around here - at times to the detriment of other, necessary services (you haven’t lived until you’ve watched a commission decide to skip buying new tires for the ambulances). On the other, in many instances the citizens are not getting the police they think they’re paying for - in training, experience, equipment, knowledge, or capability.

True. However, very seldom does the level of service increase after that small department goes away and the Sheriff or whomever takes over patrol.

None of this should be taken as me taking a side, but just adding a bit of perspective from a community that’s probably not too dissimilar to Uvalde.

Boy, I'd hate to see you actually take sides.

[ssb]

Boy, I'd hate to see you actually take sides.

Because of the way you responded, I can’t quote you quoting my quote. But:

1) Our “small” departments may have three guys on shift at any given time. The biggest one in my half of the district, in the city where I work, has three six-person shifts when they’re at full staffing (they haven’t been for a while), plus another four detectives. The Sheriff’s Offices tend to be larger. The department with the six-year captain I mentioned has nine on patrol including the sergeant, him, the chief, and I believe three or four reserves.
2) Cost of living is absolutely lower around here, that’s true, and that helps these people. It’s really still not enough - particularly for what they’re expected to do. I won’t say most, but many officers seem to have side gigs. As an example, a group of detectives has a lawncare business with a funny name that makes them far more than their salaries do.
3) I do think the smaller agency guys get to do things bigger agency guys don’t get to do, sooner in their careers, simply out of necessity. I see that in my own career - we’re a smaller office, and so I was assigned the sort of work that my peers in bigger jurisdictions wouldn’t be touching for years. And that’s a tangible benefit. Another perspective on that is that some of those smaller departments have derisively been referred to as field training departments for that reason, and many officers’ employment there lasts about that long.
4) I guess the point I was making - not well - about the biggest budget item/not getting the cops you’re paying for thing is that while these folks seem woefully underfunded, is throwing money at the problem really the solution? The six-year captain department does a hell of a job with what they’ve got, but if they need more, they’re leaning on the county to help out or, if it’s an appropriate problem, our state-level investigative agency. I don’t have the answer there.

I have a lot of bitches about the small town police departments as should be obvious. Don’t take that as me wanting the State to come in with the (state) State Police, or even the county Sheriff to take over, because I actually don’t (there is state involvement I’d like to see, but it’s on the training/professionalization side). At the end of the day it’s the quality of the officer that makes the difference, as you said, and for the most part I’m dealing with motivated people who live in and care about the communities they police, despite the disadvantages they face.

[TC215]

if it’s an appropriate problem, our state-level investigative agency. I don’t have the answer there.

…which exists primarily because a small sheriff’s office screwed up a homicide case.

[Rex G]

Here’s the thing:

More than enough badges showed up at Uvalde to deal with that problem.

The problem wasn’t the size or scope of the agencies involved.

Quoted, for truth. A mere “Like” seemed insufficient.

[Vista461]

In Orange County CA, where I'm from and still have family, many of the smaller municipalities have gotten rid of their PDs and contracted with the OCSO to provide police service. The patrol cars are marked as both OCSO and with the name of the community to which they're assigned, e.g. San Clemente, Dana Point, etc. It seems to have worked out reasonably well.

They have that in the county I work in too. Seems good until the contract deputy gets pulled to another area leaving them uncovered.

There are many times where they have one deputy covering the entire south side of our county. So we end up mutual aided to cover for them and we’re small. I try to tell our board that, and it’s in one ear and out the other. Because “nothing happens here”, yeah because they don’t open their eyes.

[Borderland]

Pretty much everybody not LE-involved in CA regards CHP's primary reason for existence being randomized tax collection. If there's a crash, they'll come around and document it, but get back to writing tickets ASAP. When CHP came to Texas, we got Acevedo.




I've recently realized that a really big chunk of what's going on politically on the right happens in churches, not in media (social or otherwise). A lot of it may make the worst of Fox news seem completely rational. If you aren't in the churches, it's almost completely opaque.

TX has some pretty big churches. By that I mean they have congregations that number in the tens of thousands. The majority of my kin were born and raised there. I was born there and moved away when I was 10. Both of my parents belonged to the Baptist church. The Southern Baptist church in Plano has a membership of 45K. Almost every small town in TX has a Baptist church. It's a bit like every small town in Utah has a Mormon church and most of the folks that live there belong to it. I drove thru a very small town in NV (Caliente) which is very close to UT and the most expensive structure in town was a Mormon church. I doubt a sheriff in TX could get elected if he didn't belong to the Baptist church and didn't glad hand the congregation at the door every Sunday. It's how they roll there.

[Lon]

Here’s the thing:

More than enough badges showed up at Uvalde to deal with that problem.

The problem wasn’t the size or scope of the agencies involved.

So much truth here. Corporal Justin Garner was from one such small agency and proved that. On THAT day, he cowboyed the fuck up and took care of business. My understanding is that he had no formal AS training, but I can’t swear to that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage_nursing_home_shooting

[DDTSGM]

I was tongue-in-cheek with my last statement. I get kind of aggravated, though, when everyone seems to think bigger is better. As in 'big city departments/officers are better' of 'Feds are better' or 'State guys are better.' Not always true, not always false.


I guess the point I was making - not well - about the biggest budget item/not getting the cops you’re paying for thing is that while these folks seem woefully underfunded, is throwing money at the problem really the solution? The six-year captain department does a hell of a job with what they’ve got, but if they need more, they’re leaning on the county to help out or, if it’s an appropriate problem, our state-level investigative agency. I don’t have the answer there.

RE: throwing money at the problem. In many cases, as has already been mentioned, the city/village/whatever, wants to maintain its own identity, and probably, truth be known, control. Eventually, as recent history has shown, citizens get the law enforcement they desire. That isn't always optimal.

In our area multi-jurisdictional tac teams are fairly common, it's a lot easier to send one or two guys to two days of training each month than a whole team. When you have towns with small departments within ten miles of each other, they tend to help each other out. Back in the day I sent the officer on our eastern most beat to back up the single officer on duty overnight in the small town 10 miles to the east for just about any call that needed back up. We were generally quicker getting there than the SO (at the time).

The problem is that even when two agencies work together pretty well, a change in administration - new Chief, new Sheriff - can screw things up.


(there is state involvement I’d like to see, but it’s on the training/professionalization side).

That was my hope for our state. It's been a mixed bag. I had hoped to end my career at our state's 'POST' validating and approving in-service training classes. Despite the example of the EMS and Nursing folks, they didn't go that way, instead if the agency head signs off on it, it's good to go. I've seen some pretty lame training under that methodology and had hoped it would change. Obviously, the powers that be didn't share my vision.

[Borderland]

Where many counties and most provinces have contracted out policing to a national force, it isn't all that, and frankly, many wish they hadn't.

Which would you prefer, a force that is accountable to local government, or a force that is unaccountable to anyone?

<https://www.nighttimepodcast.com/nova-scotia-rampage>

I'll go with this. We had a sheriff here that never carried a firearm. He was in the Cascade Mall when 5 people were killed by a terrorist. He ran away like everyone else. He retired instead of running again. We got the next guy in the command chain (I voted for him) but he hasn't done anything to help me where I live, most notably, traffic control. I can go to my mail box and watch people driving 15 over by the dozens. I sent the sheriff several emails and he did nothing. We just had an election and I got the chance to vote for someone else. If the new guy gets elected and doesn't do anything I'll cast my ballot for a new sheriff again. If nothing else I feel a little better about it.

In the city you get to vote for a mayor. Here we vote for the county sheriff.

[LockedBreech]

None of these solutions matter if you keep losing viable to excellent officers worn out from the BS of this culture and replace them with flaccid, trepid husks that will run and hide when trouble shows up.



This rings true to me. I have not served in law enforcement but my grandpa, dad, and brother did/do and my mom was a dispatcher. I also worked with law enforcement closely for most of a decade prosecuting. Doesn't make me a cop but does give me some insights. I came to get a pretty decent gut feel for officers who could be counted on in the real shit and officers who were basically other paper-pushers with a different work dress code.

Without giving too much detail, my brother's OIS was a fairly direct example of this. My brother is pretty dialed in I believe, and his backup officer is a guy I know well who is very much a professional police officer and who trains frequently. He and my brother directly and properly addressed the threat. The other backup officer, who ended up being dismissed from the department, did not take the report of an armed person seriously. He not only gave badly incorrect call-outs on scene (saying the suspect was not armed when he definitely did turn out to be armed) when it came time to shoot my brother and his backup discharged their weapons. Mr. "there's no weapon" didn't - oh, he tried, but he had his safety on and no round chambered in his rifle because he hadn't taken the threat seriously. He was a "flaccid, tepid husk" as you put it - he looked good on paper, young and eager, but he had no stomach for the work when it counted. If his lack of professionalism had cost my brother his life he'd have had a lot more to worry about than getting fired, but fortunately we didn't get there.

There was another officer I worked with years ago who had zero command presence, fumbled with everything on his tool belt, had no people skills, and I mentioned it offhand to a good officer on his department once. The officer deadpanned back that he would rather go to an active shooter call alone than with that guy as backup. The officers know who these guys are.

Big agency, little agency, doesn't really matter in my opinion. There are "flaccid, tepid" big agencies and dialed-in professional small agencies. What agencies need is the ability to dispense of shitty cops without the mire of politics and to hire cops who will do the job as it needs to be done. While generally the media equates a cop capable of decisive violence with an unprofessional cop, anyone who knows better knows that couldn't be further from the truth. It's perfectly possible to be friendly, legally cognizant, relaxed, understanding, and polite, but have the decisiveness to get nasty when the situation calls for it. I've worked with those officers and they keep the wheels of society from falling off.

[feudist]

I was tongue-in-cheek with my last statement. I get kind of aggravated, though, when everyone seems to think bigger is better. As in 'big city departments/officers are better' of 'Feds are better' or 'State guys are better.' Not always true, not always false.



RE: throwing money at the problem. In many cases, as has already been mentioned, the city/village/whatever, wants to maintain its own identity, and probably, truth be known, control. Eventually, as recent history has shown, citizens get the law enforcement they desire. That isn't always optimal.

In our area multi-jurisdictional tac teams are fairly common, it's a lot easier to send one or two guys to two days of training each month than a whole team. When you have towns with small departments within ten miles of each other, they tend to help each other out. Back in the day I sent the officer on our eastern most beat to back up the single officer on duty overnight in the small town 10 miles to the east for just about any call that needed back up. We were generally quicker getting there than the SO (at the time).

The problem is that even when two agencies work together pretty well, a change in administration - new Chief, new Sheriff - can screw things up.



That was my hope for our state. It's been a mixed bag. I had hoped to end my career at our state's 'POST' validating and approving in-service training classes. Despite the example of the EMS and Nursing folks, they didn't go that way, instead if the agency head signs off on it, it's good to go. I've seen some pretty lame training under that methodology and had hoped it would change. Obviously, the powers that be didn't share my vision.

When I graduated from the academy I noticed that in Roll Call, the Sergeants would pass out a stack of Rules and Regs that we were required to sign for. This happened at least a couple of times a week. Sometimes we'd sign for several at a time.
Nothing was ever said about it. No discussion or even reading it out loud. I just assumed they were updated R&R and would stick them in the New York phone book that was our R&R. I observed that the veteran officers didn't even take a copy, just signed the roster.
Eventually I noticed that these were the exact same revisions that were already in the book.
So I asked.
This was "Roll Call Training", part of our POST certification. It made up more than half of our "training".
This went on for decades.
About 15 years in, a new POST director audited training and had a meltdown. So it stopped. Until the next big meeting of Sheriffs and Chiefs.
Then it was back.

[DDTSGM]

About 15 years in, a new POST director audited training and had a meltdown. So, it stopped. Until the next big meeting of Sheriffs and Chiefs.
Then it was back.

Probably not his hill to die on, which may or may not have been the right choice. Did any of the officers ever complain about getting screwed out of legit training?

I'm kind of an 'any hill' guy when I think something is wrong and it impacts people or the place I work.

We got our first FATS system when I was still typing stuff on an electric typewriter, no Mac's on the desk yet. If you aren't familiar, those first machines ran off a laser disc and were strictly 'shoot-don't-shoot' trainers. They also had a printer which gave a printout of the officer's performance. IIRC (it's been a long time) they listed things like 'poor judgement in a shooting situation' if the student shot late or didn't shoot at all, and 'good judgement in shooting situation' plus, if appropriate the elapsed time from what they felt was the initial threat.

We ran all the students through four scenarios and gave them feedback during the session. When I asked the boss what he wanted to do with the printouts he said 'toss 'em.' I didn't agree and pointed out that if an officer we trained got into a shooting and it came up in court that we had discarded the records, it would look like we were hiding something. Plus, the agency could then wring their hands and say 'you never told us.'

We included the records in the student files from that point forward.

Sometimes you have to work it so folks see how what they are doing could bite them in the ass.

[feudist]

Probably not his hill to die on, which may or may not have been the right choice. Did any of the officers ever complain about getting screwed out of legit training?

I'm kind of an 'any hill' guy when I think something is wrong and it impacts people or the place I work.

We got our first FATS system when I was still typing stuff on an electric typewriter, no Mac's on the desk yet. If you aren't familiar, those first machines ran off a laser disc and were strictly 'shoot-don't-shoot' trainers. They also had a printer which gave a printout of the officer's performance. IIRC (it's been a long time) they listed things like 'poor judgement in a shooting situation' if the student shot late or didn't shoot at all, and 'good judgement in shooting situation' plus, if appropriate the elapsed time from what they felt was the initial threat.

We ran all the students through four scenarios and gave them feedback during the session. When I asked the boss what he wanted to do with the printouts he said 'toss 'em.' I didn't agree and pointed out that if an officer we trained got into a shooting and it came up in court that we had discarded the records, it would look like we were hiding something. Plus, the agency could then wring their hands and say 'you never told us.'

We included the records in the student files from that point forward.

Sometimes you have to work it so folks see how what they are doing could bite them in the ass.

No complaints, just open mockery.
With our FATS, officers were simply cycled through and shot the scenarios. Little or no critique, no score, no record. Just a participation check on the Qual card. That went for all training other than the yearly POST pistol qualification.
Zero accountability or proof that any information was even heard over the snoring.
It was dire.

[vcdgrips]

Misc Data Points. Edge of my lane. Never been an officer with arrest authority.

1. I stand by my prior posts in this thread

2. Recruitment/Retention of quality officers, men and women, black, white and brown has been an continues to be an issue in my metro area. Folks are leaving the profession and/or getting poached off by "better" departments.

3. When I first started my job, all of the "blue coat" security folks were either retired MIL or LEO. An inordinate number of them were retired detectives from KCPD which is not surprising given our location, their experience set and pipeline. Every new hire "knew" somebody unless they were a transfer. It was clear that they had been vouched for etc.

4. Later on, we started seeing 40 somethings mid/late career rural deputies/officers who started getting the blue coat job because it was 2x the pay with better insurance such that the 45-1.5 hr commute ( monster in this metro btw) was worth it. They simply could not keep a house and kids on the pay these smaller depts were paying even if mama had a job too.

5. In the last 5-6 years, these folks are getting younger and younger. They are 30somethings, many w prior MIL, still young enough to do work out on the street so to speak. They just cannot afford to do it w wife and family.

6. This year, for the first time there is a recruiting poster over the lock boxes were folks have to check their guns because the pipe line, even for this blue coat security at the court job that pays 31.86 to start plus benefits, is getting harder and harder to fill.

7. I am prayerful that there will continue to be those that answer the call for such a noble profession.

YMMV Greatly.

[willie]

My opinion is unqualified. My only experience is corrections which does not count when writing about this tragedy. I think that everything that could go wrong went wrong. There were too many cops from different agencies. It appears that chain of command was unclear as in not established. Misinformation interfered. Certainly all individuals present were not incompetent, but poor leadership or lack of structure or both could not overcome stress, horror, and confusion.

At my large high school I failed in convincing the principal to put numbers on the classrooms in case cops or ambulance folks needed to get there in a hurry. I could give more examples of stupidity. The day I retired I took a large box to her office and dumped out knives, ice picks, brass knuckles, numb chucks, black jacks, and shanks. She almost shit on herself and inquired how I took them. I replied that I asked the kid to put it in my desk drawer and in some cases returned the object if I thought it would not reappear. The Uvalde school may have been run by folks as dumb as my principal.

[Caballoflaco]

We just had a three man agency get itself disbanded by the city council.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/08/after-racist-text-vincent-council-reportedly-moves-to-fire-police-chief-disband-department.html


Just days after city officials confirmed a text message containing a racist joke was sent by a Vincent police officer, the city council approved a resolution to engage the termination of Police Chief James Srygley and Assistant chief John L. Goss, according to a report by WBRC.

The council also voted to disband the department and contract with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office for public safety services, the report noted.

The actions were taken during an emotional city council meeting Thursday evening.

Vincent Mayor James Latimore did not immediately respond Thursday night to AL.com about the council’s actions.

City Councilman Corey Abrams, reached at his home following the meeting, declined to confirm the specifics of the action taken, but said: “I’m still emotional about it.”

In the message, which surfaced on social media this week, someone identified as “752″ texts: “What do y’all call a pregnant slave?”

An unidentified recipient responds twice. “?” and “??”

“752″ answers: “BOGO Buy one, get one free”

During the council meeting, Abrams, who represents District 5, said: “This has torn this community apart. It doesn’t matter what color we are as long as we d right by people.”

On Tuesday, he said “appropriate action has been taken” against the officer alleged to have sent the text, though he would not then name the officer or anyone involved.

The City of Vincent’s website lists only three people in its police department: Srygley, Goss, and Lee Carden.

[HeavyDuty]

We just had a three man agency get itself disbanded by the city council.

https://www.al.com/news/2022/08/after-racist-text-vincent-council-reportedly-moves-to-fire-police-chief-disband-department.html

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.