Richard Anderson wrote: > Yes! It's time to have one police department if for no other reason than to > save money!
I agree that we need to have one police department but I disagree that the reason is to save money. The reason that we need to combine the two police departments is that the Park Board is a city within the city - with 170 separate areas that are spread over about 59 square miles. The Park Board has 53 FTE in its police department. If I remember right, about thirty something are sworn officers, the rest being Park Rangers. It takes seven FTE to fill one seat twenty-four hours per day seven days a week. If I am remembering right, something like half of the sworn personnel are investigators and supervisors and not directly street cops, leaving you the ability to provide maybe two single officer cars around the clock to respond to the 170 different lcoations. Simple math shows that a separate police force cannot effectively patrol the parks. The parks can only be effectively patrolled using the city police force. And the City police already do a large amount of patrol/investigations as people who do bad things in parks often do them outside of the park also. Even if there were a merger, I do not support cutting the police budget. There are parts of the city that are undergoing or are on the verge of undergoing a renaissance if only the crime issues can be addressed. Although there have been sizable reductions in crime, crime still holds many of these areas back. Resources should not be diverted from this very important issue except as a very last resort. I also believe that the Park Board should retain the park rangers. These are non-sworn individuals who provide crowd control, issue parking tickets, manage traffic flow at major events, and do other security-related activities in the parks. It is reasonable that the Park Board retain this function. One place that we need to look to save money is in tree trimming. Minneapolis trims its trees on a five year cycle. It started trimming on this cycle when Dutch Elm hit in the 1980's to reduce the dead wood that the beetle that carries Dutch Elm and never stops. Today, however, most of the elms are gone, yet we continue to trim on this highly agressive style. St Paul is trimming their trees on an eight year cycle and their trees are not falling down killing people willy nilly. It woudl make sense to look here first before cutting the police budget. Carol Becker Longfellow _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
