Dwight Hobbes August 30, 2004 Nine officers are expected to retire from the Minneapolis Police Department next year and, if Mayor R.T. Rybak can get his projected 2005 budget past the City Council, those cops will not be replaced.
Nine officers sounds like an optimisticly low estimate- typically cops are eligible for retirement after 25 to 30 years service, thus making on average 3-4% of the force eligible for retirement in a given year. With the force down to maybe 700 officers we should be seeing 20-30 retirements next year. That number doesn't even include officers taking early retirement or disability retirement options, so we could see our already decimated police force lose another 50 or more officers next year.
It would be most responsible of him to take another look at the books and figure out somewhere else to make this cut. Starting, for instance, with the $200,000 that will be spent on, of all things, a study on streetcars on the Midtown Greenway.
Agreed- I noted that questionable budget item too. We have a wealth of volunteer groups with rail experience in this area at Minnesota Transportation Museum, the U of M Railroad Club, and other groups. I suspect they'd be willing to do that study for the cost of expenses like copying, etc.. I'm sure we'd all rather have a couple more cops on the street that yet another consultants report littering the shelves of the Municipal Information Library.
Inner-city African-Americans, many of whom have had the most trouble with cops and condemn the Minneapolis Police Department as racist, in their own best interest ought to be first in line trying to help the MPD.
Agreed. None the less the Police Department needs to take action to reassure us that we won't be hassled by the police when we cooperate with them. The other day I was officially invited to the weekly CODEFOR meetings, However, with a criminal warrant for my arrest for possession of peeling paint still active, and our Police Department's recent arrest of an HCMC physician for following the ethical standards of his profession, I'll pass on the invitation- no point in getting hauled off to jail if I say something that ticks off the chief or his minions.
Activists who've protested racial profiling and selective excessive force would do well to vehemently speak out and demonstrate against decreasing the police force. Regular, everyday citizens should be dispatching letters and telephone calls demanding that their City Council representatives oppose this planned cut.
Agreed- abuse is fed by understaffing and a general feeling among cops of futility.
Police officers, frankly, are the only protection they have. There is no place to turn when crack is peddled practically on their doorsteps. There's no one else to call when they're victimized by burglarizing junkies. The plague of drug traffic continually worsens in their neighborhoods and certainly won't lessen with fewer cops on patrol. There's long been a hue and cry for more cops of color -- but with nine fewer positions, well, do the math.
Agreed- but we need those cops sent where they're needed too. Last night I shopped the new West Broadway CUB at midnight and found two squads in the CUB lot, two more squads within a couple blocks on West Broadway, as well as three of CUB's own security guards. No wonder the drug dealers so confidently do business in the residential neighborhoods a few blocks away.
BTW, CUB's security tried to get me to check my bag, a request that has never been made of me at a CUB store before. With a PowerBook and ham radio in that bag I wasn't willing to surrender it, and was rather troubled that CUB was more concerned about the security of their groceries than my electronics. BTW, I was wearing a Postal Service uniform and ID at the time which should have at least established that I was not a common criminal. One can imagine the reception one of my fellow Postal Workers of African-American decent would have received in plain clothes...
The mayor would do a great deal better, instead of expediently talking feel-good talk, to responsibly walk the walk, making it a priority that inner-city life doesn't get any worse.
And until he does we inner city taxpayers rather than upgrading our homes and increasing the tax base might be better off buying RVs (which don't pay property taxes) and camping in the best policed and safest place in Minneapolis- the West Broadway CUB parking lot!
The last thing crime-ridden communities need is a weakening of the only thing standing between decent folk and criminals.
Amen
hangin' on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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