Minneapolis simply needs, and must have, more police officers. As many readers know I have pushed the Mayor for almost four years to create a 50 man squad to follow drug dealing and crime where ever it goes regardless of precinct or neighborhood. Follow it until it is driven out of Minneapolis. That strategy is predicated on keeping the Precincts at full strength while the problem persists and then reducing it to the needed level afterwards by attrition. Unfortunately, the Mayor and Chief McManus have implemented that good idea by stripping the already critically undermanned Precincts of those fifty officers without starting to hire their replacements..
This has created a moral problem with the street officers that surpasses anything that either Chief Booza or Olson created when Minneapolis officers hated them. Just tonight I talked to officers who say the moral of street officers is at its lowest level in their memory, because they simply can not do an adequate job with the present man power. The Mayor and Chief McManus had better find a way to be more supportive of those fine people in blue, or we residents of Minneapolis are in for a long hot summer. Without confidence in their leaders officers will perform at less than the level they could, then we will really have problems because the already over stretched force will simply slow down. So we in Minneapolis really should be concerned about supporting OUR police officer. God knows they are not getting that support from our political world and their leaders.
We need one hundred fifty more cops and we need them NOW. Of the last inadequate rookie class five already are gone. If the bad moral continues we will have the best of our officers leaving for the higher pay and respect they will get from other cities. Minneapolis Police Officers are in big demand all around the United States. The only place they do not get proper respect is probably from their own leadership. The present political leadership has created this problem, we need to demand that they fix it before Minneapolis again becomes "Murderapolis", and North Minneapolis also requests to be declared a "National Disaster Area" because of crime and blight.
Readers, please do not take either my or any politician's opinion on this matter. Please stop a squad car going by in your neighborhood and ask the street cops their opinion of both their leadership from the City politicians and their feeling about whether there are adequate police officers to provide public safety to Minneapolis. Please ask "REAL" cops what they think. Then post what you find.
Jim Graham, Ventura Village, Third Precinct, and Sixth Ward of Minneapolis.
"It is always an utter folly to underestimate the lure and attraction of a great evil. The whitened bones of their victims litter the highways and byways of mankind's history. Stopped only by the few willing to pay the ultimate price and make a stand." - Toe
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