Paul Lohman wrote:
I would point out to Ms. Carlson that the best interests of the City
involve a whole lot more than just police officers. The City budget
has to balance and so hard choices are made, and they're made
everywhere in the budget, not just in the police department. Should
we give up on every other program in the City budget just so the
Police Federation is happy? ...
There are special interest groups all over the city (and on this list)
that are not happy with what has happened during the past few years.
But all I see is complaining about their own special interest.
This kind of commentary really grinds my grits. My special interest is
having the police around to help us, particularly in the core city, keep
a lid on the predators. Only last night I 911ed 9 shots fired from a big
caliber gun within 100 feet of my house. I have to do that on a fairly
regular basis. So far as I was able to ascertain, no one got shot during
this particular instance, but that is not always the case. My neighbors
and I have called in fire bombings, street fights, shooting with
victims, arson, vandalism, prostitution, and drug dealing. We have some
40 children under the age of about 15 on this block alone and another 40
on the adjacent block. Did the shots fired hit Charlie's son, age 4? Was
it Cici, having walked to the store for her mother? Was one of my
housemates in the line of fire? Was my foster son, who comes home late
being a young man about town, the recipient of those bullets?
You have a lotta damn nerve accusing anyone of whining. It's not about
balancing the budget, it's about upon whom the budget is balanced and
who is served by the way in which it was balanced and who was
disadvantaged. A mayor who slices and dices the police budget to the
point where the Chief of Police is saying he needs another 100 people to
do the work of the police department is not working for the city as a
whole. He's cozying up to the comfortable at the expense of the body
politic as a whole.
It could very well be that in other neighborhoods where folks are not
dealing with this sort of madness it seems logical to cut the budget in
the police department or it could just be the selfishness of the better
off when it comes to "other people's" (therefore of no concern) lives.
I'm voting for the latter, using this post as yet another example.
I have seen three children die--one bled out in the gutter after a drive
by shooting. One's brains were spattered all over a back yard fence.
(The fire dept. backed up, opened the hose, and washed that child's
brains into the gutter drain. Another lay dead on the sidewalk in broad
daylight again. A little girl was murdered inside her family home.
Who are you, Mr. Labeler, to hold our lives as less important than
yours? Who are you to agree to sacrifice children here to keep your
wallet comfortable? Who are you to call anyone a whiner or label
anyone's speaking truth (if not necessarily to power) "special interest"
and therefore whose legitimate issues are dismissable while you kow-tow
to the almighty budget?
Some 70%+ of the voters agreed to spend $140 million on the library
buildings, $100 million of which was purely optional. RT supported a new
library downtown and cut the police department and the library operating
budget. Who has their priorities screwed up?
I'm sick to death of all y'all and way tired of listening to repeated
pompous and erroneous declarations of fiduciary wisdom. You want to live
in a city, then you have to pay your fair share of the cost of a city.
That includes holding our lives as more important than any budget.
WizardMarks, Central
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