Are Police Departments Worthy of Funding Increases?

Dave Smith
October 6, 2006

During the 2006 Election cycle, cops will ask us for more money. We will hear the usual mantra because it is always the same and it is usually accompanied with threats. They will say that due to budget cuts or a lack of increased funding, they can not effectively police and patrol our streets and the result will be a consequent increase in crime. I don’t buy it because I know that they serve themselves before they serve the interests of the people whom they protect. I know this because the statistics prove that traffic enforcement is almost always their top priority. Why? Because traffic enforcement generates a lot of money for the department and the processing of criminals costs the department money. I will vote no on any and all tax increases aimed at increasing revenues for police on grounds that they would most likely use it to hire more traffic enforcers.

A few months ago, we were robbed at a construction job with the loss of thousands of dollars worth of tools. I called police and the responding officer came to investigate, which of course was too strong of a word for what he did. He merely wrote down a few things and left to resume his traffic enforcement. The construction site was in a small rural community that has a large traffic highway entering it with the usual reduced speed signs as you enter the outskirts. As people come into town at highway speeds they are routinely nailed by local cops when the speed drops to 35. So it is very normal to see people pulled over in that 2 mile stretch of highway. Anyways, he assured me that solving cases are indeed important to his local PD and they would do their best to catch the burglar. Sure, I could believe that. It sounded nice but in reality, it was a pipe dream and he knew it.

As for the crime, we knew that the perpetrator went out the back door because it was open when we arrived that morning. Since we had a good idea who did it, I pleaded with the Police Department to come and fingerprint the back door because their fingerprints of who did this were likely to be there. Three days passed and they kept blowing me off and they told me that they wouldn't get anything they could use because other contractors would have been coming and going. I tried to explain to them that I had no other contractors at the jobsite in over a week and that we had completely avoided using that door after we discovered the robbery. Essentially, unless he was wearing gloves, the suspect’s fingerprints were on that door and they couldn’t be bothered to come out and do their job to catch criminals.

After three days of harassing them, an officer was dispatched to fingerprint the door. Upon completion of dusting the door, the officer explained that because of moisture on the metal door, all of the prints on the door were damaged and would be useless. “WHAT? You have to be kidding me,” I said. Had they done their job on the first day, they would have the suspect’s fingerprints. We even had a good idea who did it and I had got the suspect to send me a construction bid that would have had their fingerprints on it. My theory was that if we could match fingerprints then we know who it was who robbed us. This was an easy slam dunk case.
Realizing his mistake, the officer then tried to placate me by telling me that he would talk to this sub-contractor and see if he could use his "police skills" to weed the perp out. Maybe the guy would get nervous and make a mistake. A week later, the officer starting calling me and he left several messages on my machine for the suspect to call him back. He did not even get the phone number, which I supplied to him, correctly. I called him back and told him his mistake and he said, "Oh, this is kind of embarrassing." You bet it was. Yet, I see this officer drive around the elementary school several times a day, issuing tickets for people driving 25 in a school zone marked 20. Clearly, law enforcement is NOT the primary priority for local police departments. I am sick of this stuff. Cops are always complaining that they don't have enough money to fight crimes but we see them on the side of the road in creative little spots that are hard to see from the road. Meanwhile, real criminals are left un-caught and crimes unsolved. I say, NO! I have had enough.

According to a 2000 report of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Portland, Oregon police only responded to 48% of the calls that were made. The City of St. Helens, which in 2004 was ranked 13th in Oregon for violent crime, solves only about 52% of the crimes that are reported. However, this statistic was weighted in favor of only a few categories where they were tremendously successful. For violent crime only robbery and assault were solved at rates exceeding 50% and drug laws and DUII were solved at 82% and 100% respectively. Perhaps that is really good compared to other cities and the officers should be commended in their pursuit of the bad guys.

Unfortunately, when one juxtaposes their dispatch activity with these unsolved crimes, one begins to wonder. Over the last year, the St. Helens PD dispatched officers 12, 846 times responding to 911 calls. Several, if not many of those incidents were medical and accident related calls. During the same year, the St. Helens PD pulled over 2,993 people for traffic violations. That means that they pull people over for traffic violations 22% of their overall responses to 911 calls. One has to wonder. If the St. Helens PD spent the time on investigating the remaining 48% of those crimes not solved rather than pulling people over, would crime in St. Helens, Oregon continue to go unpunished?

An Oregon State Police Officer responded to a blog stating, “…OSP does not have a quota per se, but …We are expected to “stop” and make contact. A warning is as good as a cite. Our time is broke up …65% patrol, 25 criminal, 5% admin, 5% other….I don’t keep track, the brass does.” Why does the OSP stress that 65% of their officers’ time allotment be spent on patrolling? The answer is simply that patrolling will get the state ticket revenue. OSP officers are tax-men with badges. According to the criminal-law-lawyer-source.com, they state that, “Traffic tickets have become big business for a lot of different agencies. In fact, some estimates suggest that traffic tickets are a one billion dollar a year industry.” Isn’t that a strong motivation for police administrators to pressure their cops to spend significant time patrolling our streets to protect our society from speeders? Speeding revenue was so important to the City of Coburg that the police department pressured city planners to expand the city limits to include a small stretch of Interstate 5. Is there any question as to the true motivations of our law enforcement establishment? Who cares about the rapists and murderers? They don’t make the police any dough.
This election cycle, I call upon my fellow conservatives to start getting tough on cops and the way they manage their tax dollars. Remember that they ultimately work for us and they are clearly falling short. The next time you see those red and blue lights in your rear-view mirror, just think about the burglar or rapist who’s walking by on the sidewalk, smirking that the cops don’t care.