I have friends on the DeKalb County Police Department and they are worried about the future viability of the Department. At this weeks DeKalb Board of Commissioners meeting the BOC made the tough decision to cut the police officers annual salary by not paying for holidays. The morale of the Department has been low for a few years though I'm told it has been on the upswing recently with the recent political and managerial changes.
CEO Burrell Ellis and the BOC have a tough job of paring down a bloated County budget in very lean economic times and the actions already taken will be reassessed when the revenue projections on real estate taxes are firmed up in April or May. It will be at that time that the financial condition of the county will be completely reassessed and tax increases will again be considered.
Below is the public comment from the DeKalb Fraternal Order of Police at the BOC meeting where he describes the long term affects of lowering police officer salary, offering early retirements when the department is already under staffed and it would take another year to recruit & train the new police officers to work on their own. Though the City of Dunwoody now has their own department, we are still residents of DeKalb County and therefore want a strong DeKalb police force as our neighbor. I don't have the budget answers but I believe that the County by not properly staffing and compensating their police officers are being penny wise and pound foolish in the long term.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkUiAi9TgQ4
1 comment:
What a whiner. The scariest thing is this is the best person the police could send to the meeting.
The police are getting over paid for the poor work they do. How many cases that make it to court are dismissed due to poor police work? I don’t see the DA’s charging back the time they spend on a bad case to the police. The police are not the back bone of the county, the people are. Many of the Dekalb police officers are not even citizens of this county. In hard times we are all asked to make tough decisions, but the police are acting like spoiled children and threatening that if they have to work for a lower pay scale they will not act or perform the duties of a police officer in the same way. This is not only unacceptible but criminal. This shows the need to overhaul the entire system as corruption and threats are rampant in the system. To quote the Republicans “Let’s start with a clean sheet of paper”, if the police gave the public respect then maybe we would give them respect back. This longwinded police officer just keeps repeating the same thing over and over. We will be less safe, I don’t think that 92 year old Kathryn Johnson, who was killed and then set up by the police, would agree. A good way to reduse the police budget would be to allow the offices to do community policing. Park the partrol car and walk, could be a start for the city police to start saving lots of money fast.
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