Hey, there! Log in / Register
Boston Police to lay off 60
By adamg on Wed, 03/04/2009 - 8:57pm
Commissioner Ed Davis today announced plans to lay off 40 police cadets and 20 civilians, disband the department's mounted unit and take other steps to reduce his budget in advance of whatever Mayor Menino plans to announce for job cuts, possibly as early as Friday.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Menino is a moron.
Menino is a moron.
Everyone knows Obama put money in the stim package to keep first responders on the payroll.
The mounted unit?
What will happen to the horses? And, why get rid of the mounted unit, they're one of the best darn things at breaking up unruly crowds.
Instead of cutting out the mounted and bicycle units ...
why not reduce the number of police in cars instead? Get them out of cruisers and onto walking beats.
Im assuming the cost of the
Im assuming the cost of the horses is the reason why.
And horses are the WORST way to handle crowds. Even police horses can get scared and out of control.
I agree with Ron. Less cops wasting gas idling, more cops walking around, riding the trains and being on bikes.
I thought this part was hilarious
"• The Anti-Corruption Unit will be moved to another location."
Spouting nonsense
Horses are one of the *best* crowd control units the police have at their disposal. A mounted officer can often outperform ten foot cops at crowd control. They have height and presence that gives them an advantage to see most of the crowd and be seen by most of the crowd.
The problem with cops out of cars is they can't respond as fast in support to other cops and you need more cops to cover the same amount of ground which costs more than any horse feed you're going to buy if you think getting rid of horses will afford you more foot cops.
I never said horses arent
I never said horses arent effective, I said theyre bad because theyre ANIMALS that cant always be controlled.
A cop with an uzi is better at crowd control than a cop with a stick. A cop with a horse is better than a cop on foot.
Better for the cop doesnt means better for the public.
The Fact that you even
The Fact that you even brought up an Uzi in the first place shows the inteligence of your post. You've obivisouly never seen the Effect Horses have on people. It is like putting a lion in a heard of antelope. You can't get that effect on foot or even on a motorcycle for that matter. The horses invoke a power of fear with gentalness, nothing else performs like this.
walking beats
I think the problem with "getting cops out of cars" is that there arent enough cops in cars to begin with, and those walking beats have already been cut because they are the least productive. Most cops that are in cars are reactive patrols and are needed to respond to the most important cars that involve public safety.
Now take home cars are another story....
Define productivity? Didn't
Define productivity?
Didn't crime rates drop in Dorchester/Roxbury when they got the cops into the communities?
There's no reason not to structure a large foot patrol with officers in cars that can respond as backup. Unfortunately, you need a healthy, athletic force.
yes and no
Most times large foot patrols do not result in crime rates dropping.
It's agreed: Reducing number of police in cars is a good idea.
Having cops walking the beat also has another advantage; it provides the cops with the opportunity for better communication overall with people in the community.
Having mounted police is also a good idea, because they're better able to see something going on from a distance, due to being high above the street, and they can get there faster.
Having bicycle police units is also a wonderful idea.
All told, these three methods enable cops to get to the scene of a crime much more quickly, without having to battle snail's pace or standstill motor vehicular traffic.
easier said than done.
Many times these "walking beats" have been seen as a waste of money and time and have done nothing to reduce crime in high crime areas. On the other hand, an increase in motor patrols in those same areas have also shown to be ineffective.
The Boston police have cut the number of walking beats in order to save money in the past after realzing that crime rates were not effected by them.
There are also dozens of walking beats and community service officers in the city that do this job that the public probably does not notice.
"All told, these three methods enable cops to get to the scene of a crime much more quickly, without having to battle snail's pace or standstill motor vehicular traffic"
Actually usually the opposite is true with this one.
What about plainclothes cops?
That might help, no?
sure they do to an extent
but usually what happens is that there is a minimum amount of cops you need simply to answer patrol calls (fights, alarms, drunks, accidents, medical emergencies, loud parties, domestics). Any extra patrol officers that are working after this minimum can go out in unmarked cars and focus on specific hot spots for crime. This already goes on.
But those two man police cars you see driving around are usually needed cars for those reacive calls.
And there are hundreds of community service officers, walking beats, unmarked gang units and unmarked detective units that do walk, patrol in unmarked cars and are more active in the community. The casual observer would not notice that this is going on.
That was one of the problems a few years ago. Boston was tripling and quadroupling the amount of officers in certain areas in an attempt to lower crime, (including unmarked and walking beats) In the end, crimes were simply not going down.
This is the main problem with urban police departments and crime. Without trying to oversimplify things, crime rates are social problems that law enforcement really cant reduce without resorting to Stalinist or Nazi types of policing.
Boston has one of the largest police forces in the nation
but usually what happens is that there is a minimum amount of cops you need simply to answer patrol calls (fights, alarms, drunks, accidents, medical emergencies, loud parties, domestics). Any extra patrol officers that are working after this minimum can go out in unmarked cars and focus on specific hot spots for crime. This already goes on.
Maybe it's time to start pulling cops from all the fruity special units? Maybe we could demand our police department focus on domestic crime instead of pretend "terrorism"? Maybe the Red Sox can hire their own security details? Etc?
I always find it funny how "terrorism" is defined to exclude when a gangs is "controlling" (ie terrorizing) a neighborhood.
Also, I bet BPD could save a boatload of money going to smaller, fuel-efficient cars. London/UK uses turbodiesel Vauxhall Astras. FWD so good for snow, diesels idle very efficiently (most of the time the patrol cars are sitting idling, keeping the occupant warm and not much else), small so they're nimble and quick to accelerate, etc.
turbodiesel
Can you think of a full-size turbodiesel sedan/hatch made by an American company?
Red Sox
Well the Redsox pay for all those Boston Cops there so the City actually makes money off of those details, and I agree that fords and chevys are horrible choices for patrol vehicles.
And Im not sure what you mean by the "fruity" special units, but those are the ones that actually focus directly on the gang and community problems most of the time. But when cuts are made, those are the first to go.
And that terrorism stuff are all from federal grants that the Boston police have no choice legally to use for anything else other than terrorism.
And Boston has a large police force compared to other large cities because it has less support from ouside agencies like other states do. Cities in Florida and California have very large sherriffs depts, highway patrol depts, and state support that Boston does not have.
So Pete ...
Do you really think that patrolling the downtown areas, the common, the esplanade, and the public garden will be better accomplished by driving around the footpaths (versus bike units)?
The layout of the streets and traffic issues in the central city areas - and large areas without streets at all in the middle - would tend to favor keeping the bike units around for the summer at the very least.
bike units are good
Im not saying they are not. Im just saying the minimum manpower must be serviced by vehicles. Once you have that minimum, then bike units, walking beats, unmarked cars etc are the next best police options.
But many of these places (the common, the esplanade and the public garden) are patrolled by park rangers, and those park rangers will call the police for any police related calls. They handle all the minor stuff themselves. Those areas really aren't hotbeds for a needed police presence anyway.
And my other point about the bike units is that as small as the city is, most 911 calls are serviced faster by cops responding in a vehicle, no matter where it is. Of course, if you put 1,000 bike cops across the city, there is more of a chance that one of them might respond quicker than a car, but I think the number of extra bike cops right now that you could realisticly put out there wouldn't get a great response time.