Police departments that are over-funded always have one or more of the following:
Unnecessary Backups—You see this when two or three cruisers appear to back up an officer making a routine—not a felony—traffic stop. No warrants, no guns, no searches, no drug-sniffing pooches, just guys milling around while one of them scribbles a ticket. Another clue is when you see a dozen cruisers, helicopters, drones, armored personnel carriers, K9s, and Caterpillar house destroyers mobilize to chase some mope with a warrant over fences through back yards and down garbage can alleys.
Popo Appear in Traffic Court—When cops take a “court day” it usually means they are off duty but on the clock for a full shift, even if they testify for only a few minutes. In trials of non-criminal parking citations, like one in which I recently appeared, this is an outrage. In departments with places to go and hoodlums to arrest, this never happens.
Many Strange Craft Wheeled, Tracked, Rotored and Propellered—Overfunded departments always have exotic and fabulously expensive vehicles in which to whizz through land, sea, and air. In my city, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office (JSO) has the full panoply—armored personnel carriers (APCs), turbojet helicopters, high-speed boats and Caterpillar “Rooks” to slice through buildings that hide the occasional barricaded and armed maniac. My favorites are “command” vehicles, basically RVs with computers and antennas. Some have roll-out awnings and a window for food service. An office, radio room and roach coach all in one! Who knew?
Even though the APCs come gratis from the Department of Defense, the bills for oil changes, diesel fuel and repairs are staggering. These things rumble around town now and then, but they almost never fire their weapons, since a .50 caliber slug or a 30mm cannon round can blast through multiple people and buildings and still make it to the county line.
Whack-a-doodle Vehicles—You often see over-funded cops zipping about in golf carts, all-terrain vehicles, trikes and bikes, and occasionally an electric, gyro-stabilized unicycle with a Popo on top that shows the world that the cops are going green and mean. None of these can transport a detainee or carry the rifles, shotguns and ballistic shields that are vital when things get hairy.
In Police Zone I where I live, bad guys occasionally stop by to splash some brains on the pavement and grab a stash. I doubt they would be deterred by a golf cart with a flashing blue light. To paraphrase the famous “Cops” song, “What-cha gonna do when they shoot at you?”
Horses—Police on horses occasionally clop-clop through my neighborhood. They never catch any bad guys since the local mopes are agile and know how to zig-zag through back yards and hop fences. The nags do leave steaming piles of poop for me to step in when I’m walking my Shih-Tzu.
Pachydermatous PR—These are usually roll-outs of “programs” and “initiatives” with titles that are hopeful but vague. In Jacksonville, “community policing” usually means having commanders sit down with the great and the good to agree that crime is bad and murder deplorable. It also refers to the sheriff’s strolls along peaceful and prosperous streets to chat up voters before election day.
The most annoying are canned PR programs with names that usually begin with “Operation…” and that are deployed with the media equivalent of drum rolls and trumpet flourishes. The rubes don’t know that most of these are purchased at police trade shows and make no changes to standard operations.
Especially memorable was “40,000 Door Knocks.” This was a fave of the last sheriff, who vowed to have cops knock on 40,000 doors to ask if anyone knew who was murdering whom in our fair city. They never knocked in my neighborhood because a) door knocks can be answered by bullets, and b) everybody, including me, knows “nuffin’ ‘bout nuffin’” except what will happen if we snitch.
The current most outrageous Police PR gimmick is the tractor trailer game center staffed with smiling officer friendlies. These rigs get parked in the high-homicide parts of town and the doors thrown open so one and all can enjoy rounds of War Hammer, HALO and Call of Duty.
The idea is that drive-by shooters, wife beaters, gang-bangers and the violently insane will have so much fun gaming that they will forget to kill people. This is the twenty-first century equivalent of Al Gore’s famous, and famously absurd, midnight hoodlum basketball. I predict that mobile police game rooms will fizzle when bad-boys steal the things. I’m tempted to steal one myself. The state line is only 30 miles away.
The only metric that matters to citizens is the body count. In overfunded departments, the murder rate, and the rates of felony battery and rape, don’t go down no matter how much money is spent. This is because such departments’ missions and tactics are ineffectual, and no amount of money will fix those.
Wes Denham is the author of two books on criminal justice and the occasional column, “Crime City.”