[EdGreene]

Better hope it is not your city that gets a dirty bomb.

Police, fire departments see shortages across USA
Read entire article here:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...sacrossusa&e=4

By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
Mayor Jane Campbell calls police and firefighters part of the nation's "domestic army" - the troops who will be called upon to respond to the next terrorist attack. But in Cleveland and many other financially troubled cities, the ranks of those first responders are thinning.
At least two-thirds of the nation's fire departments are understaffed, according to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), which sets firefighting codes and standards. The shortage is worst in rural volunteer departments that have trouble recruiting new members. But many big and medium-size cities that are more likely to be terrorist targets are also short-handed.
Some, including New York, have had to close fire stations; others, such as Houston, have had temporary closures. In many cities, response times are slower, and trucks go out with too few firefighters.
That can have a real impact. Investigators cited many factors that contributed to the deaths of 100 people in a West Warwick, R.I., nightclub fire last year. But a report commissioned by the state noted that the five firetrucks at the scene arrived with only two firefighters each - half the number recommended by the NFPA - and video showed delays in getting hoses turned on.
(SNIP)
Many big-city police departments such as Cleveland also are bleeding officers. Nationally, the number of police has remained stagnant in recent years, despite federal help from the Clinton-era COPS community-policing program, which spent $9 billion to help put 118,000 more officers on the streets.
The Bush administration, which has emphasized training and says staffing levels should be largely a local responsibility, is phasing out the program.
(SNIP)

[Ciberblade]

I think what this really points at, is a problem of quantity over quality. It is not very different than the issue with teachers I addressed not long ago.

[rmay635703]

Quality is no substitute for quanitity, you need a little of both.

I would ask do you feel safer with 85%+ of our troops overseas and fewer police?

Who would man the jets against another attack here at home when there is no one to fly the jets?

Many entire divisions are gone leaving a skeleton crew here at home. I think we're more vunerable now with all our troops out than with at least some of them here.

Cheers

[Ciberblade]

It is a large problem to be sure...

...remember how the Roman empire was defeated?

[iltos]

Originally Posted by ciberblade

I think what this really points at, is a problem of quantity over quality. It is not very different than the issue with teachers I addressed not long ago.

...i live in a little foothill town northeast of los angeles....thirty years ago is was a quaint backwater, a mix of hippies living in the canyon at the back of town and descendants of the folks who settled the place still living in the neighborhoods....had a volunteer fire department, a famous volunteer search and rescue team (the san gabriels are some of the steepest piles of decomposed granite in the world) and a single police car

today its a quaint hip place....still mostly (old) hippies (with jobs now ) in the canyon, with assorted foreigners and students and artists and tradespeople....and a few remnants of the "old timers" in town....and a whole bunch of wealthy folk who consider it their "suburb"....the search and rescue team is sort of an "active memory", the fire department is still all volunteer, but we have 32 paid policeman now, with 11 cruisers, an suv, and a woman who drives around in an unmarked car (less you live here ), doing what is called "code enforcement"....things like making sure that people keep their hedges low at intersections, and don't park their cars on the lawn.

its a quiet place....in thirty years, there has been one violent death, outside the bar in town, a shooting by an off duty cop five years ago (one of the then 21 officers on the force, 19 of which....then....lived elsewhere....of the current 32, 27 don't live in town......)

so what do the police do here in this incorportated town of 10,000? well....they accompany the volunteer fire department on paramedic calls...usually three carloads....they park two or three cruisers around town everyday, so that the unsuspecting will obey the traffic laws as they pass thru (they use the suv, i think, just to accompany the officer who drives and parks the cruiser, so he has a ride back to the station), they patrol "the boulevard" (the one main street through town) like avenging angels at night, well equipped with both the brightest damn floodlights i've ever seen (they create an "instant interrogation room" if you happened to get stopped) as well as the attitude that everyone they stop is either drunk or stoned, and they follow up on calls from concerned citizens who see something odd going on outside their window (like a stray dog barking at their fence, or a guy with a backpack walking down the street)....

not a lot then....but their growing presence is apparently justified, as it continues....and imo (and this is the point)....the justification boils down simply to presence, apparently (the parked cruisers, the clamps on the boulevard at night) to stave of the occassional and completely random burglaries that blow into town once every couple of years for a single night, hit a couple cars for a few bucks and a cd player while breaking a window).....

.....course, the truth is that they never catch anybody, or even do much in the way of investigation (which is understandable, btw, given the "gravity" of the crime)....but their presence is viewed by the wealthy influx of "suburbanites" as a deterrent

the only way to make this town any more quiet is to have, say, a policeman for every street (there are 187)....or to let them all go, except one for each shift, and use the money to buy a whole lot more cruisers

[Ciberblade]

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that less is more.

I see the focus on numbers (at least these numbers (as in people)) as tragic. I worked at a company that employed 13 field techs. Two of us had calls per day closed 2-3 times that of everybody else. Now to the paper pushers, that translated into 'goofing off on the job'. When in reality it was a matter of efficiency. You see because of the speed in accurately troubleshooting the problem, left more time for preventative maintenance. Which results in lower calls per day. Now after some revised training techniques, the company now employs only 8 field techs, with 2 in-shop techs for difficult problems and training, and more work is getting done than before. Yes 3 people had to look for work, then again -- it is the nature of the beast...be good, or be gone.

[DiSaidSo]

The good thing about towns like yours, iltos...the criminals know that the police don't have anything better to do. So if they catch you, they're going to prosecute you.

Staffing and recruitment of local police forces are the responsibility of the city. It's up to the municipalities to manage their money to be able to PAY for the firemen and policemen. If you can't pay your forces, they will get jobs in the suburbs where the pay is higher and the crime is lower. I had a long talk with an officer from a town that sounds a lot like the one you live in, iltos. He used to be a fed, but now he is a captain for the sleepiest town in Texas. He could be an officer in Dallas in a second, but he says he's too old for that kind of excitement. He tells his new recruits that if they want to bust down doors, they should go work for Dallas. I think police officers either do it for the adrenaline or they do it for their community. They don't do it for the pay.

But on the other hand, they deserve more pay than they get. Ditto for firefighters.

Bush also cut Project Impact under FEMA. This was a program to help communities prepare and mitigate for disasters. It could save FEMA and the participating communities literally millions of dollars. I don't know why he cut it, but I'm still kinda pi$$ed at him for it. I wrote a paper on the program for my disaster mitigation class in college and I was amazed at some of the great stuff this program funded and how much better these communities are going to fare the next time there's a huge rainstorm or an earthquake or a hurricane. But alas, politicians are not emergency managers. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, was a governor and a lawyer and had no experience in emergency management. Pfft. I am not a fan.

Wow. Tangent!