Will police give up their take-home cars to save the jobs of their fellow officers? File
When the stimulus package was being hammered out, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanual is supposed to have said, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste” or words to that effect.
I wonder if there's some of that sort of thinking going on in City Hall as we deal with the budget crisis and police lay offs.
The mayor has grounded the police helicopter and put the mounted patrol out to pasture. The officers are being returned to patrol duties.
There are legitimate uses of police helicopters and mounted officers too, but I'm not convinced they were the best used of the manpower.
A helicopter is useful in chase situation, but it also magnifies citizen perceptions of crime every time people hear the police buzzing in a tight circle overhead at night. I'm willing to say I’m not convinced it's the optimum good use of manpower or money, but once the city was invested in the helicopter business, there was really no getting out of it – until now.
Obviously, mounted patrols are better at crowd control than ordinary officers, but crowd control is typically on a lower order of police priorities than responding to calls for help from crime victims. Again, I'd rather have the officers in cars responding to calls.
Neither of those changes would have been possible without the crisis.
The real feat would be if the city could turn the budget crisis into an opportunity to break the Fraternal Order of Police's lock on take-home cars.
The cars are built into the police contract and have been for years. They are (for good reason) a bone of contention for taxpayers, who don't typically get cars from their employers and can't understand why the city is providing transportation, especially to officers who live in other cities.
But no mayor has had any chance of driving that issue out of the police contract until now.
Even now it may not happen, but there's the best chance for it in years because instead of the city trying to take a privilege away from the officers, the crisis has transformed the issue: Now it’s the union refusing to give up a perk to save the jobs of its own members.
I'm not saying there are any ulterior motives at City Hall about the budget crisis. I think the revenue shortfall is legitimate and the cuts were made in good faith: They were the best of a series of bad alternatives available to the mayor.
But I also think there's some interesting reshaping of the police department's attitudes and priorities possible in a time of budget crisis that would never have happened otherwise.
