Blame whoever you like - But thanks to many factors our city of nearly 1 million found itself short on police manpower during Saturday's 3rd shift.
Homicides routinely take a large chunk of manpower off the streets. Responding officers, supervisors, crowd control, crime scene preservation, interviewing witnesses and more. This response is necessary to push the odds of an arrest in the favor of the community. The concept of leaving no stone unturned doesn't happen without manpower.
Yet, CMPD's ranks are so depleted that when a second homicide call came in on Saturday, resources were stretched thin. When the 3rd call came there were simply not enough officers able to respond.
CMPD was short handed.
Dispatch did the best they could sending calls for service to outside divisions, Officers in South responding to calls in Steelcreek. North running to Metro. But what that created was voids in the normal coverage and not enough manpower to respond to the 3rd homicide.
Who is to blame? Raleigh for starters, CMPD won't say but the attrition rate among CMPD Officers is at an all time high and the cost to taxpayers is huge.
Here's the issue, CMPD recruits and trains their own officers. Once they complete training they are an investment, but the life of a rookie officer isn't fun. It doesn't take much to start looking elsewhere or to discover with their training and major department experience they are highly marketable.
Why Raleigh? They pay more 15% more on average, and then there's the cost of living which is considerably lower, traffic is less, crime rate much lower. And because the ranks of Raleigh's Police Department are growing there are more chances for advancement.
Its not just Raleigh, DOJ, Homeland Security, and even private operations are looking for well trained officers.
But the real blame goes to your city manager and the Charlotte City Council. Those potted plants that are more interested in spending tax player dollars on affordable housing and what happens to the Eastland Mall property to effectively address the CMPD pay issue.
8 comments:
The so called manpower shortage has been several years in the marking. Attrition and retirements outpace hiring. Couple that with no raises for senior officers in15years, little to no leadership tendencies among the entire command structure, overworked and under appreciated patrol officers, constamt rewards, raises, amd benefits for command staff while the working folks get squat amd you have a recipe for disaster. Constantly arriving at work to see four or five units working the majority of days is irresponsible, unsafe, insulting, amd dangerous. Sadly, command staff does not care about the safety of patrol despite platitudes. They will gladly pull from patrol to supplement any city sponsored event and patrol can go hang. Because it doesn’t mean they will be inconvenienced or have to work a weekend, a holiday, or a shift. Their yearly bonus depends on saving money in the district meaning killing off overtime use and controlling costs. There is a true Us vs Them attitude throughout the department.
Is it going to take the death of yet another CMPD Officer to make someone finally question this house of cards? Problems abound throughout the department. Morale is at a all time low. Why would anyone be an advocate to either come work here or to remain here any longer than necessary?
So what I'm hearing is Sunday at 2 am when the 3rd homicide call came in, officers in South Charlotte started covering other areas, which either left large sections of South Charlotte totally without coverage or a single officer with absolutely zero backup any closer than 5 miles away. Fiction or fact?
Charlotte is a war zone. Get your popcorn ready, niggas. I'm coming back....
Rodney
Criminals are the bottom 10% of society. Cops are the bottom 20% of society.
The disconnect.......is that cops demand respect of the 80th percent and up. That is a joke. These people are jokes in the own right, but not as bad as hardened criminals. They still shoplift and fuck each other, though.
I can tell you how they lost 1 recruit.
A white recruit put a FB post in support of Donald Trump. A week later, a senior black officer called him into his office and called him a "racist". They forced him to resign.
The recruit was hired by the SBI, and makes more money than the black CMPD officer.
Spineless pussies!
Internal management at CMPD has become so nepitistic and the city politics so hostile to Police, I am not sure any raise will stop the bleeding.
Especially when the published raise isn't even close to reality. Trying to Bull@#$% cops is a bad idea. Cops are pro BS detectors.
City leaders will lose all confidence from it's police force by being dishonest and playing games with numbers rather than just laying out the truth..
Corporate leadership styles of "sell them the truth" doesn't work on Cops and Military guys.
Something the ass kissing white shirts forgot because they push paper and won't even do ride alongs to refresh their memory. Most of the corporate city leaders just don't get that anyway.
If things don't change soon proactivity will fall even more and attrition will increase. The second the economy slows Charlotte may he the next Baltimore or Detroit. Once great cities that became @#$@.
Short handed?? Maybe if IA wasn’t firing officers for BS then we’d be fully staffed. This rapid rate of firings never happened under Stevens.
You get what you sow. This BS started with King Rodney and now is continuing with King Putney. They both are racist and have chips on their shoulders. If they hired someone outside the department with integrity, for the chief then this probably wouldn't be happening. Plus the command staff has no balls to stand up for the officer's in the field who are constantly getting screwed over.
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