Fewer Cops? Expect MORE Crime

A major central Fornicalia law enforcement agency (of which I am familiar) must, due to lack of cash, cut its complement of deputies back to 1970s levels:

Patrol staffing will be knocked down by 74 percent – leaving just 10 cars patrolling the entire unincorporated county at any given time. Detective staffing will be halved. Helicopters will be grounded, the Problem-Oriented Policing program will be disbanded and dispatchers will be in triage mode as they assign precious few resources to calls for service.

The department will look "pre-1970," said sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tim Curran.

"While the population of the county has grown exponentially and so has crime, we'll have the same number of deputies patrolling the streets of Sacramento County as we did in 1970," Curran said. "The impact will be devastating to the taxpaying citizens of Sacramento."

On Friday, (Sheriff) McGinness said his department will have to lay off 80 more deputies than initially anticipated – for a total of 209 – to cut $57 million. In addition, 22 non-sworn employees will be laid off.

"There's nothing good about it," he said, "unless you're a criminal."

The Sheriff was taken to task, recently, by publicly revealing that the budget cuts would in fact decimate the department. The fight for public safety funding, between the Sheriff and the County Executive, who controls the budget figures before sending them to the Board of Supervisors (and few persons trust the CEO), went into the media domain recently and, it would appear, the County Executive's Office is winning.

Some time ago, our County Executive promised to make this county the "shining star" in the state in terms of providing social services. Police and fire response? Ehh, not so much. Let's just say he's not the Prime Cheerleader for my department, and leave it at that.

Remember the final sentence from the above quote? It's odd our Sheriff would say that, because a local TV channel began to interview inmates leaving the massive downtown jail this past Monday and Tuesday. One quote from the article:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Inmates inside the Sacramento County Main Jail are using deep budget cuts as an opportunity to plan more crimes, KCRA 3 has learned.

"There's going to be hella crime. There's going to be a lot of crime," said Alfredo Gaeta, a man who admitted he just recently got out of jail for assault with a deadly weapon. "People are actually talking about it."

Those cuts set to begin as early as next week, according to sheriff's staff, could mean the number of patrol cars working at any given time would drop from 38 to just nine countywide.

The sheriff's union said such cuts would mean that its deputies could not adequately enforce the law or protect people from crime.

"There's no doubt the ability to protect the innocent and the most vulnerable people in the county is going to be compromised," Sheriff John McGinness said.

The final lines in the article?

According to Gaeta, that reality could mean a spike in crime if those cuts are made as planned. "There's a lot less eyes looking at crime," Gaeta said.

On the other hand, our Sheriff has said he'll have no alternative but to begin issuing more CCW permits.

It'll be the Wild West all over again.

BZ

P.S.

I carry a gun and I'm glad I live 79 miles away from where I work.