Northeast News
July 27, 2016
Only in Kansas City does a Mayor defend cuts to the police department by tweeting in his defense that the police department budget has increased every year that he’s been in office. That might fool some of the lesser news-dogs in the main stream media, but not this critically thinking pooch. Of course the budget is going to increase annually because of inflation and a variety of un-fixed costs associated with vehicle maintenance, insurance and a variety of other variables. When looking at the total city budget, not one time since the city’s charter in 1850 has a city budget ever declined from one year to the next. This makes the Mayor’s claim that the “police weren’t cut” a specious defense at best. Fact: on any given day less than ten officers patrol the entire East Patrol Division, the city’s largest and busiest patrol division.
Positions of both civilian and commissioned officers have been cut department-wide, putting a greater burden or patrol officers who already go from call to call leaving very little time for problem resolution, much less grabbing a street taco for a quick lunch. Those cuts to the police budget compromise public safety at large. Now on the heels of the recent line of duty deaths in Dallas, Baton Rouge and for the second time in two months, Kansas City, Kansas, the Mayor and council’s decision to cut the Department’s budget for two years running seems to be coming home to roost. Throw into the mix the social media judgmental component so expertly outlined in the July 13th edition of theNortheast Newsby Chris Andrews, as well as a President of the United States who’s bias against the law enforcement community is widely known, and its clear to see why good, quality commissioned police officers are leaving the field at an alarming rate. The dog also thinks it’s more than a little ironic that the police funding cuts almost exactly match the settlement in the suit brought against the city by the FOP for not fully funding police pensions. This news-dog thinks it’s high time the Mayor and Council stop playing politics with the Police Budget and start giving a little more than lip service when it comes to supporting Blue.
