Spending Money Just Because They Have Money To Spend

A letter I fired off today:

Office of Mayor Jerry Abramson
Metro Hall / 4th Floor
527 W. Jefferson St.
Louisville, KY 40202

c.c.: LMPD, Governor Steve Beshear, LG&E, Miller Pipeline Co., MSD, LEO Weekly, Louisville Courier Journal, Me Talk Big Noise blog

Re: wasted money

To Whom It May Concern:

There is a question that has bothered me for some time and today I sought an answer: “Why does every utility project require at least one, and usually two cops sitting in their cars with the engine running and lights flashing?” A half of a block on Clay Street, between Market Street and the alley was closed for work by the electric company today. That particular block is short to begin with and the distance from the corner of Clay and Market to the alley is less than 200 feet. There were two massive Louisville Gas & Electric Company trucks blocking the western lane. The eastern lane was blocked by traffic cones and two police cars with an officer in each. One of the cops was asleep, and the other was watching a movie on his laptop. There is very little traffic on that stretch of road as the street is closed at the end of the block. The absurdity of two cars being used to block this is staggering and I would go so far as to say it is a form of theft from the public coffers.

I asked the movie watching officer (the one that was awake) what the logic of this set-up was. He answered that they were “under contract” with LG&E and officers were required wherever work was being done. He couldn’t explain why and I don’t think anyone in government or at LG&E can either, at least not honestly. These two officers, being paid well over $25/hr while their two cars were burning gasoline were doing the job that could be done just as well by a pair of barricades with flashing lights.

This ludicrous use of our police force has bothered me for years. Several years back when I-65 was being resurfaced there was an officer at every single exit and entrance to the highway, sitting in a running police car all night long every single night for several weeks. Explain to me how it would be more expensive and less effective to place concrete barriers with flashing lights and a sign at each of these ramps and remove them at the end of the night. You can’t because it would, in fact, be cheaper and just as effective. Put a phone number on the barricade and pay one person to answer and give directions to those confused about getting out of town. Paying a cop to sit there (especially at the ends of exit ramps) is at best moronic.

Last year here in the Highlands the gas lines were being replaced and along the blocks where work was on-going police officers were stationed with their cars. As best as I can tell they were doing absolutely nothing other than accompanying their gasoline wasting, pollution producing police cars turned lighted barriers. For several days in a row there were large trucks and backhoes parked along the shoulder at Winter and Edward, a difficult intersection in good times and during this work it was impossible to see if there was traffic coming from either direction. Were the officers directing traffic? Were they letting the drivers entering blind from Edward know that it was clear or they should wait? No. They were standing around talking to people from the pipeline company, not directing traffic. Not once in the months the gas crews were working this neighborhood did I see any of these officers doing anything other than standing around, getting paid for breathing.

During heavy work on Bardstown road there were cop cars parked behind concrete barriers with their motors running and lights flashing. To what purpose? None. These cars were doing nothing that could not be achieved by placing flashing lights on the concrete barriers. They were wasting our money, they were wasting natural resources, they were adding age and wear to the vehicles, and they were most certainly not patrolling our streets and alleys, reducing crime.

I thought this stupid waste would have ended after a deputy sheriff was killed while playing barricade on I-64 last year. He was sitting in his car where there should have been a couple of big, dumb hunks of concrete with lights and signs when a truck ran over his car at highway speed, killing him instantly. Did anyone in government think, “Wow, having living people acting as a barricade to traffic may not be a good idea”? Of course not.

And best yet, after witnessing the absolutely moronic use of police officers on Clay Street I drove past Cherokee Park where a far more complicated and much busier set of streets were half closed by barricades and a couple of guys with signs directing traffic. Not a cop in sight and traffic seemed to be moving fairly smoothly.

The city of Louisville has closed parks, cut education funding and increased fees for services because of budget woes but we’re still pissing away thousands of dollars a day having police officers and police cars doing unnecessary jobs. I want these officers on foot patrols in the housing projects, or walking the Highlands at night, not sleeping in a car blocking a half a block of downtown street. Maybe if these fat cops (the officer watching the movie had a belly that would have embarrassed Homer Simpson) were hiking around the city bad things like babies being shot in the Shepherd Square projects or my elderly neighbor’s house being emptied by thieves in the middle of the night might not happen.

Every year I pay my taxes to this city and this kind of thing makes me more angry than I can express in words. Rather than protecting and serving, the Mayor and Chief of Police are going for pretending and soaking. You go to the rich, white parts of this city and wait an hour and you’ll see a police car cruise through, slowly. You can sit at the corner of Jacob and Jackson (huge open air drug market) for two weeks and you won’t see a single cop that’s not driving fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit, eyes forward, passing through. That is unless it’s the week where they try to get in their drug busts for the quarter so they can suck at the Federal teet of “drug enforcement” funding. Then there are dozens of cops being rude to everyone in the area, pushing people around and telling kids to shut the f#@! up while pulling over and searching everyone they profile (i.e. white people or black kids in nice cars). Again, a waste of money, a waste of time, and a waste of any good will of the people that live there.

I invested in property in Smoketown (the historically black part of Louisville) expecting the housing projects to be destroyed and a light rail system (streetcar) to run in front of my door. Neither of these things happened but I’ve kept up the property and lived there for years. Last year my brother and I were held up at gunpoint by three young boys with a very big revolver. It took over a half hour for an officer to arrive (we were two blocks from Broadway). When we called the detective about this, two weeks later, he hadn’t even looked at the case and implied we were criminals ourselves asking sarcastically, “What were you doing in Smoketown, huh?” As it was 11:30am on a school day you would think a quick check of absent male students that lived in that area would’ve solved the case. I doubt he did a thing as we never heard a word from him. Perhaps if the officers sleeping in their cars where street work was going on had been walking around that neighborhood those kids wouldn’t have decided to hold us up. Perhaps if officers were interacting with these children and acting as roll models they wouldn’t think of police only as the bastards that beat up their uncle or sent their mother to prison.

What the police department is doing by accepting these “living barricade” jobs is a form of theft. It enriches the officers that get paid for doing nothing and it fattens the coffers of the police department by payments from the utility companies while taking officers off the street and away from actually keeping the rest of us safe. All of us citizens end up paying for this stupidity whether it’s through our taxes or through the money we pay the utilities. The vehicles we buy are worn doing nothing, the air we breath is polluted by these senselessly running engines, and our police officers feel they deserve to be paid for sitting on their asses which might explain the crap attitudes so many Louisville officers bring to the public they harass and ignore. This just reeks of one thief scratching the back of another thief. The executives of the utility companies get to rub shoulders with the mayor, assuring there will be little examination of what they charge the city, the chief of police can do that bureaucratic thing of taking pride in controlling more money than necessary while doing as little as possible with it, and the mayor can pretend that he’s worried about the city’s budget as he closes parks and slashes pay and benefits and ignores flagrant wastes of money like this while making the donors to his campaigns feel safe by sending cop cars cruising through their crime free subdivisions.

If anyone can explain to me how this makes any sense whatsoever I will be amazed. It smells like business as usual to me and that business is not to the benefit of the vast majority of the taxpayers and utility customers of this community.

Sincerely,
Alan Miller