The High Cost Of Patrol
The cost of fuel has become so prohibitive that El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa has asked his officers working the graveyard shift to stop routine patrols, shut their cars off and respond only to emergency calls. "We have told them to cease all routine or random patrols — which means that residents won't see marked units driving through their neighborhoods being proactive," Maketa said. "We've essentially had to turn back to being reactive, primarily because the county doesn't have the revenue to keep our fleet being fueled." Other departments across the state are caught in the budget pinch, but the full brunt of the problem may not hit until next year. The sputtering economy and soaring cost of fuel will force sheriff's departments to make fundamental changes in the way they conduct business, said Don Christensen, executive director of the County Sheriffs of Colorado. "They have hard decisions to make. They are trying to figure out where the hard cuts are," Christensen said. Maketa said that in 2003, the El Paso department's fuel bill was $160,000. By the end of 2004, it was $300,000, and it is now $700,000. By the end of next year, he said, it will be more than a million.
The Denver Post
3 comments:
Use a bike, WALK, or buy mopeds. Have you ever seen a fit cop?
Go back to cops walking the streets. Was a better system than today. Back then if a cop needed help, citizens helped him. Today it seems to take two squad cars, and at least 4 cops to beat the crap out of a drunk or a suspect.
Far as spending a million dollars to heat your facilitys, maybe you need to release everyone who is non violent. I am speaking of huge cutbacks.Needs to be done all over the country. Specially all the security at the courthouses. Who is it they protect??? Sure isnt the citizens.
Yeah, and hike up the price of those donuts even more to prohibit cops from eating them! We've got nothing but reactionaries policing our cities, and it's paramount to another manipulation, and we pay dearly for that manipulation. How about a whole different approach? A sweeping new drug policy that actually taxes the drugs that our reactionary police force CAN NOT stop. Then an incarceration policy that punishes those who deserve to punished and TREATS those who deserve to be TREATED. Then we won't have to have so many stupid cops on the street terrorizing those who they are sworn to protect, and with the savings, we can get more kids an edcucation so we can compete with INDIA and CHINA for all the jobs that we're sending over there!!!
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