Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Police to pay fee for off-duty use of cars

Now this is a good idea! Make all the officers driving take home cars to part-time jobs pay the taxpayers for the gas being used.

Of course,we will have some saying they have to drive their take home cars to a part time job because they may get called out. How many chiefs aides or ICP officers have ever been called out? When they whine, they will sound just as silly as the detective in the attached article.

Kudos to the Alpharetta police chief. But when you have an elitist chief of police like Bolton, you can't expect reasonable independent thinking.

CLICK HERE FOR AJC ARTICLE

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Since we are trying to save taxpayer money I think we should take this one step further. We need to be sure officers are paying the applicable federal and state taxes on ALL of their extra jobs. Not just the 1099 ones, since we're trying to fair and all. (sarcasm off) Can we get off all the whining about take home cars, their use, or who has them? Do you think you win public support with this type of bickering? No you don't.

No I don't have a take home car nor do I work extra jobs.

Anonymous said...

Half of these taxpayers dont give a crap about us, and you think its a good idea to tax those officers with take home vehicles? Why dont you just get off the take home car issue. If you dont have one and are that upset about it then put in for a postion with a take home. We need to be supporting each other not saying it is a good idea to tax us for the things the county has done for some of us. Lets face it we are underpaid and under appreciated. And that isnt going to change anytime soon.

Anonymous said...

The only people who should have take home cars are those with on call responsibilities. If your position requires you to be on call periodically, you know that even when you are not officially on call, there is a good chance you will get called in. Ask anyone in CID. It's the nature of the job. People who work set hours and have no on call responsibilities do not need take home cars.

Stop complaining about people with take home cars who actually need them, because they put up with a lot of stuff that people without take home cars don't.

DeKalb Officers said...

The last 3 post from Anonymous appears too have been written by the same person. Like we said, someone would complain about paying for take home cars driven to part time jobs. And yes you sound silly.

This is directed at that poster: If you have been following this blog, very few people, if any are against essential personnel, such as Major Crimes, having take home cars. Obviously they are on call and are called out more than the average detective. (With our crime rate, they need a bunk house.). But as long as line officers are waiting up to 2 hours for a car, we will strongly be against NON-ESSENTIAL personnel having take home cars. And we will campaign against it.

We consider non-essential as: ICP, aides, crime analysis and hell, for that matter, Bolton.

Anonymous said...

Bolton?..... Does that include drivers of vehicles assigned to Bolton who got tickets out of state or were involved in a fender bender?

Just rumors? Don't know...but where there's smoke......

dedicateddkpd said...

You don't really get it do you eric? Listen the CITIZENS of DeKalb LOVE the idea of ICP. They think of them as their own little police officers. Whether it's effective at reducing crime is of little concern. It's all about perception. You will never get public outcry over ICP no matter how much you or I think it's useless.

Sure you can continue harping on the "I hate ICP" and all the others you feel shouldn't have take home cars, but what are you accomplishing? All it does is cause bickering and makes us look petty. Additionally fighting amongst ourselves is what "they" want. Constant personal attacks between bloggers will only show how childish we can become.

As I've posted before there are so many other bigger battles to fight than ICP take home cars. We need the public behind us, and lets face it how many DeKalb citizens have you seen support you during your time on the streets? Sadly it's been my experience that the majority only come around during the christmas party, fill their take-home plates, and go home. Meanwhile I get cold leftovers, if anything, and we paid for the food. Merry Christmas!

DeKalb Officers said...

We never have claimed to dislike the ICP concept. What we don’t like is line officers standing around for up to 2 hours waiting on cars so they can do their job. Why can’t the ICP officers get in line for cars too? That is what you don’t get. ICP are not called out on emergency situations or any other situation. If they were on call 24 hours to answer 911 calls, that would be different.
Sure the public loves them, put I think the public loves having an officer answer their 911 call in a timely manner more.

Anonymous said...

Eric,

I'm a line officer who waits for on board with ya there. Unless ICP is gonna start rolling out of bed to pick up the slack when something happens, there is no reason for those cars to not be assigned to the precinct motor pool.

Fifty more cars in addition to the other cars assigned to civilian and/or sworn staff without on-call responsibilities would go a long ways in cutting down the man/patrol hours lost waiting for cars or coming in early.

Conservatively, I'd venture to guess that the average officer loses 3 to 4 hours of patrol time a week waiting for cars or coming in early to give up cars. Multiply that times the number of officers responding to 911 calls and you start to see the impact.

And I thought the whole focus was on productivity.

Anonymous said...

Crime Analysis does not have "take home cars". There are three cars that are shared between seven or so people. Because Crime Analysis does alot of traveling between Decatur, precincts, Metro area meetings etc... The cars are necessary. Oh yeah......Crime Analysis is also on an oncall schedule where they are required to work nights and weekends. I agree with the other posters Eric. Drop the take home car crap and at least get your facts straight before you slander fellow officers. You're not helping by causing division.

Anonymous said...

Does the public really like ICP?? They wear the same uniform as everyone else. The public is NOT Pro-Police, when are we going to stop caring about hurting the publics feelings. ICP vary's from precinct to precinct. Most are just another ticket writing unit. Do we really need 10 officers plus a sergeant per precinct? What is their mission/goal/objective? The concept isnt terrible, but im sure they could get their tickets in and attend a few meetings here and there with 4 or 5 officers. 10 is just overkill. Im not really sure why this always turns to a ICP bash. They work five days a week, and are rewarded a take home car, which I say "good for them" I know in one precinct the teams are split and one team is out knocking doors, taking guns off the streets, and locking up perps. That should be the #1 goal for the entire agency. At least at South they do it right. We are not here to generate revenue for the county, that is not our concern. I think its insane that one officer comes in with 20 bullshit tickets per watch for things as dumb as a tag light violation, and a broken turn signal, when half of our fleet as headlights out. When will the media finally shine some light on this? When will GCIC step in. The mismanaged finances are boderline criminal!

Anonymous said...

Geez I was with a major pd and they did the whole ICP concept within the context of a watch. THeirs absolutely no need for some seperate unit like ICP.. you could accomplish the same thing within the concept of a watch list. Funny New York did it.. Chicago did it.. Minnapolis did it.. But noo not DeKalb every opportunity to create a new meaningless fiefdom is never passed on. Jesus how many more shades of red tape can one drudge up.. pink.. crimson.. wine.. etc etc..
end the whole ICP nonsense send them back to the watch with the vehicles and incorporate the concept.. THIS IS NOT HARD TO DO!

Anonymous said...

Could we stop bickering like school kids about all this crap and look at it from a little diffrent angle. This is a huge county with about half the police officers it should have. If you think about it, if we had enough patrol vehicles to get all the officers on the road that we "should" have, then with the manpower we have today, everyone could take home a line unit and still have cars to spare.

The problems we have are too big to start throwing mud at one another because they do, or do'nt have a take home car. The real problems like in things like manpower, expired vests on the streets, the fact that Berretta stopped producing our sidearm and we've only got a handful left, our huge turnover, the watchful eyes of the APD 7 and of the huge ammount of corruption soaking it's way down from the top!

You know, I forget sometimes how much I hate this place.

Anonymous said...

APD 7?

Anonymous said...

Don't know that the number is 7 but I think he's using that in reference to the "diamonds in the rough"....aka the Lt's..... that Pennington failed to recognize and promote to the top level of management at APD.

We all know from experience that Bolton has both brought in from the outside and appointed from within only the best to the positions of Deputy Chief and Major.....Pennington must be asleep at the wheel!

How did he ever let Bolton hire them away! And how did we ever survive with such a lack of experience and leadership!