Another year under the leadership of Terrell Bolton has come to a close. Thank God! Just like his first year as chief of police, in the second year we saw an all time high in homicides (112), pedestrian armed robberies up 9%, residential robberies up 17% and residential burglaries up 22%.
Vernon Jones is out, leaving behind a police department in decay. His legacy is a department whose morale is at an all time low, crime at an all time high, wasteful spending into the millions of dollars and a county budget facing a 40 million dollar short fall.
It will take years to recover from the damage Vernon Jones has caused. He hired Louis Graham who was forced to resign over improper and probably illegal promotions. Vernon Jones then hired Terrell Bolton who was fired from the city of Dallas Texas for being incompetent and failing to follow orders. For two years now, Bolton has proved his ineptness.
We look forward to the New Year. We hope Burrell Ellis will help the police department off its knees. We hope he takes to heart the recommendations listed in the Transition Report. We are realist and know Mr. Ellis cannot wave a magic wand and fix all broken parts immediately. We understand there may be delays, freezes and even cuts in the future to accomplish all the recommendations. We understand it will take time.
But his first priority should be terminating Terrell Bolton, terminate his appointed commanders and demote the rest. There is cause and plenty of it. Secondly, he needs to abolish the chief of police as a merited protected position. Bolton is the first chief in the history of the county to be merit protected. We wonder how Vernon pulled this off and what backroom deals were made.
At the very least, 2009 should be an interesting time and if nothing else, fun to watch.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
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1 comment:
Fly on the Wall
Well what would Vernon do if he had a Chief of Police who was complaining about everything he did.
I'm guessing he would fire that person, so why does Chief Bolton seem confused with this issue. He has lasted this long only because he kissed and bowed down to CEO JONES. I only hope he understands he said that Commissioner Ellis was one of the ones who was keeping the police department from advancing. He did mention 3 other commissioners before the election.
He now has to understand that we have new life and another direction to make this department great. We will look back in time and try and understand why we had to go from greatness and to the bottom and then rise again. We will rise again we have some great leaders that were promoted throught the ranks , so our faith will rest with these people. I can only hope that the new CEO looks at these people and accept them into our next new leaders. We do not need any more outside leadership in this department. We have the best of the best already here , so please take advantage of what Dekalb already has in place.
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