Friday, May 04, 2007
Crime update
Despite the best efforts of the State Supreme Court, Lakewood is on the move against crime. There's a good review in today's News Tribune. It's worth reading. It's going to be interesting to see how the people who always want to find something bad in Lakewood are going to try to reinforce their beliefs through what is both an accurate and positive account.
That said, we can continue to learn an important lesson:
Community policing in northeast Lakewood began about five years ago, but budget cuts over the years damaged the effort. Neighborhood patrol officers there must cover twice as much territory in a shift as they once did.
“You start losing your community when you take our officers away,” said Terry Love, president of the Northeast Neighborhood Association.
This topic has come up before when I've written before about the city budget. The council's lack of desire to budget for enough neighborhood police was a major reason why I voted no on this year's budget.
Let's hope we have the collective vision to budget at least one neighborhood officer per neighborhood this year.
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That said, we can continue to learn an important lesson:
Community policing in northeast Lakewood began about five years ago, but budget cuts over the years damaged the effort. Neighborhood patrol officers there must cover twice as much territory in a shift as they once did.
“You start losing your community when you take our officers away,” said Terry Love, president of the Northeast Neighborhood Association.
This topic has come up before when I've written before about the city budget. The council's lack of desire to budget for enough neighborhood police was a major reason why I voted no on this year's budget.
Let's hope we have the collective vision to budget at least one neighborhood officer per neighborhood this year.
