McCubbin: Mayor attempting to justify restructuring with excuses, attacks on officers

I suppose offering competitive pay, increasing benefits, restoring the pension and health care coverage made too much sense.

Why do you suppose the KSP has not lowered their standards (ever) and have never had a shortage of applicants even though their salary is lower than a lot of Ky police departments including LMPD and all state police departments surrounding Ky? And all applicants who become cadets know that 1/3 of them will not make it through the academy.

Considering that LMPD's starting pay has stayed in the low to mid $30,000's since the creation of Metro in 2003, and that 20-year retirement has been eliminated, you can't expect a truly qualified college graduate to consider this as being a real career. Some join in hopes of quickly moving up the chain of command to make real money, or hoping to be superstar crimefighting detectives, but find their hopes quickly dashed and resign. The Mayor and Council are unwilling to let LMPD be a real department again, so the Chief is making the only decision he can, which is to open the floodgates to those having only HS diplomas with some history of drug use. They might actually stick around more than a few years since they have so few job opportunities in our permanently bad economy.