Make Your Comments Known On Merger

As a citizen I always thought that merger would be helpful to the community. I felt that the duplication of services was one of the main reasons that we should have merged. I also thought that the City of Louisville was dwindling in importance becasue so much of the population was moving outside the city's boundries.As a Police Officer I definitely thought that we needed to join forces to combat crime. I felt that there were "too many Chiefs and not enough Indians"When merger took place I was pleased that Chief White took the bull by the horns and anounced that while some decisions would be tough, we needed more Officers on the street and therfore we would decentralize and focus more on community issues.Maybe we are expecting too much too fast. I think that decentralization has not been effective. I think that the Mayor has left too many vacancies unfilled. (Over 70) There are not more police Officers on the streets than there were before merger. I have seen too many Officers placed in "warm and fuzzy" units and not addressing crime problems as they should be. Whenever an Officer is taken off the street to fill a job that a civillian could just as easily fill, we have wasted all the law enforcement training that we put the Officer through in the first place.Merger has not worked so far. The mayor has done the same crap he did when he was Mayor of Louisville before. He is more interested in throwing festivals than doing what is more important, making merger work. He has surrounded himself by a huge group of toadies under the guise of Administrative Assistants and Deputy Mayors and Cabinet Secretaries at huge salaries that boggle the mind. The waste involved at the top level of City Hall is enormous and we are not being told the truth. Unfortunately merger cannot work unless we get rid of the excess and wuit trying to pretend to be the 16th largest City in the nation and just try to make a community work.

David,

I would have to agree with the 1st post. I would like to add that we have more command than I feel is needed. We have them doing everything from supervision of the troops to standing around the chiefs office looking busy. How many Sgts and Lts. do we need to make up the policies and "look busy" in the front office. when the chief first arrived he stated we were top heavy. He has made more sgts than what he gained in officers when he decentralized all of CIS and CID. We cannot make a difference when we don't have good officers on the street, instead we make up "let give em hugs" units just to look good.

In short the merger is a joke at this point as everything was just thrown together without thought or policies in place. We are playing catch-up at this point of time and until the dept and the mayor changes what is important it will stay the same.

The biggest complaint Ive heard (and have to agree with) is the decentralization plan, specifically the cuts to CIS. I see NO increase of personnel on the street, but I do see new "specialized" positions being created. (impact platoons, school resource officers, problem solving units, positions being created in "special operations") Why cut the detective ranks for manpower reasons and then turnaround and create positions for these short lived speciality groups?

The traffic enforcement unit was cut drastically. Was it because of the "perception" thst giving people speeding tickets makes them angry.

Hell I can remember getting a speeding ticket 17 years ago, and it still makes me angry, but I never rationalize that there are posted speed limits and I violated them. No, I was mad because I got a ticket for something I did wrong.

I got caught once out of how many hundreds of times.What it did do was slow my but down for awhile because I was afraid I would get cought again, I would have to pay another fime and maybe my insurance would go up. What it possibly did was slow me down and save my life.Traffice deaths on our LOCAL highways are up over 50% form last year!Chief White told Officers that he wold re-evaluate his decisions from time to time. He told Offciers at an FOP Meeting in June that he realized that the traffic decision was a mistake, but he has failed to do anything about it.

How many more people are going to die before you take notice Chief???

How many more Officers are going to be wasted in schools instead of doing LAW ENFORCEMENT work. Leave the teaching to the teachers and the policing to the police.

When a bum asks me for money I tell him I have an agreement with the bank, "I don't make any loans and they don't lock any body up!" So far our agreement has worked pretty good.Take the Officers out of the study groups, the warm and fuzzy units and put them to adressing the drig and gang problems. Have the Offciers arrest people with warrants and track them down and send their butts to prison.

Quit having hand holding strategy sessions and get these Officers back on the street where thye belong.

Just heard the news, congratulations david, hate to cya go.

www.abramsonuncovered.com