Chief Conrad tells Rotarians making city safe is top goal

Hey idiot, before you claim "First". Look! You're not.

FIRST ,,,Aints mines

Effective Sunday, April 1, 2012 the 6th Division Mid Watch and Late Watch will go to 2 person cars. The reasoning behind this is as follows:

Officer Safety; I believe that having 2 officers in a vehicle is much safer than having just one. Your back up is built in and it allows you to be more proactive during runs and during routine patrol. I believe that it also will enhance the reports being taken because while one is taking the actual report the other can do a neighborhood canvass, talk to other witnesses, photograph evidence or just review the scene. I believe that it will make our officers better officers and we will get a better product. I believe that it will allow our officers to make better arrests and instead of quantity I think we will get better quality. It will also cut down on the danger of back up officers having to speed to get to a location to assist.

A byproduct of this program is that we should have less wear and tear on our equipment and drive less miles within a month. We will be tracking this to see if this is true.

Single person cars will be responsible for reports taken and any one person type runs. I hope within a month that everyone has been able to pair up with another officer that they like to work with and are like minded.

There will be an adjustment period, please be patient. The radio will have to adjust to 2 person cars as will all of the officers in the Division. We will evaluate this after 90 days and again after 180 days. If it works we will continue but if it doesn’t we will revert back to what we have now.

If you see a problem with this please let me know and we will try to work it out. If you have any success stories please let me know. I am going to try and track a lot of information in the next 3 months to see if this program is beneficial. One of the things I want to track is Officer Satisfaction. So please keep me informed as to how this is going and as always my door is open.

Thanks.

Major Donald F. Burbrink II

6th Division Commander

5600 Shepherdsville Rd.

502-574-2187

don.burbrink@louisvilleky.gov

Just ride 4 man cars and a platoon will only need 3 cars per shift, plus we can play circus music everywhere we go. That will save money. Instead of having 12 cars making runs, we will just use three and then gas those cars up 4 times per shift because you are still going to the same number of runs. UUhhhh...... In other words, this idea makes no sense.

This is coming from a man who has over 30 years on the police department. If he were anyone else making such a bold change this site would be on fire calling for him to "just retire." A certain commander wanted to refine roll calls and made hats and sticks mandantory and suddenly she is cast as a witch. I'm not pulling the card, but membership surely has its privileges. Now, give me excuse after excuse on how I am comparing apples to oranges.

Years ago, LPD rode 2 Officers to a car alot of the time. Not sure why but maybe it was because they were short of cars. Maybe an LPD Officer can answer that.....JCPD Officers did not ride two to a car because as most know, it takes a long time to get to the runs out in the suburban areas.

morale is going down with patrol.... the hats at roll call formation and now 2 man cars....yes moale is down ask any 6th division mid or late watch officer.

I think this could possibly be a good thing but it needs some tweaking... As I am not in that division and have limited network that includes that Major, whoever does can feel free to take this idea and call it their own.

Many of the concerns stated for using two man cars are well founded, one poster mentioned tying two men up for a report. What you can do is have limited two man units and leave the majority as solo cars. People who would enjoy working with a partner would put in for the slot which would cover one or two beats and as an extra incentive they would respond to in progress calls but unless it resulted in an arrest they would not be responsible for the report, further they would not get dispatched to "already occurred" report calls.

In the end there would only be a few double cars per division and the people doing it would probably be enthusiastic about it.

Chief, PLEASE STOP THIS