Police morale is an issue that every department has to deal with at one time or another. Quite frankly it's not newsworthy to most media outlets. The majority of the public already understands and sympathizes with the plights of the local law enforcement officer. It's a tough job, but we chose this line of work. No, pay and benefits are not the issue today, it's mismanagement. Even though the majority of the public understands the physical dangers of police work, very few realize that the greatest threat facing the Louisville Metro Police Department today are the policies and practices implemented by the current administration.
Decentralization - This is the cornerstone idea of Chief White's administration. The idea was to eliminate numerous speciality units and detective slots and put those officers back on the street. The plan has not met with success since being implemented. Here are some of the casualties of decentralization.
Metro Narcotics was stripped down to a skeleton crew
The Gang Unit was eliminated
The Street Crimes Unit was eliminated
Numerous detective slots were eliminated
These units would have been very useful in aiding to prevent and adequately react to the 7 homicides last week in the west end. Certainly their intelligence gathering would have been able to accurately predict an upcoming gang war in the west end. Unfortunately that intelligence was not available.
So what about the upside? Isn't there more officers on the street now that these units and positions were eliminated? NO. In fact there are less.
When Chief White started cutting detectives, positions generally held by older "seasoned" officers, he failed to take into account the fact that many of those "older" officers wouldn't neccesarily want to go back to the street. The result was mass retirements. We are currently over 130 officers short of our authorized strength. This number is only going to get larger. It takes over 1 year to hire and train an officer before they can be put on the street, you do the math.
District Realignment - Recently the department was realigned from 10 police districts into 8 police divisions. There are 2 reasons why the administration did this.
It gives the appearance of having more officers per division. If we have 1000 officers to split amongst 10 districts, that gives each district 100 officers. If we have 1000 officers to split amongst 8 divisions thats 125 officers per division. When the administration is asked about their accomplishments they can easily refer to the now 125 strong 4th division. That sounds like a big improvement over the former 100 strong 5th district of yesteryear. It's a hide the numbers game, but unfortunately they will not mention that the former 5th district only covered Broadway south to the University of Louisville Campus. The new 4th division covers Broadway south to Pleasure Ridge Park. No, thats not a typo. Can you say backup?
It costs less to run 2 less police stations and since the police budget this year was cut by almost 10% we need to save every penny we can. No, that was not a typo either. The Police budget for 2004 was almost 10% less then it was in 2003. Wasn't the Mayor on TV recently stating that Public Safety comes first and foremost in his budget. Yes, he was. See the video below.
Now the Louisville Metro Council is stepping in and saying the Mayor has underfunded the police department.
In his interview with channel 32 Chief White stated that "Change and Accountability" were the reasons that officers did not like him, this is only true in the fact that his plan for change is not working. It is incumbant upon the Chief and his staff to meet and discuss with their officers about ways to improve the current problems within the police departrment, but unfortunately the chief stated that the morale problem does not affect his ability to lead the department. It is that reasoning that will only add to the current state of turmoil.
VIDEO LIBRARY
Mayor states that Public Safety comes first and foremost
Former LMPD officer speaks out on current state of morale
Metro Council says mayor has underfunded the police department