Wow!!! I concur with what you said, but I don’t think the problems have come just with the inexperienced officers. Years ago there was no background investigation process and the old Chief hired people based on interviews alone. That message got out to several people who were in trouble at their departments or had been fired from departments. Some of those officers came over and brought their problems with them. Some left them behind and became productive officers. With the police department conducting background investigations now, we are getting younger officers that we can mold into good officers, as opposed to getting problem children from other departments.

Another problem is that some officers get tired of watching other officers get away with things that will get a normal officer fired. We have all seen officers get fired for minor violations and then see another officer commit a more severe violation and they walk away with a slap on the wrist, if anything. To quote some officers, "There are a select few officers who can’t be fired no matter what they do." While this is not a wide spread problem, it is definitely something that affects morale.

As far as the Chief is concerned, I agree that it is definitely not in his favor that he has limited police experience, and I am not a fan of the "If you don’t like it...leave" quote; but I do know that there have been positive marks on his behalf. We have gone away from the days of the old Chief not wanting us to do any police work to the new Chief welcoming police work. At that same time, I have seen some decisions that have made me scratch my head and say, "What the #$%@?" Overall, I think we have moved forward, but we were already so far back that we need to move a light speed.

I hate that we have lost so many good officers to other departments. It is even sadder that there have been quite a few that took pay cuts to leave the department. I don’t know what it will take to finally get things up to speed, but I hope it happens soon. Until then, I will keep moving forward and hope for the best. Good luck to you and thank you for writing something positive about the rest of us.

NewGuy out.