| Bratton on policing and the economy |
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| Written by Mark Nichols |
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Bill Bratton, the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, is asking the federal government to send billions of dollars more from the economic stimulus package to law enforcement agencies across the country, making a strong argument that the money is needed to keep America’s communities safe from a potential rise in crime that may be coming as a result of the drastic downturn in the U.S. economy. The chief said he is keeping a watchful eye on those crimes that tend to go up when economic times are hard, like property crimes, domestic violence, and shoplifting. The LAPD chief will go to Washington D.C. and make the argument that the nation’s cities, towns, counties and states need at least 100,000 more officers out on the streets protecting the public. Bratton said the costs of doing that would be around $8 billion and would return U.S. law enforcement to hiring levels prevalent during the Clinton administration. The stimulus package currently allocates nearly $4 billion to law enforcement, including about $1 billion to hire 11,000 officers in the coming three years. “You want to be investing in me instead of Wall Street,” Bratton told AP reporter Thomas Watkins in an interview on March 3. “I get a better rate of return.” Bratton is anxious to get busy hiring several hundred more officers with money coming from the newly enacted stimulus bill. The LAPD has long suffered with a shortage of manpower. They have close to 10,000 officers providing a wide range of law enforcement services for a population of almost four million. The ratio of officers to population is among the lowest of any big city in the country. Bratton and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa traveled to Washington, where they met with Attorney General Eric Holder to make their case for more funding, some of which will be used to deter terrorism as well as to protect the nation’s second-largest city if the rapidly escalating violence from Mexico’s drug cartels spills over the border. “Along our border, we have a country that is increasingly destabilizing,” Bratton told the Associated Press. “Let’s recognize that and start doing something about that now.” Bratton has long been a fierce defender of the belief that effective law enforcement is key to economic recovery. He said a drop in crime in New York in the early 1990s preceded an economic turnaround there and he believed the same could happen on a national scale. “If you make it safe, you can create jobs, you can create educational opportunities, you can create tourist opportunities,” he said. “If you don’t make it safe, the economy is not going to turn around as effectively or maybe not as quickly.” Bratton, in his second term as chief in Los Angeles, has overseen seven straight years of declining crime rates. He predicts the trend will continue and credits the department’s strategies of sending extra officers to crime hot spots and holding area commanders accountable for crime spikes for the LAPD’s phenomenal success over the last several years. subscribeAdd this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites          Comments (0)
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