It was reported on AnnArbor.com that Police Chief Barnett Jones, in a meeting of the Main Street Area Association (MSAA), told the association members present that he could return the six beat cops cut in the 2009-2011 budget. Said Jones, “I’d be willing to give you those beat officers back, but you’re going to have to pay for them.” The idea wouldn’t be for, say, MSAA Chair Newcombe Clark to write Cheif Jones a check made out to cash, but rather a contract for services. The Ann Arbor Police Department has contracts for services with local agencies such as the Ann Arbor Public Schools, as well as the AATA. The Ann Arbor school district contracts for three officers and pays all of the costs associated with employing the trio of crime fighters.
Jones was quoted in the AnnArbor.com piece as saying, “…Ann Arbor generally has a reputation as a safe community and it’s a reputation worth protecting. He said he’s not concerned about the current level of service the Police Department can provide, but worries about what may happen if further cuts are needed.”
Not worried about the current level of service? What service? Since July of 2009, Main Street merchants have been complaining about increases in aggressive panhandling.
Maybe if more people had urged, pleaded, begged, scraped and generally went on bended knee before Council the Main Street Area merchants would not be getting squeezed by the city’s Chief of Police. Jones explained it thusly, “This is the first community that I’ve worked in where priorities are a little different. … A couple hundred people showed up when we talked about closing Mack Pool,” he said. “Not a lot of people showed up when we talked about laying off police officers.”
Well, Jones showed up at the City Council meeting during which the lay-offs were discussed. He stood there and assured Council, the public and the tooth fairy that cuts proposed in the budget prepared by Leigh Greden, Stephen Rapundalo, Marcia Higgins, Margie Teall and John Hieftje would have no impact on his department’s ability to police our streets. The Ann Arbor News reported on Jones’s testimony at the May 16, 2009 City Council meeting, “Police Chief Barnett Jones said there won’t be a net loss of police presence.” After a Main Street merchant spoke in opposition to Jones, the Police Chief “…assured City Council members that patrol officers will still be downtown on foot or on bike.”
Four scant months later, Chief Barnett Jones is telling Main Street merchants that they can have patrol officers downtown if they pay for them. Those merchants do pay for police protection—with their taxes. What Barnett Jones is suggesting is nothing short of a political shakedown.
What we need, now, is a political takedown of Barnett Jones. Unless, of course, he’s talking on behalf of Mayor, Council and the City Administrator. In that case, he’s, once again, just doing what he has been told to do and is doing it like the good little political lackey he has turned out to be. Either Barnett Jones misled the public at the behest of certain members of City Council at the May 16, 2009 meeting, or he was just talking to talk.
It would be prudent to ask the members of the Counci’s Budget and Labor Committee (Sabra Briere, Mike Anglin, John Hieftje, Stephen Rapundalo and Marcia Higgins), if Chief Jones’s plan to charge Main Street Area Association members for police protection was approved by them.
The time has come to pay the piper, and it should be our elected officials who get stuck with the bill, not Ann Arbor taxpayers. What do you think? Should MSAA merchants be expected to pay to get their beat cops back on the streets?
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Is the Chief of Police seriously asking Main Street merchants to pay for police protection? What’s next? This is outrageous! City Council needs to do something about this, beginning with pulling the budget out and finding the money to put those police back on the beat. Who was more naive? The Councilmembers who believed the Chief when he said the cuts wouldn’t impact policing of downtown, or the public for thinking our Police Chief was telling the truth when he spoke before City Council. If he wanted people to come to the meeting and speak against cuts, he should have gone public with his fears about the budget priorities and cuts. Instead he assured us all everything would be fine. Now he blames us because we didn’t show up to speak against the cuts?
Comment by DGS — October 7, 2009 @ 8:36 pm
[...] Association and offered to return the Beat Cops in a pay-for-policing offer. I wrote about that here. Was Chief Barnett Jones just trying to up sell our Main Street Merchants police coverage like so [...]
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