Hey Jon,
Here’s the deal – TPD will still run the January academy with 30-34 recruit; however, today we are still down 75 authorized positions – that’s an entire division of officers. What the city doesn’t want to talk about is actual deployable number of officers which is less than 600 patrol officers (same as in 1998) , nor did they mention the officer to population ratio. If you take that in to account will are down at least 300 officers.

Now the budget. M&C did not mention the $130 million in discretionary spending – I know that you have mentioned this many times, but they “forgot” to discuss that in study session. M&C kept referring to “keeping a balance” with public safety and other services. What they are trying to protect are they pet projects, i.e., kidco, GLBT, etc. rather than cutting there and not cutting police. Romero compared public safety to kidco calling them “equal”. Uhlich stated they should be “holding to the communities priorities”, whatever that meant. And Leal is talking about raising taxes. Romero and Trasoff want to “keep an eye” on public safety for the next six months? They are hoping the violence will slow down and people will forget about the problem of not having enough police officers…period. Trasoff as of yesterday is still trying to figure out what the city’s priorities should be and what they should be doing – shouldn’t they know what they are doing and what those priorities are? Clearly public safety is not their priority.

Please continue to urge your listeners to question and demand answers from M&C.

Thanks, Larry