Priorities

I love reading police reports from small towns and suburbs to see what kinds of "problems" the police have to deal with and then compare it to what real police in the city have to deal with.

Last night on the local news there was this story about a young lady in Grafton (outside Milwaukee) who was arrested by police for overdue library fines. (Look at her smile in that mug shot) It is sad when the police have nothing better to do than this. How about you save tax payer money and have less police on duty in these hick-a** towns. Or how about you come down into the city and fight real crime.

About a year ago I was at my local tavern and a car was broken into. We saw it happen and chased the kids down the alley. We then called the police to file a report and get a squad out there. We did not call 911, just the non-emergency police number. The dispatcher said it would be 3-4 hours until someone came out. We then asked to talk to their supervisor because that was absurd. The supervisor was very nice and informed us that there were 45 calls with higher priority, 30 of which involved individuals where safety was at risk. This was in one police district in the city, and on a Thursday night. The police ended up coming the next afternoon (about 15 hour later) and said they would keep their eyes out for 3 kids wearing white shirts. (I think the case is still open.)

Butter up that bacon!

I was driving through a parkway in Wauwatosa on Friday and came up to a light that was flashing red. No big deal, most people know how to handle one of these. But for some strange reason there was a group of police officers (4) there helping to control traffic. I thought this was odd because this was not a very busy intersection. When I got closer it turns out that one police officer was training this other police officer how to control traffic while two other officers were on the side observing. The one officer was literally grabbing the other officer and moving his body in different directions and waving the other officer's hands in the air to move traffic.

How difficult is it to control traffic. I'm pretty sure you just stop traffic in one direction and then let the other traffic go, and then do the opposite. Then repeat. Not too difficult. What kind of lack of confidence in their own police force does Wauwatosa have that they have the need to waste the time of three other officers to go train one officer on how to control traffic. Unbelievable. (Almost too sad for cake but its a long week and I do not want to give out that award too early.)