July 8, 2008

From TheKCGuy

Tony has brought up a good point about off duty KCMO cops using city equipment while working security at private businesses. I suspect that if he keeps beating his drum about this legitimate concern, it will eventually make it to the "mainstream press" and people will get angry and demand some kind of change. Unfortunately, it's possible that local cops and businesses will suffer by having to jump through hoops to get good security protection, and useful equipment will probably sit unused after hours.

I have actually long been surprised about how much the off duty jobs were integrated into regular police duty. I hear them talking about it all the time on the scanner, and it seems that local businesses can work directly with the KCMO police department to supply them with off duty cops for security. I'm not sure what kind of compensation the businesses give the police department or to the individual officers for that, though, and I was unable to find anything about it in the publicly available KCMO PD policy memos.

Perhaps this is a good time to investigate how privatization could help defray costs for the city and provide dependable, effective security for local businesses. Both Kansas City and the local businesses need a force of trained officers and dependable equipment. Perhaps those needs can be fulfilled (at least partially) by private organizations who see both KCMO and the local businesses as customers.

I usually try to hold my opinionated rants for the weekends so that I can focus on practicing the joy of gluttony in local bars and restaurants during the week, but I just couldn't hold off this time.

In other crime related news, yesterday's post about speed traps seems to have generated some interest, so maybe I'll spend some time and try to collect a good sized list of these. I have head the pleasure of receiving a driving award in pretty much every county, city, town, and municipality in the tri-state area, so I think I can come up with a rather complete list of common speed traps in the Kansas City metro area.