Mary Reilly opines on the OVPD in her letter to The Explorer. She writes: " ... they continue to show a confrontational and adversarial attitude toward citizens, with no thought toward creating a positive bridge with the community."
Perhaps, that is too much of a generalization, but we believe Mary knows what she is talking about.
Here is her letter.
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The Oro Valley Police Department is currently in desperate need of a change.
Already with one of the highest ratios of officers per capita in the U.S., they are lobbying to avoid layoffs, and even increase their force. Over the years the OVPD has laughingly developed a reputation as a group with little to do but enforce traffic laws, and are even known as "tax collectors."
They enforce with adversarial techniques routinely, including such questionable strong-arm tactics as using the back-up "wolf-pack" technique to ticket traffic violations (2-3 cars to issue one ticket), and deploying unmarked cars with visible radar detection devices to target speeders.
They use intimidation tactics at city council meetings, attending armed and "en masse," and then proceeding to usurp entire meetings with speakers and union officials. But, most importantly, they continue to show a confrontational and adversarial attitude toward citizens, with no thought toward creating a positive bridge with the community.
Thank you,
Mary Reilly, Oro Valley
7 comments:
To Mary R.
Perhaps if you tried to offer something positive along with the criticism in your opinions and letters you might get more support.
Mary,
Congratulations on speaking openly, helping the public understand just how the OVPD operates.
Besides arriving en masse for the driving infraction, have you ever seen them cluster at Fry's for coffee and donuts? A Tucsonan wrote a letter to Star's editior about these "coffee breaks" when their jurisdiction requested help from OVPD for Tucson's shortstaffed cops. But OV responded that OV doesn't have enough of its own.
While individual cops may have a strong work ethic, if the leadership does not encourage reporting crime, encouraging interviews of potential witnesses, collecting forensic evidence and the Town Prosecutor's authorizing its testing, how much support is there for the "cop with integrity" to function?
If citizens were satisfied with their performance, the community would post a long list of their accomplishments with superlatives.
Have you seen such a list?
Where I come from ticketing is a lower paid civil service job. Money for police to do police work might be channelled to those individuals who are dedicated to eliminating crime and the corruption that exists.
Ms. Coyote,
Now there's an idea to help the Police Budget woes! Shift some to lower paying jobs that ticket trafficers...and the bigger bucks to those who crack crime.
Hi Spirit,
Where I am from there were police dept. employees who gave out parking tickets. Not sure if OV gives out many parking tickets. Are you suggesting that OV give out more parking tickets :)) kidding
Not sure how much this would save that much money as they would still need the training, and equipment required to give out tickets.
A lot of the posters here are stating that the pd budget is 50% of the town budget, etc. My first reaction was also surprise at that. But then I started thinking about some of this. Does it cost more money to run a police dept then say an administrative office?
Is there more money spent on say a cop for training, euipment, etc.
Also there are other costs associated with thngs like government regulations and mandates. All of these things add to the cost of running the town, but probably more so with things like public safety/law enforement.
You bring up some good points but then you bring in petty issues like cops have coffee and donuts.
I don't mind if they take a break, do you? Don't know if I would allow cops to eat their lunch or dinner in public(sarcasm intended)!!!
You say "If citizens were satisfied with their performance the community would post a long list of their accomplishments with superlatives."
Really? When is the last time you or most people have thanked anybody for doing a good job, let alone a cop. Unfortunately most cops are dealing with people who are either law breakers or crime victims hard to compare that with other occupations.
Again I will say I support law enforcement and think they have a difficult job and am not discounting the fact that others have had some bad eperiences!
Ms. Coyote:
The Letter to the Ed the AZ Star published was written by a man from Tucson, not me, who observed the OVPD group coffee break.
Presumably you have worked and know how necessary a break is. I'll bet you also adhered to the time limits. This comment is not about "a break", it is about the image the PD projects to the community.
Meeting as a group in a public place when someone is supposed to be "keeping the peace", sounds more like a group of high school kids cutting and congregating,who don't have a sense of responsibility yet. This adolescent obliviousness of the public image they are creating by so doing for all to observe, is that, adolescent, and not the mark of maturity.
A friend substituted for a teacher in a high school. The period covered was drivers' ed. An OVPD officer told those students that they didn't have to worry about the speed limit on Oracle because the appropriate machine that tracked speed was not in place. In my mind to give hormonally high teens, the freedom to challenge the speed is reprehensible, supports their deliquency,unsafe driving practices, puts the rest of OV at risk.
To reiterate, I am for qualified, professional police and support the salaries of those who are.
Those who take their responsibilites seriously put alot on the line for citizens. For them I am extremely grateful. For the cop who finetuned my awareness of their forensic evidence taking responsibilities, their job to protect, investigate, develop evidence I am forever indebted.
During the time period that this subject matter has been 'running' on this site, I have asked over, and over, and over for someone to come forward with a solid and factual basis for the OVPD to maintain their stand on personnel and budget; to date, with the exception of an anonymous document, sent by someone who, by the nature of the document, was without question a person on the 'inside' and one who had analytically typed in mostly detailed commentary(Councilmembers also received this document anonymously), not one OVPD person has stepped forward with even a semblance of rationale. Every comment I have read or heard in support of the OVPD 'necessities' has been anecdotal.
At least when Muhammed Ali said "I'm the greatest", he had a punch!
Original Post was titled "Mary Reilly opines on the OVPD tactics"I tried to say on topic.
In my opinion a lot of the discussion and posts have been mostly about criticism of the police and not about how to cut the police budget and the budget in general.
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