Work has been relatively slow and uneventful so far this week. C is in his second week of evaluation. Last night was day 2. Our first report was for a man at Starbucks who decided to leave his wallet on his table while he went to get a refill of coffee. Shockingly, his wallet was no longer on his table when he returned. Really, leave your wallet on the table? Then leave the table? It never ceases to amaze me what people do. Our second report was for a man whose vehicle was broken into and his child's car seat was stolen. Who steals a car seat? Maybe there is a big market at the pawn shops for car seats. I have no idea. Tonight has been about the same, just different stories. Our first report was for a 63 year old male that was robbed while opening the gate of his apartment complex. Not that it is ever right, but robbing older folks, that is just ridiculous. At least have the balls to rob someone in your own age bracket. Our second report of the night was for a man who had his truck burglarized. He said that this was not the first time that this had happened to him and in fact happened less than 6 months ago to the same vehicle. At first, that sounds like bad luck. Then we ask what had been taken, and he says his Dell laptop computer. When you think that your vehicle gets broken into frequently, why do you leave a laptop inside? He said that he was only inside the bar for 20 minutes. It takes less than 5 seconds for the suspect to punch the lock, grab the laptop bag, and take off. After that, we made a few traffic stops as well. More illegal left turn tickets. The subject of tickets brings me to our roll call tonight. Yes, every night we have a roll call just like they did in Hill Street Blues. If you are too young to remember Hill Street Blues, check it out on Hulu. The Sergeant started talking to us about court attendance. When we write tickets, most of them are handled by paying the ticket, defensive driving, or deferred adjudication. Which ever way is chosen, the city makes money. The officer never has to make a court appearance. A few people decide to take tickets to trial. They either represent themselves or hire an attorney and fight the ticket in either a judge or jury trial. When someone decides to fight a ticket, the officer is subpoenaed for that court on the day of the trial. If the officer can't make it to court, he can ask to be disregarded by the desk Sergeant. When you get disregarded, you are asked for a reason, sick, out of town, or child care issues and are all valid reasons. When the officer does not show up for trial, the ticket is dismissed. When the officer does show up for trial, he is compensated. The issue is this, the city wants officers to write tickets. Tickets are a revenue stream for the city. The city also wants officers to attend court when their tickets are going to trial. After all, the city does not get paid if the ticket is dismissed because the officer does not attend court. So, what does the city do in response to officers failing to attend court? They attempt to punish officers. They start internal affairs investigations and give officers reprimands and days off for not attending court. What does this lead to? Officers stop writing tickets. The revenue stream shrinks and the city backs off on court attendance. Then officers start writing tickets again. It is not that officers do not want to attend court. We get compensated well for attending. But, sometimes it is very inconvenient. Just imagine if you were told at your job that after you got off work at 5 PM, that you had to be back at work at 9 PM. Then you were still required to be back at work at 8 AM the following day. Sometimes, that would be fine. Other times, that would suck. But the thing that bothers me about the situation is this, why do those in charge constantly try to change behavior by punishment? That might work with 8 year olds, but not so much with officers. After trying this and seeing the same result every few years, you would think that someone might come up with a better idea. I am not in charge, and I do not pretend to run a city or a department. I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night either. But, I have an idea. Try something positive to encourage officers to attend court. Right now we have a minimum show up time for court. No matter how long it takes in court, we are paid our minimum show up time. To get officers in court all they need to do is double our minimum show up time. Bingo. Officers in court. The side benefit for the city would be increased revenue because officers would write more tickets to increase their chance of having court. It will never happen. But I think that it would work.
No comments:
Post a Comment