HPD manpower issues begin to affect public parks

The Houston Police Department has looming manpower issues that are now starting to be felt.

Carolyn Campbell reports for KHOU-11 that HPD is being forced to cut down patrols at area parks in order to maintain manpower in areas deemed more critical:

With more Houston police officers retiring, the department is trying do the same job with fewer people to make sure Houstonians are protected.

One idea is to take some patrol officers from Memorial and Hermann Parks and put them on the streets.

What will this mean for police protection in the park?

Joggers like to see them no matter what time of day it is. Police patrols make the thousands of runners in Memorial Park feel safe.

Next week, there will be fewer patrols assigned there from the Special Operations Division.

[snip]

But Capt. Lentschke says there's no need for joggers to change their plans.

"The numbers may change, but we will have police visibility out here every single day. The difference will be in the type of allocation. We will add mounted, we will add some bike officers, and so we'll have a little bit more visibility in those aspects, rather than just the patrol cars," she says.

Capt. Lentschke is losing about 50 of her 200 officers to retirement, but that's happening throughout the police department. As hundreds of officers retire, they have to shift manpower.

Police say that this is all to make sure that officers are there when citizens call.

The problem is going to get much worse before it gets better, because the city has not budgeted for cadet classes to compensate for retirements that are looming, let alone normal attrition.

Public safety is the most basic function of any municipality. Mayor White and City Council have completely abdicated their responsibility to ensure that HPD has adequate manpower to keep citizens safe. Local media are just now reporting on the problem. In two or three years, it will be much worse, and crime will skyrocket as a result.

It is beyond comprehension that a giveaway of $2 million for an African-American museum is a higher priority for Mayor White than public safety.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 09/29/04 09:38 PM | Houston Life | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (0)

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