Chron: White/HPD will cut overtime funding
As noted in an update to this post, Mayor White rushed a memo to Council after a critical report by KHOU-11's Jeff McShan regarding alleged plans to cut back on police overtime and cadet classes. In the memo, the mayor disputed some of the assertions in McShan's story.
Later, the Chronicle posted a story by Matt Stiles ("HPD plans to cut overtime jobs") that would seem to confirm some of the assertions in the earlier KHOU story. Here is an excerpt:
Houston police plan to slow spending on overtime programs credited with reducing crime so they can stretch the diminishing grant money that funded the effort, officials said Thursday.
Knowing that the city's crime rate declined 5 percent last year, Mayor Bill White asked the department to "phase down" grant-funded overtime spending to avoid an abrupt halt in officer presence in certain high-crime areas when the money runs out.
Mayor White flatly denied that he plans to cut cadet classes for this fiscal year, however:
White said the re-evaluation of overtime spending will have no effect on the three remaining police-cadet classes scheduled for this fiscal year, which runs through June 30.
Meanwhile, KTRK-13's Miya Shay notes that Mayor White's bumbling police chief was in Austin (strangely referred to as the Hill, evoking thoughts of the national capital) clumsily lobbying not on Houston issues, but in his capacity as head of a large city police chiefs' organization. It will not come as a surprise to Houstonians that he seems not to have made a very good impression.
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 01/28/07 01:30 PM | Print |
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