Police and fire waving the white flag?
I ran into my friend Joel the other day, and he seemed to be in a very good mood. He was positive, upbeat, and happy about life. I wondered what had come over him, and then I realized that it had been a while since my last blog post. My inattention to posting to the blog regularly had the unintended consequence of allowing Joel to forget the true depressed status of the world, and fall into a false sense of complacency. To that end, I have put together a really good post to get him back on track.
Since last year, I have written blog posts about my prediction that reduced municipal budgets will start to have an effect on government services. This will also extend into public safety issues, I wrote on several occasions. Well today, it was reported by ABC that the chief of police in Detroit is officially ignoring witnessed crimes, because he does not have the manpower to enforce all of the laws. Let me repeat that: a major city police department is giving up on fighting crime. After letting a driver go who had no license, “He certainly is a legitimate arrest,” Evans said of the minivan driver. There are not enough beds in the city jails so some suspects are released, or minor offenders, like the minivan driver, often are not taken in. The in-car cameras and computers in most squad cars don’t work so officers can’t record traffic stops, run license plates and check for warrants.
OK, so this is just a driving offense. But wait, the Detroit News reports that even major crime is unenforced. The cities own paper calls Motor City the place to come to get away with murder. They quote the counties highest law enforcer: “The reality is, we have a reputation in the state that if you want to commit a crime, come here,” said Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor who said she does not challenge the analysis. “The chance of arrest is quite low, the chance of prosecution is quite low. What does that say about the commitment to the public’s safety?”
OK, but this is Detroit, not where you live, right? Wrong. The effects of the recession are creeping all over the United States, I have written about examples in Palm Beach FL, Manhattan, and Los Angeles. Detroit is the canary in the coal mine. Tax revenue is falling in every state and county. Claims for government services such as welfare, unemployment, and assistance is climbing. Federal funds availability is dropping. It can only mean that the “Detroit Affect” will spread to more places, possibly near you.
The recession places more strain on municipal budgets in ways that are often unseen. This can be seen even in places like Bangor Maine. 
Yesterdays local paper in the Pine Tree State discloses that arson fires are rampant. “Our investigators are literally running from fire to fire,” State Fire Marshal John Dean said Monday. That couldn’t happen at a worse time, investigators say, with reduced cash reserves in the Fire Marshal’s office. “We are really, really hard pressed,” Dean said. “We had to borrow money from the Criminal Justice Academy account to make payroll one time.”He said in some cases, there clearly has been an economic factor such as a home burned down that was subject to foreclosure. Historically, such cases usually show up later in a recession, he said. “That is generally because it becomes one of the last gasps, one of the last activities to get out from under the debt,” he said.
The state motto for Maine is “Dirigo” which is latin for “I lead”. Let’s hope the great state of Maine is not leading with this troubling trend.
[...] states are also barreling toward economic disaster, raising the likelihood of higher taxes, more government layoffs and deep cuts in services.” Pew found that the 10 states tend to rely heavily on one type of [...]