More Police Means More Taxes?
Tomorrow morning, Police Commissioner Rick Caruso will appear on Doug McIntyre's radio program on KABC.
Here is a question that Doug should ask Rick:
How do you square your support for a significant sales tax increase in the City of Los Angeles with the fact you are developing major shopping malls OUTSIDE the city in communities where Los Angeles is already losing significant shopping activity.
Of course, Caruso will come back and say that he has interests within the city such as The Grove. But most of them are outside LA, in border cities such as Glendale, Westlake, etc. where the well heeled who aren't well heeled enough to escape LA altogether can go for an afternoon and pretend.
By my estimates, adding a 1000 more police officers is going to gost $100,000,000. Its in the budget and I know we could root it out if the political will is there. For example, the DWP paid $24 million for PR. We all know how pointless that is. But think of the PR the DWP could get by donating that money to the City of LA for more police officers. It would be massive! More importantly that's 240 officers thanks to DWP. Another $9 - $10 million can be achieved by getting rid of the completely useless and unneeded Department of Cultural Affairs. Absolutely we need arts and culture in this town - but we have more artists and creative types than anywhere. There is no reason the private sector could not support the arts. Right there we have $35 million. Lets spend a little more time - cut the waste in the Mayor's office, the City Council.
Now right there some of you are jumping off your chairs - hey that's my job! Well for crissakes you're most likely smart enough you could make way more in the private sector and if you're not, we don't owe you a job. I know it ain't politically correct to say so, but lets be serious here folks - we are in a crisis situation.
I'd like to run a little contest here - post the ways YOU KNOW we could trim the budget, add more police and make the city run a little more efficiently. Who knows the best one might win some kind of prize.
More importantly, we owe it to the city.
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 12/05/2004 04:15:00 PM
12 Comments:
Very good point. Or, we might consider, just as we do for other special assessments on development, adding a fee for the additional cost of policing that development will cost the City of Los Angeles, or suspending another fee like and art's fee for a few years and using those funds for policing, until we can get fully staffed. But, my gosh, why be business unfriendly to the developer....when we can tax our own citizens an additional tax, including those who cannot afford it....and send business to the multiple of other Caruso and out of the City stores, shops, auto dealers, etc.
Another Caruso question.
You have been on the LA Police Commission for years now....as President and now as just a regular old member. While you have found ways to build shopping centers all over this town and others, why haven't you as a police commissioner found ways to: a. build morale, b. find more funding for the police, c. develop a program that brings more quality police to Los Angeles, d. develop special benefit programs for police housing (or maybe even muliti use housing for cops and their families over or next to his beautiful shopping centers in the city)......all to make things better, without raising taxes that Rick himself has said many times in the past was a detriment to doing business in Los Angeles ???? Come on Rick, your a bright, out of the box thinking guy....use it in your commission role. Pretend your making money from it !!!
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HE DID....HE AND THE OTHER COMMISSIONERS GOT RID OF BITTER BERNIE. THAT WAS THE BEST THING FOR MORALE, MORE OFFICERS WHO LEFT ARE COMING BACK, VETERANS AREN'T RETIRING AND STAYING ON...ETC.ETC. I LIKE RICK. HE'S A GREAT GUY, SO STOP BEATING UP ON HIM.
I don't think Mayor Sam is beating up on Rick. He's brought up some excellent points that Rick should answer. If he is going to get the goodies, he has got to step up and deal with the critiques.
Sure he got rid of Bitter Bernie, so what? Everyone wanted Bitter Bernie gone.
That's true everyone wanted Bitter Bernie gone. However, it takes guts and balls to do what Rick and the other commissioners did when you have as many as 300 blacks coming weekly to the commission meetings beating up on you. People don't know that the police commissioners are volunteers. They don't get paid a cent. No one came to support them or Hahn when they came out. A bunch of whimpy ass politicans hid behind the scenes. It took a lot of character for Rick to make that decision and stick to it. When city council voted on having our LAPD officers waste time responding to false alarms Rick was the only one who said NO. Come to find out later that he was right. The damn city wasn't equipped to handle what city council voted to do. How insane and absurb was that? We need to get rid of those lame ass city council members. Absolutely no leadership.
What did Rick have to lose? He ain't running for anything. The Mayor can do more for his shopping centers than 300 blacks or 300 of any folks off the street. It might have been the right thing, but it wasn't courageous. The community (other than some blacks), the officers, the mayor, the council all wanted him gone.
Now firing Ron Deaton - that would be a act of cohones!
Please stall on the Rick Caruso tributes. This is the same guy who called Maxine Waters a b---- and then was too scared to show up at a meeting when she came looking for him. Gimme a break!
Everybody including her own constituents have said she's a b--tch. Her closest friends have said she's an emtional, loud mouth out of control woman who needs to take a chill pill. Caruso showed class and dignity when that witch came out in the press acting like a lunatic. All the press people covered the story cause they couldn't believe a Congresswoman would behave in such a undignified manner. Why isn't she protesting about all the black on black crime in your district? She thinks Wal Mart is more important. She's an idiot....
I agree. It's always a demonstration of "class" for a public figure to call another public figure, particularly an elected one, a "B*tch", or "A$$hole" or even "Mother Fu#@er". It's a true sign of etiquette. In fact, I urge everyone to try it in public. Let your class be seen by all!
I agree. It's always a demonstration of "class" for a public figure to call another public figure, particularly an elected one, a "B*tch", or "A$$hole" or even "Mother Fu#@er". It's a true sign of etiquette. In fact, I urge everyone to try it in public. Let your class be seen by all!
Thanks to the last poster for showing us all the light. Furthermore, it's extremely shocking how the whole mess was swept under the rug. If roles were reversed and a male minority public official called a female white public official the same name, all hell would have broken loose!
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