As I have read about the events with the Collegedale Police Department unfolding, I have started to wonder why doesn’t the Collegedale Police Department contract with Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office? With minimal adjustment and addition to the Sheriff’s Office, the city of Collegedale could provide a much better service for much cheaper.
Think about it, what can Collegedale Police offer that Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office can’t? The current budget for the Collegedale Police Department is $2,448,637, this includes $392,000 for new vehicles and $36,400 for their SWAT team rebranded as SORT. It would appear that most of the vehicles that Collegedale Police are driving are in rather good shape. It would also appear that with a $36,400 budget for their SORT team, the city of Collegedale is a rather violent place.
Instead of a community friendly small town feel, they are attempting to match the budgets and behaviors of much larger agencies.
Can someone also explain to me why the city of Collegedale Police Department needs to have an MRAP? I rode in this military vehicle while I served our nation in a war zone. Why on earth does the small town of Collegedale need this vehicle, which by the way is not cheap to maintain. If things are so bad to where this equipment and level of financing are needed then why doesn’t the city let us know about know about what is going on.
In light of the recent massive tax increase that the citizens of Collegedale are going to be paying, why would you not cut the fat from the city first? $36,400 cut here, $392,000 there, adds up. In the last article from the Times Free Press about cost over runs in the city of Collegedale for several projects, I expected to read about tough decisions that the city would have to make so the tax payer wouldn’t be adversely affected. I am sorry to say that I wasn’t surprised when the solution was to hire another employee and restart the project.
If the clearly dysfunctional Police Department were to go away, think of the savings to the city taxpayer. Even if the police budget was cut in half by contracting with the Sheriff’s Office it would almost negate the need for a tax increase.
In closing, what happens when class action lawsuits hit the Collegedale Police Department? Will that cost again be passed on to the city taxpayer? Aside from the current lawsuits from the police officers and potential lawsuits from people who were potentially wrongfully targeted because a quota had to be met, what happens when other issues come up? What happens when people find out that a explosives detection dog that was surplused by the military was used for narcotics detection? Since you can’t un-train a dog on a odor, how many people were wrongfully searched, detained or arrested due to a bad K9 search?
When these bills start to add up who will pay for the Collegedale Police Departments bad policies?
Robert Cain