Austin discusses cutting PD budget by 25% while

[pyrobow]

their current officers work 12/12

[glen]

There is a lot to it. City Council is saying they want to use the $$$ for cadet classes for other resources. It will cost them in the end and if an Officer is greedy and work driven can make white collar money. It happened here years ago when I was a young patrol Officer. We could work all the OT covering shortages that we wanted. I was bringing 5 uniforms with me in the truck- had a small window unit I plugged into extension cord and slept in truck for week at a time. I did this for over 2 years. Paid for the $140k house that I lived in and paid for over 30 acres in Williamson County. I was making more than the Chief of Police as a patrol Officer- just had to work a lot more hours then he did. Couldn't do it at my age now. Averaged over 100 hrs overtime every 2 weeks. Now they have policy that you can only work 36 hrs xtra a week. Probably from the 10 guys like me that made a small fortune last time we had a severe shortage.

[Johnny44]

Implosion of liberal cities...winning!

[etbowhunter]

Glen, I remember the officer shortages years ago but I believe at that time there was always social support for law enforcement. With the current environment both politically and socially, do you think officers will be willing to put themselves at that level of personal and legal risk for the extra income or will they simply walk away and look for other options to make a living?

[glen]

ET- guys will walk away causing more of a shortage. Some folks like me are born into it and just do it. Try not to listen to the outside noise and just go handle calls the best you can and do it one call at a time. Although there is a bunch of negative and Ive been through negative times. When you show up and help someone in a time of need they are usually thankful and appreciate you. Until the last part of my career I spent my entire time in a less fortunate portion of the City and although the media - others- want to say the relationship is horrible it really was not. I had plenty of folks I stopped by and checked on when I had time. I had a Pop Warner football team I showed up and tried to watch portions of their games- all of them knew my name and all of the parents that showed up knew me. Everyone does not hate you in your neighborhood but that doesn't sell papers or get people to watch the news.

[pyrobow]

Glen, I understand a lot of what is going in the dept. I have family and friends that are in APD.

I find it ironic that at a time when they are forcing the entire dept. to work overtime they are reducing the force. Both by attrition and no new hires.

I would expect more senior attrition soon, just like there was several months back.

[etbowhunter]

Glen, first of all let me say that based on your reply, you are truly a throwback to what i remember police officers to be for the most part when I was younger. Good men that were called to your profession and genuinely cared about the people they were charged with taking care of. The proverbial "sheep dog" for the flock. I also understand that even back then there were "bad" cops.
I just wonder how many younger officers see the world around them and are now looking at the environment as, at the very least thankless and at the worst downright life threatening and are weighing the very real decision of living to see their kids grow up versus the alternative.
Regardless of what happens and the very few bad cops, there is a special place in heaven for the men that place others above themselves. Thank you for your service and may God protect you and your brothers in these times.

[glen]

ET- thanks

PRY- It is the Capital City and politics always goes first- sometimes the end result is not thought out clearly- it is just the political thing to do right now. I feel for all the guys right now but the ones with 12-20 years I feel the worst for. I agree there will be a lot of men and women that had full intentions of doing 3-7 more years that have changed their plans and will go in the near future. Some will wait until after Jan 1st for tax purposes some will just punch out as soon as they can get their gear and paperwork lined out. I actually walked someone through the retirement process yesterday and talked to a good friend that always said he was gonna do 30 that I helped pull numbers for at year 23. It will be rough times for both residents and police departments in Metro areas in the near future unless cooler heads prevail.

[Hogmauler]

I can’t blame any of y’all for leaving. Just heard about the fine print on Pelosi’s p d restructuring or whatever you want to all it. The first part didn’t sound bad. But basically what these folks intend to do is hold police personally accountable more so than they already are. I guess it means they can be sued e en in a non lethal or non assault scenario. Once again I am dumbfounded that there are people walking among us that actually believe a psychologist can go out and answer a domestic violence call.
P S A: To all freshmen college students. Change your major to psychology. There will be drastic shortages in the future.

[Kingfisher789]

I heard this past 2 weeks cost 1 million in OT pay....thanks looters and protesters. We could have made a payment on your hotel for the homeless...

[Hogmauler]

And “cry rooms” and “safe spaces” for college students.

[glen]

Kingfisher- that is not even close to the $$$ amount. My guys all did about 40 hrs OT last week. So lets just average $2500 an Officer/Detective/Sgt in pay. Lets say 1800 guys and that's about $4.5 million a week in OT pay. This does not count all the $$$ it cost in supplies and such. That is for one week. These are not factual numbers but just estimates based on my guys that work for me. And I'm actually lowballing the numbers.

[Hogmauler]

That is crazy’ and lowball at that.