Thursday, October 15, 2009

City of Pontiac Police - Don't Bother Us With Trifles

Trifles like burglary, assault and similar 'minor' crimes.

Detroit Free Press: Who can you call if cops won't come?

When a burglar attempted to steal tools from a warehouse he owns in Pontiac, Leon Jukowski did what any reasonable property owner would: He called his local police.

Three days later, an old friend on the force paid Jukowski a sheepish "courtesy call" to explain that the Pontiac department no longer had the resources to investigate B&Es.

"So what I am I supposed to do? Have one of my employees drag the burglar off the street and beat the crap out of him?" asked Jukowski, a former deputy mayor who is running, against the advice of many of his saner friends, for mayor of the cash-strapped city.

His friend from the police department smiled ruefully. "We don't really send people out for that anymore, either," he said.

Pontiac, in between being a location for the shooting of the Red Dawn remake, is undergoing a severe financial and mismanagement mess putting it in the rusty triangle of Flint, Detroit and Pontiac. The lack of police protection is a result of the economy and mismanagement on the part of the city.

Not having sufficient police resources to protect your citizens from serious felonies is not a good thing. Considering that governments first duty is the maintenance of law and order and the protection of its citizens Pontiac's inability to do so is disheartening to say the least.

This is certainly not going to help lure businesses and people to live in Pontiac, where they can be faced with uninvestigated property and personal crimes and certainly not when a crime is in progress and there is no response.

Time for Pontiac to get the Oakland County Sheriff in to do the policing function or cut other unnecessary areas to give the Pontiac Police the resources and support they need, especially as they're done to 65 sworn officers from 170 three years ago, and crime hasn't dropped in lockstep, if anything its increased given the lack of deterrence of police presence and follow-up.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Pontiac Police respond to calls for the vacant Fairlawn Center. The place has been empty since 1996 and the police go there to arrest people for B&E.

Pontiac Police are more interested in protecting this vacant building than helping current business owners like Jukowski, who even has an old friend on the force.

It must be the owners of the vacant Fairlawn Center have more clout.