Wednesday, February 12, 2014

MORE

While John Cranley wants to hire more police and add to a budget that's already in the red, do we really need more police? A post from the Cincinnati Libertarian from '05 indicates, not necessarily.
Are more police officers always the answer? Lt Rahtz sites an experiment in Kansas City where the police department there took all of their patrols out of one beat, and sent them to a beat with a similar crime rate (the only time a police officer would enter that beat was when dispatched). So for a time, one beat had twice as much police presence as before, and the other one had virtually none.
So, what was the end result? Crime stayed the same in both beats. Police presence had no effect on crime!
While having more police to respond & investigate might be on the table, mere presence doesn't seem to be any deterrent.
Add to that, that The Queen City is near the top 10 of officers per capita in the nation and that we had only about 300 police around 1890 when the city population & footprint were about the same…
Maybe holograms are the answer.

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