The Vanishing Beat Cop

Joravsky at it again:

• Since 2008, 944 police officers have retired, according to the police department's pension fund. During that same period, only 310 new officers have been hired.

  Many of the retirees were 9161s. Others were higher-ranking officers—sergeants, lieutenants, and commanders. The department promotes from within, so those vacancies have largely been filled, if they were filled at all, by 9161s moving up. The only way to replace all those 9161s would be to hire a lot more new cops than the city's been willing to.

  But that's not clear from the city budget. The police department bean counters are playing an old trick: robbing Peter to pay Paul. They're letting money be earmarked as salaries for officers who aren't hired, then spending it on other departmental needs.

We'd take issue with the "spending it on other departmental needs" though. As far as we can tell, the department just returns the unspent money to the general fund for spending on anything else Shortshanks thinks he needs. The Fleet budget is a separate line item and we aren't seeing increased training or new equipment.

Joravsky opens with the boldness of the street thugs not feeling the pressure of years past by the police and the confrontational encounters we're seeing more and more often.

Then he delves into budget numbers as we did months ago where unfilled spots are simply listed in the budget as line items at the lowest entry level salaries.

Finally, he gets down to number crunching of beat officers (under 5,000), retirements, lack of hiring and no promotions and the effects it all has on crime.

It's a serious article and deserves serious coverage and ought to provoke serious discussion. Which means it will be covered by exactly The Reader and a few insignificant cop blogs.