Layers

There was a great story on the FOX News site this morning about the Austin, TX police department walking away from their duties. There are several things going on there. One (Austin being a commie town) is that they have a “defund the police” movement, which affects everything from budgeting to morale. Two, being a border State they’re being inundated even more than usual with the scum of the world.

Looking for a picture for the post I run across a story saying the Governor of Texas is floating the idea that the Austin PD should be taken over by the State, its so dysfunctional. That’s not good. The story at FOX was just devastating:

“Kirk Andrews, owner of Petticoat Fair Lingerie in north Austin, told KVUE News that when he called authorities after his shop had been robbed, they said that he should put on gloves and search for bullet casings because police would not be able to assist due to the coronavirus.”

Collect your own evidence?? That’s gonna hold up in court?? Yeah when there are bullet casings at a crime scene, that’s an indication it was not a misdemeanor! Contemplate just one of the implications of this, vigilantism. And then the macro aspect, what it means for a society when the rule of law takes a holiday. Its ridiculous!

Cops generally aren’t worth a shit in the best of times, throw in a flood of illegals, COVID and defunding and you’re talking about a serious mess! Austin is the San Francisco of Texas, a liberal enclave. They are getting exactly what they deserve. The trouble is you know there are going to be a handful of decent people that live there, that are being taken down along with the idiots. That’s a shame.

It just reminded me how poorly served we are in Ames by our police department. I’m not even going to go into it all: the lack of patrolling, the entire overnight shift sitting at the station, the carnage resulting from their failure to write ‘running the red’ tickets, bike lanes to nowhere choking traffic. Cops start around $80K here, then I remembered its actually 2 1/2 times what is paid after benefits and associated costs of employing someone. So its actually a budget impact of $200K per cop. Not to mention the societal costs of accidents, injuries and mayhem as a result of bad policing.