AMNESIA FILE: DURING LBPD’S 2010 CUTS CHIEF STILL HAD HOPE FOR ACADEMY
By Greater Long Beach
It’s budget-slashing season in Long Beach again, and Police Chief Jim McDonnell has put his game face—also known as the best possible face—on the pending reductions to the Long Beach Police Department budget, programs and staffing. It’s the same face—strained but steadfast—McDonnell put on the same kind of cuts to the LBPD last year.
But the best face McDonnell could put on the budget fashioned last year included his hope—expressed at a November 2010 media briefing—for a Police Academy to replenish the ranks of the LBPD, which have been thinning through retirement and attrition. We haven’t heard words like that from McDonnell this year, not that anybody had noticed—or perhaps wanted to—until Monday, when Bill Pearl of LBReport.com pointed out Long Beach’s latest case of mass amnesia.
LBReport.com provided a transcript of the salient portion of McDonnell’s mid-November 2010 media briefing, where he responded to a question about what he hoped to see in the 2012 LBPD budget—that is, the one the Mayor, City Manager and Long Beach City Council are stripping now.
McDonnell began by noting that LBPD was losing between 40 and 50 officers per year due to normal retirements/attrition, then expressed his hope for a sizable Police Academy class in October 2011. Said McDonnell:
“This year as best we could, we wanted to be good partners with the rest of the city, and we want to continue to do that. But we get at a point now where we’re at 867 [sworn officers] in the budget now [884 minus 17 recruits eliminated by not funding fiscal-year 2011 replenishment police academy class, using that money to layoffs of officers currently above budgeted level] and we anticipate losing 40-50 a year sworn officers for general attrition, just people ready to retire.
“And so for us to be able to replenish some of those bodies, we need to run an academy. We’re looking at options as a lateral academy. There’s been some optimism for a lateral academy here because experiences in the past have not always been that positive, but we’re in a different place where some organizations around the state are laying off good people and in large numbers and we may be able to take advantage of that.
“The ideal would be to have a full regular recruit academy and my goal is to be able to work with the city departments, and the city manager, to be able to come up with an agreement to start a new police academy October 1 of 2011 … but as soon as we can possibly do that, which would be October 1, my hope is that we can start gearing up to that over the summer months with what we have in house to be able to get us to a position where we could kick of an academy of considerable size to be able to start looking at replenishing some of those numbers.”
[Chief McDonnell discussed multiple factors in hiring process; background investigations; test-taking and attrition in the academy.]
“In an ideal sense, it would be nice to say for public safety to start with, and maybe beyond that eventually, to be able to have a planned succession strategy, where we know, we anticipate and we can pretty safely say we will lose those 40 to 50 [officers] every year, to have an agreement so there’d be built in every budget a new academy to be able to replenish at least the attrition, and then if we have an opportunity based on budget to be able to build the department, then we start looking at doing that by hiring additional people on top of the attrition number…
“…[O]ur people right now are stretched very thin, so when we have [cites example of a "Critical Mass" bicycle ride] or some kind of a major event, we pull people from the rest of the city which is not in any way something we want to do. We want to be able to have beat integrity so that the officers assigned to beats stay on those beats and provide service to the people as well as being proactive…”
Fewer officers retired in 2011 than management expected. However, on August 2, when Mayor Bob Foster and City Manager West released their proposed 2012 budget for City Council consideration, it did not include a replenishment police academy class. Mayor Foster and City Management have proposed that the Council let police levels taxpayers decline by expected attrition by 31 sworn officers during fiscal-year 2012 (October 2011 to September 2012).
FOR SPECIFICS ON THE DECLINE IN LBPD STAFFING GO TO LBREPORT.COM
30 Comments
I think it is extremely unwise to continue to defer police academies this way. Our city Council’s corporate memory seems far too short.
We have -once again- attrited our police officer ranks to dangerously low levels and if we are not careful this is likely to result in contracting out part of the city -once again- just to continue to provide even the most basic of law enforcement services to our community. This is not a prudent way to conduct strategic public safety planning in the second largest city in the county.
We have made it too easy for our police officers to leave, feed off our trough, AND go work somewhere else, utilizing the training etc that we paid for. The retirement plan is just that, not a supplemental income plan. It was not established for greedy people to gorge themselves. Walter Reuther and Samuel Gompers are rolling over in their graves seeing how their good intentions boiled down to a disgusting lust for money. The greet, for example, should not be able to receive our retirement money if he is not retired. Remember, actions speak louder than words.
wrongbeach should really review the various duly-enacted state laws related to public employee and public safety retirements before he makes some of the absurd statements he does.
I collect the pension I earned, after meeting the established legal requirements for doing so, in the manner prescribed by law. If wrongbeach is unhappy with these laws, he should work to see them changed.
Many, many people in the private sector who retire and collect pensions, often choose to return to work and remain productive in that way. Likewise many, many people in the public sector who retire and collect pensions choose to *not* return to work and, instead, enjoy whatever sort of liesure they happen to prefer as is their right as a free people in a free society.
wrongbeach refers to those who choose to continue to work after earning their retirement as “greedy.” Really? So the military veteran who retires after 20 years and returns to work in either the public or private sectors is “greedy?” The retired business professional who is collecting a pension and has returned to work as a school tracher or college professor is “greedy?”
Are these and so many others not simply choosing to continue to trade their labor for an income as is their right? Speaking for myself, I hope to continue to work and be productive doing *something* at *some* level for as long as I remain physically and mentally able to do so. As my father did, and his father, and his. I was raised with a strong work ethic that tells me that not only is it *acceptable* that I work for as long as possible, but that I it is *expected* that I do so.
Perhaps wrongbeach was raised differently.
Perhaps wrongbeach would make a different choice. It will be is entirely his right to make that choice and no one should seek to denigrate or desparage him for it. What a shame he does not seem willing to extend that same level of courtesy and respect to others.
wrongbeach would apparently prefer to be able to decide for others whether or not they will continue to work after retirement. Somebody should remind wrongbeach that no one has, as yet, died and made him king.
why arent i surprised greet is double dipping, there is no hypocrisy he wont engage in.
howardx, can you explain why you believe that returning to gainful employment after retirement is hypocritical?
Rather than have a new Police Academy Class, why not have Mayor Fostger, in his infinate wisdom, put aside ANOTHER $2.1 Million slush fund to pay existing Police Officers RETENTION PAY like he did in 2008? Heck, it DID NOT work before when he did it. Why not do it again now?
Mr. Ruehle’s inference that LBPD officers received $2.1 million in “retention pay” from a Mayor Foster-facilitated “slush fund” is false.
The 2009 median pay adjustment *never happened.*
Despite that this pay increase was part of a legal agreement with the city, the POA agreed to let the city off the hook when they had *no legal requirement* to do so. In so doing the POA saved taxpayers *millions* in general fund dollars. [Current POA contract, Section VI (D)]
Once again, Mr. Ruehle seems to prefer to employ false, fraudulent, and otherwise misleading tactics in his efforts to persuade others to his point of view.
I think it is extremely unwise to continue to pay bloated pensions way. Our city Council’s corporate memory seems far too short.
We have -once again- attrited our police officer ranks to dangerously low levels (with the officers well-pensioned help) and if we are not careful this is likely to result in contracting out part of the city -once again- just to continue to provide even the most basic of law enforcement services to our community. This is not a prudent way to conduct strategic public safety planning in the second largest city in the county.
Thanks wrongbeach, they say that mimicry can be considered the sincerest form of flattery. I am on record that I think we need to change our public employee pension formulas. Thanks for confirming that you agree.
It is not retirements that are responsible for attrition but, rather, the city’s failure to replace those who resign, retire, or are terminated, in a reasonable and timely manner.
Is there any factual data that you can point to that indicates that average numbers of LBPD retirees have significantly increased in the past decade or so? I seem to recall reading that there have, in fact, been *fewer* LBPD retirees than was initially anticipated.
i believe YOU are hypocritical greet. everyone keep in mind the sweet deal greet is getting due to his membership in a union, the next time you hear him complaining about unions.
so, howardx, if I understand you correctly, you can *not* explain why you believe that returning to gainful employment after retirement is hypocritical.
I really didn’t expect that you could.
But as is so often the case with you and some others here, you again offered a comment that is completely unsupported by the facts and for no reason other than to use as a vehicle to offer insult. Then, when asked to support what you claim with some proof or evidence, you ignore the challenge and move on to the next unfounded comment to use as an offering of yet another insult.
I currently enjoy the public pension that I earned, every bit of which was lawfully negotiated with, and fully approved by, my employer at the time. If you are displeased with the labor contracts that your elected representatives approved on your behalf, you should register that complaint with them, and not with the employees who did nothing other than to exercise their legal right to negotiate the best wages and working conditions their employer would agree to provide.
Unfortunately economic circumstances have changed significantly in the past few years, and it seems obvious, and unfortunate, that current public safety pension formulas are not sustainable. If they were, I would be strongly advocating that they be not only maintained, but improved.
During intellectual discussions and debates, unnecessary offerings of insult and baseless ad hominem attacks serve no constructive purpose.
Nonetheless, I rather doubt that this will keep you from continuing to employ them.
Headline: Long Beach Police Officer Convicted of Statutory Rape of Minor
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_18699869
Does Chief McDonnell’s attrition numbers include the Long Beach Police officers fired for rape, embezzlement, lying in court, DUIs, manslaughter or murder?
Doubt it. Long Beach doesn’t terminate its employees for violating the law with impunity.
Mr. Ruehle’s assertion that Long Beach doesn’t terminate its employees for violating the law with impunity is false.
There have been several examples in the past in the local, regional, and even national news of former LBPD officers who have been fired after having been convicted of committing various crimes. Mr. Ruehle has taken great pleasure in pointing them out to us and linking to the stories.
Mr. Ruehle, himself, even acknowledges this fact in his own rhetorical question: “Does (sic) Chief McDonnell’s attrition numbers include the Long Beach Police officers *fired* for rape, embezzlement, lying in court, DUIs, manslaughter or murder?” (emphasis added)
Like so many other comments Mr. Ruehle posts concerning LBPD, this one has no foundation in fact.
Greet, please list the names of those Long Beach Police officers YOU claim were fired. I can’t wait.
Keep in mind Long Beach Police Officer John B. Greet is one of those Police Union (POA) buddies who backs every Long Beach Police officer no matter what atrocious crime they are charged with.
Nice try, Mr. Ruehle. You’ve listed them often enough when it suited your own insulting purposes. Suddenly you need MY help to do so? LOL
This current comment of Mr. Ruehle’s is also completely unfounded. The very first comment I offered on this same story on The Patch back in May should have sufficed to prove this: “These charges are tragic and, if true, acts that are utterly despicable when committed by anyone, let alone a person who had once sworn an oath to keep his “private life unsullied as an example to all.”
Perhaps that wasn’t sufficiently convincing for Mr. Ruehle. Here’s another from this same article: “Where we fail (to aspire to the ideals in the Law Enforcement Code of Ethics), it must be noted and dealt with swiftly and appropriately.”
And this also…”If these charges prove true, in my opinion there is no prison cell dark or dank enough in which the defendant should spend the rest of his natural life…let alone the “four years and four months” the PT is reporting to be possible upon conviction.”
Like so many other comments Mr. Ruehle posts about me, this one has no foundation in fact.
And the falsehoods just keep on coming….
You are a liar Greet. The only names of Long Beach police officers I’ve ever named are the ones who either committed crimes and got off Scott free because their union buddy Long Beach cops never charged them with a crime or they were charged with a crime committed outside of Long Beach where their union buddy Long Beach cops couldn’t help them.
Greet, you claimed there are “several examples” of the Long Beach Police Department terminating their own officers for violating the law. Start naming them you lying sack.
I won’t hold my breath because it doesn’t happen in Long Beach, the city where the police department is above the law.
People fail to realize the Long Beach Police Department recently failed to terminate a police officer who TWICE (murder trial & rape trial) was found in a court of law to have lied in his original testimony resulting in innocent people being sent to prison for over 20 years. In both cases, the actual guilty people later confessed after the DNA evidence pointed their direction. When the innocent people were let out of prison many years later, they filed suit against Long Beach and settled for MULTI-$millions of taxpayers money, something City Hall doesn’t want to talk about.
Meanwhile that same lying ass cop kept his job provided by us taxpayers. There is no policing of the Long Beach police force. They can violate the law with impunity because they have guys like Greet who ALWAYS have their back.
Perhaps Mr. Ruehle has posted links, so often, to stories of instances of former LBPD employees that have been convicted of crimes and fired, that he has simply lost track of them. It is interesting that he is quite adept at naming these names whenever it suits his insulting purposes to do so but cannot seem to bring himself to do so whenever it does not.
His many and repeated comments on this topic, both on this site and others, are a matter of clear and public record and readily researchable by anyone interested in determining the facts rather than the falsehoods Mr. Ruehle repeatedly posts.
You stated there are “several examples” of the Long Beach Police Department terminating their own officers for violating the law.
So, name the names you lying sack.
Apparently it is acceptable for Mr. Ruehle to post any number of false, fraudulent and otherwise misleading comments on this site and several others and never once offer a single shred of evidence to support them.
Yet I am somehow to be considered a “lying sack” because I am not interested in listing, for him, many of the very names that he, himself, has previously mentioned here and elsewhere.
Perhaps Mr. Ruehle is finally coming to understand, to some small degree, how truly annoying it is when he repeatedly makes claims that he either cannot or will not prove.
Mr. Ruehle could freely and openly acknowledge that my claim, here, is true if he thought it would benefit him but he refuses do so, because he knows that it will not.
All we need to do is look at this very thread to see clear, if inadvertent, evidence of Mr. Ruehle’s personal knowledge that what I said is true:
“Does (sic) Chief McDonnell’s attrition numbers include the Long Beach Police officers fired for rape, embezzlement, lying in court, DUIs, manslaughter or murder?”
With Mr. Ruehle’s own words he is, again, proven false. Either he believes that there have been “Long Beach Police officers fired for rape, embezzlement, lying in court, DUIs, manslaughter or murder” or he was attempting to mislead readers into believing that this has occured, when it hasn’t.
Which is it Mr. Ruehle? Were you misleading us then? Or are you misleading us now?
Name the names Greet, you lying sack.
Here, as in so many other instances, we see that Mr. Ruehle cannot or will not answer for his own obviously false, fraudulent, and otherwise misleading commentary. All he can do is attempt to offer more insults and epithets.
Sad.
Did you know the Long Beach Police Department recently failed to terminate a police officer who TWICE (murder trial & rape trial) was found in a court of law to have lied in his original testimony resulting in two innocent people being sent to prison for over 20 years. In both cases, the real guilty people later confessed after DNA evidence pointed their direction. When the falsely imprisoned people were let out of prison many years later, they of course filed suit against Long Beach and settled for MULTI-$millions of our taxpayers money, something City Hall doesn’t want to talk about.
Meanwhile that same lying cop kept his job, paid for by us taxpayers. Apparently, the Long Beach Police department can violate with impunity the very laws they are hired to enforce.
Mr. Ruehle, can you cite the specific sections of the specific court cases in which you claim an LBPD officer “was found in a court of law to have lied in his original testimony resulting in two innocent people being sent to prison for over 20 years.”?
Name the names Greet.
LOL. I dont think so, Mr. Ruehle. That’s ok, I’m fine with you being annoyed that I will not do so. I’ll just accept that you refuse to cite the specific sections of the specific court cases. I’ll just add it to all of the other claims that you have made for which you refuse to offer proof.
Thanks though!
While Long Beach Police Chief O’Donnell is at it, why doesn’t he reopen the FOUR domestic violence cases against former Police Chief Batts that were never prosecuted and were covered up by City Hall? Just more examples of the Long Beach Police Department being above the law.
http://willibys-corruptjustice.blogspot.com/2008/09/oakland-police-department.html
Mr. Ruehle seems to be unaware that re-opening such investigations are not within Chief McDonnell’s authority, if the statute of limitations have run out or if the alleged victim has declined to prosecute.
Given that the alleged victim in this case is currently a member of the US House of Representatives and certainly has the political juice to have these investigations re-opened if she truly wanted to, Mr. Ruehle might consider the possibility that, for whatever reason, Rep. Richardson chooses to not do so.
There is no alleging about it. Greet and every other so-called good cop in the department knew about the wife beatings and they ALL kept their mouths shut. They are ALL cowards and accomplices, including Greet, for not questioning the Police Chief’s and City Hall’s conduct. Though I had heard about it from cops for over a year, not a single one stepped forward until the Lobstergate fiasco.
It’s kinda like all the cops know and talk about a certain female city council staff members who has repeatedly been pulled over for DUIs and released. They all joke about it. Yet not a single one has the intestinal fortitude to do something about it until someone gets killed.
Mr. Ruehle fails to understand the term “alleged” in the context I have used it. In this context, the crimes he is mentioning are only alleged to have occurred because no one has ever proven them in court nor has anyone admitted to having ever committed them.
Mr. Ruehle also fails to understand that not everyone in any organization, police department or otherwise, knows everything about everything that everyone else is alleged to have done.
Mr. Ruehle prefers, instead, to believe the worst of every LBPD officer at the time and stoops to wrongfully accusing people he has never met of being “cowards and accomplices.”
No wonder Mr. Ruehle is not well-regarded in city government. It has nothing to do with his tireless and highly-appropriate scrutiny, nor with his laudible questioning of many city policies and procedures.
It is his unfortunate habit of presuming to play judge and jury in cases where he very often does not have all the facts, nor fully understand those facts he does have.
Mr. Ruehle could be a far greater voice for responsible reform in our local government if he would only learn to speak more responsibly himself.
While you folks keep dithering, more and more of my taxes go to cops who can’t even keep gang members out of Bixby Park.