Today, Jordan Green of Triad City Beat opines, Increasing pay for police and fire doesn’t please everyone. My reply:
Jordan wrote: "Police and fire consume the largest share of the budget and employ the largest number of employees, making them an effective voting bloc..."
But is that true? The part about the effective voting bloc, I mean? How many Greensboro Police Officers actually live and vote in the City of Greensboro? I know a lot of GPD officers and few live in Greensboro. While that's an easy assumption to make, is it correct? Or is that simply what the media and elected officials perceive to be true?
Jordan continued: "City leaders tend to worry about police morale in particular out of concern that officers will perform less effectively if they’re not happy on the job."
One would certainly think that to be true but beginning with the way the Chief of Police is a political appointment by City Council right down to the way City Council has constantly used GPD as scapegoats in Council's own scandals like the recent cover-up of the facts concerning the party at the Vaughan household (Look it up, parts are missing from the P2C website) it becomes obvious GPD is regarded by Council as just another tool to their own means.
Obviously pay is low here. Pay is low for everyone including journalists. Pay will always be low here as long as our city continues to be run by corrupt and inept leaders. And the saddest part, any attempt to correct low wages in any one sector of the population without solving our problems as a whole is divisive as it simply robs Peter to pay Paul.
