The
next circus act of Mayor Greg Ballard and Public Safety Director Frank Straub has opened. Another high paid, out-of-towner will join Straub's staff as Deputy Director in charge of training and community relations. Rick Hite, a retired Baltimore police officer who spent most of his career there complaining about how
unfairly black police officers were treated compared to white police officers, joins the Straub team. But hold on, it gets better. Ballard and Straub announced that two of the community's most controversial radio talk show hosts,
Abdul Hakim Shabazz and
Amos Brown, will serve on a new advisory board for Public Safety, along with Councilors Angel Rivera and Ben Hunter, a black minister, someone representing the Asian community, someone representing the Hispanic community and Ice Miller partner Melissa Proffitt Reese. Gee, they forgot to name a handicapped person and a gay. What were they thinking? The press release actually lists Shabazz as an "Attorney At Law." The guy is not licensed to practice law in Indiana and has never practiced law. By the way, did he ever give up his Illinois vanity plate "Abdul" and start complying with Indiana law by licensing his motor vehicle here and paying taxes here?
10 comments:
There is no money to hire police. No money for police equipment. Judges keep releasing criminals to prey on us....and Straub wants to TAX & SPEND another high salary to ADD to his staff!
What's more? He wants to put this guy over police training....my copy of the City Code says that is not allowed. The police chief is responsible for his department. If Straub cannot command the police, how can he appoint a training commander? Straub cannot discipline the Chief or any officer, they don't work for him.
Now look at the left-leaning ultra liberal things Straub is doing....REMOVING minority POLICE OFFICERS from the streets! Many have been pulled from protecting us to become social workers, working with minorities in the community instead of fighting crime!
-Mandating quotas for media relations, after putting out a gag order that was mentioned on AI, micromanaging the police department.
Now how many police officers could be hired instead of wasting money on the cost of: Remodeling Straub's new suite of offices in the city-county building, additional staff for Straub's public safety office, the real estate expenses Straub wants to make, including renting Eastgate Mall, & a school???
This sounds like liberal TAX AND SPEND policy.
If you check out Straub's resume', he prominently points out his experience as the training administrator for the NYPD. If he thinks he knows so much about it, why doesn't he do the job himself instead of hiring another high paid crony? Oh, that's right, he's too tied up playing police and fire chief.
An axiom in the world of computer programming is "Adding more people to a behind-schedule software project will only cause it to get further behind schedule."
I submit to you that adding more people to an already FUBARed public safety department will only cause it to be further FUBARed.
I cringe to think that this accidental mayor will give Abdul and Amos more power over the rest of us than TPTB have already given them. The clown photo you have posted is a perfect illustration for this piece, AI.
I have a question. Why doesn't the Mayor utilize the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee (GIPC) rather than form another group? Two members of the new group (Raju and Melissa) are already members of GIPC. Plus, GIPC is well-represented by a cross-section of community members, including the media and clergy.
GIPC also has the Race and Cultural Relations Leadership Network that meets regularly and could be enlisted to provide its input.
There doesn't seem to be a need to create another group.
GIPC has always been populated by elitist insiders who make lots of money off city government. I don't trust anything they do. They are not in the least bit representative of the community. They are all too far removed from what is happening in these troubled neighborhoods where police combat crime on a day-to-day basis, although admittedly, it is a better group than the one Mayor Ballard and Straub came up with. I've never in all of my life seen a politician do something as stupid as to appoint two self-important radio talk show hosts to a single board that is supposed to serve an important advisory function to the city. Like I said in the post, it's a circus act. Ballard keeps kissing Amos' feet and he keeps clobbering him over the head. Abdul keeps taking money under the table to promote propaganda for Ballard. Abdul and Amos hate each other. I can only imagine how comical it will be watching each one of them trying to one-up the other during any conversation at a meeting.
I moved from Indy to Chicago in Nov. 2007 and thought the cronyism and ineptitude was bad in Chi-town.
I've long joked that I should send a letter to the editor apologizing to the city for voting for Ballard as one the last things I did before moving to Chicago.
It seems like Indianapolis is being run by a bunch of intellectual Lilliputians.
Jeff, GIPC??? Are you kidding? I trust Indianapolis Downtown more than I trust GIPC. GIPC is just a bunch of elitists looking to spend taxpayer money on corporate welfare projects.
So let me get this straight. The city announces they will be $50 million short and are trying to find ways to cut the budget right? Detectives can no longer get business cards printed, street officers are no longer issued field duty notebooks, office supplies are scarce, and many of us are driving ratty looking cars and our Mayor and THE DOCTOR hire another high paying outsider, forming a special office for homeland security, and continuing to expand the office of the Public Safety Director?! Am I the only one who is dazed and confused?
With this new "Advisory Board", it sounds like Carlos May (our new Director of Latino Affairs) has already become redundant. If he's not good enough to represent the Latino population on this board, he probably doesn't need to be on the payroll.
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