Tuesday, September 09, 2014

FOP President Threatens Council Members Who Vote Against Raising Income Taxes

The president of the local Fraternal Order of Police for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, William Owensby, used public comment time on last night's proposal before the Indianapolis City-County Council to raise local income taxes by about 10%, or $30 million a year, supposedly for the purpose of hiring more police officers, to chastise council members for not doing their jobs. Although Owensby works full-time on police union business, his paycheck is paid with our city tax dollars. When Councilor William Oliver objected to his testimony threatening to work to defeat council members who didn't support the tax increase, he was advised there was nothing inappropriate with Owensby's comments. This is the same guy whose son, Corey Owensby, brought disgrace to the Indianapolis Police Department after he was criminally charged with false reporting and official misconduct. Where was Owensby and his union the past seven years when none of the 65% increase in the local income tax rate got used to hire additional police officers as promised? He traded more police officers for pay raises. That's the truth. He knows that more pay raises are the only thing certain that will come as a result of this tax increase, even as ordinary taxpayers have seen their wages drop about 25% on average since the Great Recession of 2008. His union, by the way, supports the downtown mafia's proposal to let a private developer build a more than half billion dollar new criminal justice center that will consume what little remains of this additional tax increase after pay raises are handed out.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amen, brother. AMEN.

Christine Scales sure does appear to be the sole Republican Councilor not challenged by a lack of ethics and basic human decency. The others- including the Democrats- in that City Council Room? Not so much.

Can you imagine how great and corruption free our City would be with her at the helm on the 25th floor or the City County Building?

Anonymous said...

I agree that Christine Scales is The BEST Mayor Indianapolis could hope for!

Anonymous said...

William Oliver is as ignorant as Monroe "Swea Pea" Gray....what fools!

Gary R. Welsh said...

Regardless of what you may feel about Bill Oliver, he was absolutely right to object to Owensby's threats. The FOP, if it had any sense, would sack him as their president. He has lost the respect of many of the council members.

Anonymous said...

Since there is a need for more police officers, A reassignment may be needed, the Chief or Public Safety Director should reassign him back to 'work'
or he can retire and still be the Head of the FOP and get paid a salary with the union dues that members pay. Which in turn would free up taxpayer money to hire a new recruit.
Either way IPD gets another officer.

Anonymous said...

What is IMPD's policing model? What is their block-by-block plan for daily neighborhood beats?

From what I can see, they haphazardly drive around in cars with no particular method to anything they do.

IMPD has 1500 officers. Subtracting no more than 50 for administrative tasks leaves 1450. 1450 divided by three gives 483 officers assigned to morning, afternoon and evening shift.

Obviously, officers can't work seven days a week, but they can work five days for 40 hours. Each shift therefore has 345 officers on duty at any moment.

There are 342 square miles in Marion County. How many patrols of one square mile can an officer make, on foot, in eight hours? Quite a bit of ground can be covered.

Obviously, some squares are more dense than others, but some squares in Idnianapolis are outright empty.

Given obvious math, Indianapolis has ample police officers, if only its policing plan were designed effectively, aimed at doing actual beat work.