Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Curry Lashes Out At Ballard Over Public Safety "Funding Crisis"

Marion Co. Prosecutor Terry Curry appears to have received his marching orders from the downtown mafia, and those orders mean conflating the debate over public safety funding as "a crisis" in an effort to put public pressure on Mayor Ballard and City-County Council members to enact a tax increase. A Fox 59 News reports claims that IMPD is short 685 police officers, while the FOP recently claimed 500 new police officers were needed:
“For the past several months when meeting with neighborhood associations, faith groups and other organizations, I have become a broken record with two messages: our public safety agencies are woefully underfunded and, as a community, we must undertake a substantive discussion about how we address this crisis,” wrote Curry.
Curry said IMPD officers are spread too thin. He cited a recent incident when Deputy Prosecutor Denise Robinson was sent to a crime scene because there were no homicide detectives available.
The department is short by an estimated 685 officers. Nearly half of the force is also eligible for retirement.
Some are questioning Curry's claim that his chief deputy prosecutor had to go to a crime scene recently because no homicide detectives were available. Prosecutors are kept away from crime scene investigations in order to avoid becoming witnesses in a case. Others question why his staff devoted an inordinate amount of resources to the Bei Bei Shui case. Shui is the 36-year old pregnant woman who Curry charged with murder after she attempted to commit suicide by ingesting rat poison, which resulted in the death of her fetus. After wasting more than a year on the highly-publicized and controversial case, Curry's office wound up reaching a plea agreement with Shui just as the case went to trial. The Chinese immigrant pleaded guilty to criminal recklessness, a misdemeanor charge, and was sentenced to the 178 days she had already served.

The Ballard administration has insisted that crime numbers, except for homicides, have been down across the board despite lower staffing levels. Public Safety Director Troy Riggs says funding isn't the problem.
“If we don’t have an honest dialogue about this, in four or five years, it could be a crisis,” said Troy Riggs, Indianapolis Public Safety Director. “[But] what can we afford? That’s the tough part.”
With 85 percent of the city’s budget already going to public safety, Riggs said hiring hundreds of police officers would cost an additional $84 million . . .
Riggs claims that 100 police officers have been put back on the streets as a result of reassignment of duties, and that the department has plans to add an additional 100 police officer by the end of 2016. Nowhere in any of the stories in the local news media is there any discussion about how the mayor and City-County Council deliberately chose to spend a substantial part of the hundreds of millions of dollars raised from the 2007, 65% increase in the local income tax earmarked for public safety on other priorities supported by the downtown mafia.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really hate to disagree with Mr. Riggs, whom I greatly admire, however, there were NOT 100 officers "reassigned" to the street, as is reported.
Many of those were merely changes in assignment, making them eligible for radio runs.
These NRO's fulfilled a vital function in their old assignment. They were able to take the time to stay in a high-crime area, stake out businesses, and keep the criminals moving around.
At least that's what the original intent of their assignment was.

Gary R. Welsh said...

That's the problem. Nobody is playing it straight with the facts.

Gary R. Welsh said...

I'm still waiting for someone to document all of those tens of millions in savings we were supposedly going to achieve from the merger of IMPD and the sheriff's law enforcement division.

Anonymous said...

I call Terry Curry out on his claim he sent a high ranking deputy prosecutor to a homicide in lieu of a real police detective. I don't believe it!

Hey, Terry, can you provide the name of the person who deceased???

Defense would have a field day if a supervisory prosecutor tried to handle a crime scene in lieu of police! I'm sure police would let that happen, the closest thing would be that a deputy prosecutor appears near the scene and is briefed on the investigation, but not taking a investigatory role!

Can you imagine the egg in Terry Curry's face should his version ever happen and defense find out about it? -Terry would have to hire a special prosecutor on that case because sending a supervisory prosecutor would cause all manners of conflict in prosecuting....and WE WOULD PAY!

Anonymous said...

Terry Curry really got egg on his face from the wasted resources on the Bei Bei Shui case. Imagine going from a homicide case to a misdemeanor....disgraceful.

But then he can always boast in political advertising that he pled an orginal murder charge to a misdemeanor equal in punishment to disorderly conduct.

He may already be considered famous (or infamous) as this is chronicled in Wikipedia.