Your Money or Your Life

Good news -- the Los Angeles City Council refused to place a half-cent sales tax increase on the May 17 ballot. (We already shell out 8.25%.) Bad news -- that means black people may riot.

Or so says Police Chief William Bratton.

"You have the opportunity to put us finally on the road that will make us the safest largest city in America." But without [the] additional [1,260 police] officers, he warned, "At each incident we risk this city going up in flames once again, which has happened twice in recent history."

More here. The City has an annual budget of around $5 billion; the extra cops would cost $200 million, and City Councilmembers make more than $140,000 a year.

Comments

[c]

Ironic, considering the role the police themselves had in causing the last round of rioting.

[Adam]

wow..$140,000 a year is only $20,000 a year less than Congress

[Matt Welch]

No *wonder* they spend so much time criticizing the federal government....

[Mo]

I'll risk the riots, thank you very much. I see about 5 police cars every day in my safe Mar Vista neighborhood. Every morning, when I get on the freeway, I see two police vehicles waiting on the on-ramp to pass out tickets for people making the illegal right on red (only illegal in the morning). Methinks we don't need more cops here.

[Richard]

200,000,000 dollars for 1260 police officers? That is over $150K apiece!!!!

[sage]

Damn. Is that 8.25% the total, or there also a state sales tax? I pay 8.6% overall, but at least I don't have a state income tax.

[joe]

Yeah, since when have more community police ever reduced crime?

Oh, well, there was the time when William Bratton was Chief of Police in Boston, and made putting police in the neighborhoods a priority, and the crime rate plummetted. Or the time William Bratton was Chief of Police in New York, and made community policing a priority, and the crime rate plummetted...

OK, but besides those two minor episodes, give me one good reason why I should possibly believe that William Bratton knows what he's talking about when he says he needs more community police to reduce crime.

And yeah, 8.25% sucks.

[Add It Up!]

"200,000,000 dollars for 1260 police officers? That is over $150K apiece!!!!"

But they need cop cars. And uniforms. And guns. And bullets. And tasers. And precinct buildings. And bean-counters to make sure the money is well-spent (Oh, look! I made a funny!). And sensitivity training. And pension contributions. And ...

Most businesses plan that each employee's total cost to the business is around 2.5 times the employees actual salary. So $150K per cop isn't *that* unreasonable. Assuming, of course, that $200M actually resulted in 1260 cops. I'd bet it cames closer to half that.

[sage]

Joe,

I think what Mr. Welch was referring to was Bratton's resorting to a common scare tactic. Give me what I want, or the city will burn.

[Mo]

Trust me joe, there is plenty of wasted money in the LA coffers to cover the funds. And 8.25% includes the state sales tax, but not the income. Blech.

[Matt Welch]

joe -- All in all, I'm not against hiring a thousand more cops. I'm just not remotely convinced that this City Hall is spending its current hoard of $5 billion so wisely that the only solution to every problem, every time, is increasing taxes.

(That, and banning Wal-Mart. And protesting the war. And sending councilmembers to the Super Bowl to woo the NFL back to Los Angeles. And creating fanciful new reason for impounding & auctioning off the cars of criminal *suspects*....)

And I think Bratton's scare tactics are ugly and disingenuous.

[Shawn Smith]

But the report also notes the killing of a black kid by the police that recently occurred. It sounds like Bratton's comment amounted to something like, "Yeah, we just fucked up killing a kid, and if you lilly-white asses don't want your houses burnt down because of our fuck-up, give us our mother fucking money!"

What a bill.

P.S. Sorry for the profanity.

[jc]

When crime goes up, hire more cops. Hire more cops, crime goes down. So hire even more cops. If crime goes up, you didn't hire enough additional cops. So hire more cops.

Wow, it's like magic!

[Kevin Carson]

"each incident"?

Um, maybe the cops should stop creating all those "incidents" in the first place, and then they'd have less rioting to contend with. And maybe if they'd stop spending so much time planting evidence and harassing people, maybe the cops they already have would have time to get more legitimate work done.

If the downside of a "no" vote is more rioting blacks, is the downside of a "yes" vote more police beatings?

[Russ D]

Anyone else see the pictuerein the Boston Globe on Monday of the cops lining the streets of the Fenway? Nice police state you live in joe! Now wonder crime is down. Hire the SS and crime will plummet. (Until the government thinks up new crimes.)

Seriously, Bratton isn't the only successful big-city police chief in the US. There are other cities that have reduced crime AND reduced the number of cops per capita, but why let those facts get in the way of a nice tax increase, one borne mostly by the poor.

[David T]

It may be good news that the tax won't pass. But why is it good news that *it won't be on the ballot?* Why is letting the people decide so horrible? Unless of course Matt views the majority of his fellow LA voters as stupid or venal. (Not that they may not be. But if he feels that way, he should say so.)

[Evan Williams]

But why is it good news that *it won't be on the ballot?* Why is letting the people decide so horrible?

When it's majoritarian theft, then it's a good thing. If the tyrannical majority doesn't even get the chance to vote on whether to steal from me, then I'm happier. This is a crystal clear instance where your hard-earned wealth is directly at the mercy of 50.1% (or whatever it takes in LA) of the people. Quite frankly, I would applaud the beaurocratic class if they had the balls to stand up to the people and say, "no, you will not even have the opportunity to decide whether or not to steal more of everyone's wealth".

Majoritarian Democracy is not always a good thing on a local level. If 50.1% of the people in your town decided that everyone should be forced to wear purple pants every tuesday, then you would have to do it. Thus, letting other people decide how I live is not always a good thing.

[Matt Welch]

David T -- There are two ways to get something on the ballot, as far as I'm aware: Gather enough signatures, or have the legislature put it on there. I've got nothing against the former.

[My2Cents]

Say "Please" and maybe they will change their mind.

[David T]

Evan--if this were a case of a majority voting on whether to increase some tax that they think will fall entirely on "the rich" that is one thing. But this is a *sales tax.* Every voter pays it, and evey voter knows that he or she pays it. Why assume that they will vote to increase it if there is no need to do so?

[Krispy Kreme Lobbiest]

It's a conspiracy. William Bratton ran the NYPD until 1996. Cooincidentally, the first New York Krispy Creme also opened in 1996. The first Los Angeles Krispy Kreme opened in 1999 and the doughnut lobby has been aggitating for more LAPD cops ever since. Bringing in William Bratton two years ago was just the glaze on the doughnut. Soon LA will be crawling with cops who have nothing to do but hang around at the Krispy Kreme spending your tax dollars on our doughnuts. And there's not a thing you can do about it. Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!