Carolina cops could ignore crime due to gas prices

Well, being a criminal in Smithfield, North Carolina may have some advantages due to the fact that the city can barely fill their tanks. And the little funding that they do have put aside runs out in February.

Disclaimer: Being a criminal is bad and in no way whatsoever should you try and take advantage of the lack of gas.

Cops in Smithfield aren’t going to answer 911 calls from hotels; they say those are usually hang-ups. And robbery reports? False alarms, mostly. Actually, misdemeanors altogether are going to be ignored — all until the city gives gas money to the PD.

The Smithfield, North Carolina town council nixed funding for patrol car fuel this year by 14 percent, or around $10,000 from the previous fiscal year. Police Chief Michael Scott says that that is only enough to keep the vehicles on the road until around February, at which point he is prepared to enforce some drastic new moves that would keep the department from going under — but will also leave a lot of the city’s exposed to crime that cops won’t even bother to investigate.

I am not a genius when it comes to American finances. I imagine that the cities usually need to come up with these funds. It's obvious that all these bail outs are not going towards the people who need it. The money is going to off shore corporations. Pretty sickening when Americans can't police themselves because there isn't enough money. But they have money to fund around ten wars.

Pretty much, some criminals will have free reign on some of their activities because there is a good chance the cops won't be able to come stop them.

Scott has asked the town council to let him use the $30,000 the city allotted for office supplies and equipment repair so that he can keep the small fleet of patrol cars fueled through 2012. If they aren’t willing to budge, however, he says that the local law enforcement will be forced to ignore 911 reports and not bother with incidents that might not necessarily warrant police intervention.

Imagine calling 911 but not getting help because they spent the money on ink cartridges and paper clips instead

To the town council today, Scott is expected to announce his own plan for pinching pennies within the department. The Johnston County council refused to shift the $30,000 from one budget to another, so in response Scott is suggesting that cops avoid 911 calls from hotels and payphones, "as a very high percentage of these calls are errors in dialing,” he tells the News and Observer. Since burglaries are also often false alarms, the Smithfield PD will stop responding to those as well. Additionally, he is proposing that cops completely avoid the city’s western and southern ends, since the crimes that do occur there are rarely violent.

This article is even telling which part of town to commit your crimes in. Talk about ridiculous. I sure hope that nothing serious happens there because if some old lady gets mugged or worse these bozos won't even respond.

This is another obvious sign that the system is broken. I can't blame any one person or organization. It's the whole system. It's a complete farce.

I recommend everyone that lives in this area to get some really good locks and some protection since the Police cannot help.

The people who live in these non police service areas should have their taxes reduced if you ask me.

reply to post by Corruption Exposed

I recommend everyone that lives in this area to get some really good locks and some protection since the Police cannot help.

The people who live in these non police service areas should have their taxes reduced if you ask me.

Excellent recommendations all-around, regardless of where you live! Remember, the police are (sometimes?) only minutes away when you need them in seconds, and with as much as our various levels of government fail to accomplish per stated intent, reduction in taxes at all levels with re-prioritization of wasteful and ineffectual programs/spending should definitely be on the table.

S&F for the post, and the excellent points.

Sounds like a libertarian wet dream!

Now if only they could defund the socialist fire department....

So the economy has an effect on personal responsibility? People would have to take care of their own business without the police to respond to every little incident. Maybe this kind of thing can bring communities closer together as they'll need to rely on each other.

I'll take my freedom over security, we need to spread that security money around to areas hit hard by the imbalance of overseas war spending.

just imagine if they had to pay the fuel prices we brits do $10/gallon, they'd probably go back to horses

No money for gas, eh?

This is a load of BS. Typical knee-jerk response to get people to cower in fear at the mere thought that cops won't respond to calls - all while the town blows money on god knows what useless crap they generally do. Let's see an audit of expenditures as well as an audit of personnel. I'm guessing it would take all of 15 minutes to free up quite a bit of money after said audits were performed. Hell, this could be said of every government in every town, state and most certainly DC.

Originally posted by negativenihil
Sounds like a libertarian wet dream!

Now if only they could defund the socialist fire department....

While the pinko commie swine are disgusting...(*rolls eyes*)...let's hold off on that until we've got the free-market solution ready for deployment. I like your initiative, though!

In all seriousness, extremes on any end can easily become ridiculous (as well as entirely too easy to parody unnecessarily...), and I don't mind local or state governments providing vital services as long as they are productive at it and not doing so with needless waste.

I live 20 minutes away from Smithfield, have not heard this as of yet, I do not read the Raleigh paper though. Smithfield-Selma is along I-95 so between the HP and the Sheriff Dept I am sure everything will be ok. And it could be another form of entrapment that we see all the time, crime pays, it brings in tons of cash thru the courts-would they really make such a thing public? Think people, because once it is shown to be profitable to the city of Smithfield to make such a claim, other cities will imitate. Pretty soon MSM will be reporting strikes in Law Enforcement all over. And then comes Robocop and OCP. :-P


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