Parkin Police - disbanded

I guess you can mark frequencies for the Parkin Police Department (Cross County) as 'deprecated', since the city mayor has terminated the entire police force and the radio dispatcher. Police protection "costs too much", the mayor says. Parkin mayor disbands police, cites cost

OK so guess CCSO will pick up the slack and ASP?

The article did say both the Sheriff and State Police will, in fact patrol Parkin. One thing kind of bugs me about it though. Does anyone besides me see more than just cost as a reason to disband an entire department like that? maybe I am reading to much into it, but, it just makes me wonder.

milf said:

OK so guess CCSO will pick up the slack and ASP?

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nsrailfan6130 said:

The article did say both the Sheriff and State Police will, in fact patrol Parkin. One thing kind of bugs me about it though. Does anyone besides me see more than just cost as a reason to disband an entire department like that? maybe I am reading to much into it, but, it just makes me wonder.

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The same thing has happened to various small town PDs here in OK over the years. There have been multiple reasons with criminality, corruption, and just plain politics being the leading factors. Some small town PDs have also lost certification from the OHP for ticketing on state highways when it's obvious that it's all about the revenue, not safety.

Ten full-time cops for a town of 1,100...and they're all "off duty after midnight." Sumpthin' don't smell right about the whole mess.

I'm familiar with several burgs of that approximate size that get along just fine with a Town Marshal and zero, one, or at most two Deputy Marshals. Part-time people paid accordingly who provide their own vehicles (by leasing agreement to make it legal). And they get dispatched by their parent Counties rather than having their own dedicated system. 10 full-time employees would represent a pretty huge financial burden for a town that size, and that's not even getting into the supporting infrastructure. Maybe Hizzhonor the Mayor is onto something...

So assuming 10 full time officers are working 40 hours per week, that is 400 man hours that need to be accounted for each week. And assuming there are 2 shifts per day (day/evening), that would be 16 hours each day * 7 = 112 working hours each week.

So if my math is correct, then that means roughly 3-4 offers are on duty per shift. I don't know the area at all, not sure if that is overkill or not.

10 Full time = Chief, Deputy Chief, Detectives, Narcotics, and then Patrol. Hmmm In reality that means 4 rolling patrol at the busiest time. That would be the reality of smallsburg Law Enforcement.

With the Sheriff's Office I worked for, for a long time, Sunday meant 4 patrolling deputies for the entire county. Again, 4 patrol cars rolling for an entire county for 18 hours. Made assisting MHP interesting if anything came up, much less any incidents....:roll:

DJ11DLN said:

Ten full-time cops for a town of 1,100...and they're all "off duty after midnight." Sumpthin' don't smell right about the whole mess.

I'm familiar with several burgs of that approximate size that get along just fine with a Town Marshal and zero, one, or at most two Deputy Marshals. Part-time people paid accordingly who provide their own vehicles (by leasing agreement to make it legal). And they get dispatched by their parent Counties rather than having their own dedicated system. 10 full-time employees would represent a pretty huge financial burden for a town that size, and that's not even getting into the supporting infrastructure. Maybe Hizzhonor the Mayor is onto something...

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I was wondering the same thing. Why so many cops for such a tiny municipality? For that matter, I know of a public university campus (which will go unnamed) of 15,000 students (most of whom are commuter students or distance-learning students) which has 25 full-time campus security officers and 15 part-timers. Why so many cops for a campus measuring 1 mile X 0.5 miles in size and has at most 8,000 students on campus at midday?

Parkin is almost as bad as Detroit.....once great town run by inept & corrupt liberals.

Layoff of 10 is latest round in Parkin spat

Contempt cited, 2 Parkin aldermen jailed for weekend

Rumor has it these two idiots have been stealing from the city and tried last year to bar the mayor any access to city bank accounts. Then again the police dept. was nothing more than revenue generation that borders on criminal activity - bait & switch speeding stops that all go to the city for so called "inattentive driving". Town locals with expired tags or defective equipment get no tickets, one fool drives a riding lawn mower as a car, pulls his girlfriend in a small trailer sitting in a kitchen chair (I'll post a pic if I can get one!), selective enforcement of seat belt usage. It's a mess, so much so it's almost comical.

I drive through Parkin twice a day to and from work. It is nothing to see 3 cars at various places along Hwy 64 running radar and on traffic stops. Any TN tags towing an RV, boat or jet-skis are prime targets - west bound on Friday / east bound on Sunday.

Sadly most towns like Parkin hire either uncertified officers and work them until the time restrictions limit their ticket writing usefulness or, like Bald Knob, they have overzealous officers - Erik Ballentine is a former Parkin officer - that overstep their authority.

Situations like these make scanners a valuable tool for the citizenry to keep tabs on what happens in their community and keep the "powers that be" in check. Too bad for most folks that Cross Co. SO is on a DMR system.

Old post but still applicable....

http://forums.radioreference.com/arkansas-radio-discussion-forum/62843-parkin-speedtrap.html

The officer in the above post is the CID with the Cross Co. SO. At the time he was working in Parkin due to him and several other deputies getting into a jam over an illegal strip search of a female inmate by male deputies. Most were allowed to resign rather than be terminated so as to be rehired later after the uproar over the strip search died down.

bubbaearle said:

Then again the police dept. was nothing more than revenue generation that borders on criminal activity - bait & switch speeding stops that all go to the city for so called "inattentive driving".

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Little one-horse towns have to be careful using speed traps as revenue generators. Concord (in Cleburne County) got in trouble with the state over that a few years back.
Concord in violation - News - The Helena Arkansas Daily World - Helena, AR - Helena, AR