Government is notorious for fuzzy thinking – when it thinks at all. So we were dismayed, but not surprised, that Mayor Howard “Let’s Make A Deal” Frimark and his 5th Ward Alderpuppet, Robert Ryan, want to press ahead on a big new police station even though we can’t seem to afford to pave our streets, fix our curbs, eliminate flooding, and do all those other things for which residents of upscale communities such as ours pay their hefty property taxes.
And we were pleased, but not surprised, to read that many of the 566 respondents to the recent City survey (who, admittedly, don’t speak for all of us despite what the surveyors may say) don’t want to spend a lot of money on another multi-million dollar boondoggle, even though we’d prefer an advisory referendum on the November ballot that would let the voters voice their opinion on the issue.
But you can be sure the fans of the new cop shop don’t want that. People behind big new spending plans always try to keep them away from the voters, preferring to slide them through the local governmental body of their choice – be it the City Council, the School District 64 Board, or the Park District Board – where compliant officials seem always at the ready to write checks that we taxpayers struggle to cash.
That’s why we expect that the lobbying for a new cop shop will start picking up steam, which is what the letter to the editor in yesterday’s Herald-Advocate by John P. Kenney, “DDS, MS D-ABFO, CSCA, Fellow, American Academy of Forensic Sciences,” of Park Ridge (“Time to take action for police station,” May 15) appears to be.
Had we put much stock in Dr. Kenney’s hand-wringing hyperbole over the possible consequences from the size and condition of the current cop shop, we might have barricaded ourselves inside our houses behind triple-locked doors, installed multiple alarm systems, and put 911 on speed dial. But once you get past all the speculation, opinion and just plain bluster, the arguments are more “Chicken Little” than Armageddon.
As we’ve written many times before, the condition and layout of the current police station is dilapidated trending toward deplorable. Our police officers and department staff deserve better – including a better layout, better space use, and better conditions. But tripling or quadrupling its size, as the “if you build it, we want some” consultants have self-servingly recommended, is exactly the wrong way to spend our money.
Yes, the current layout is inefficient. Yes, the female officers need a better locker room. And, yes, arrestees shouldn’t be traipsing past rooms where the witnesses against them are being interviewed. But that’s as much an argument for renovating and reconfiguring the current space – with perhaps a modest addition – than exponential expansion. And that’s because people, not brick and mortar, do most of the real police work, as Dr. Kenney’s letter unintentionally reveals.
Take his anecdote about last Sunday’s “situation” where some goof shot up a TV set with a .22 rifle. Kenney notes that it drew the attention of “four patrol cars, a community service officer, and a command officer” to “neutralize” the offender before he could commit another telecide. Don’t get us wrong: we’re pleased with how the situation was handled. But did the size of the current cop shop impede the handling of this situation? If so, how would a four-times bigger cop shop have produced a better result, or prevented it from happening altogether?
Dr. Kenney complains about evidence technicians working “in a room the size of a walk in closet!” Admittedly, that doesn’t sound too good. But before we start looking to build them a crime lab, we’d sure like to hear an authorized representative of the PRPD (like Chief Swoboda) specifically identify any investigations or prosecutions that have been torpedoed or compromised because of the size of the evidence techs’ room.
Dr. Kenney advocates building a police facility “that will carry us for the NEXT 40 years.” Frankly, that’s a really good sound-bite but a really dumb idea. Trying to predict the future even 10 years down the road is tough enough: taking that out 40 years is a fool’s errand, especially when it involves betting $15-20 Million in bonds and another $5 Million or more in interest on that prediction. Not even the mercenary cop shop consultants are willing to go beyond vague generalities and questionable extrapolations that are fuzzier than bunny slippers in making their case for a Taj Mahal cop shop.
That’s why we hereby invite Dr. Kenney and any of his fellow futurists to produce their detailed depictions of Park Ridge 2048: what it will look like, how many people will live here, their demographic make-up, how many magnetic cars will fill our airspace, how many RoboCops we’ll employ, and any other specifics by which the taxpayers might be able to assess for themselves whether spending multi-millions on a 40-year facility is a good idea or a crackpot one.
But while we await the arrival of those crystal balls, we can take comfort in the fact that, as Dr. Kenney points out: “Our police department, one of only 47 municipal CALEA accredited departments in the state of Illinois, has done more with less for decades.” With that in mind, we wonder: “Why can’t the past be prologue?”