We here at PublicWatchdog generally are fans of citizen task forces to study particular community problems and provide input to our elected public officials. 

So when a task force was proposed in late 2009 to provide input and recommendations to the Chief of Police, the Mayor, and the City Council about the Police Department, we supported it.  After all, at that time the City had recently received the $100,000+ “Ekl Study” of the police department’s gaffes, shortcomings and dysfunctions; and it was just about to write a check for $185,000 to settle a police brutality/civil rights lawsuit arising from an officer’s alleged pummeling of a 15 year-old resident while in custody.  Clearly the PRPD needed some feedback from the community.

So the “Chief’s Advisory Task Force was formed in early 2010, and is now comprised of 25 citizen members, plus Chief Frank Kaminski, Cmdr. Dave Keller and Ald. Jim Smith (3rd).  After almost two years of operations, however, we haven’t seen all that much in the way of useful output from the Task Force. 

And that specifically includes a newly-proposed $1.1 million “upgrade” to the 50-year old police station, which was reported in a November 10, 2011 TribLocal article titled “Task force OKs $1.1 M in upgrades to police station.”  According to that article, this project is the brainchild of Task Force member Ralph Cincinelli, who identified “major flaws and risk factors inside the station” before coming up with his million dollar baby response. 

Although Cincinelli’s proposal reportedly doesn’t call for a “major addition” to the current building, the article states that it does include a “new separate, smaller building with a fitness room and space for property/evidence,” as well as a bike storage area and a sally port “to help transport arrestees securely.”

We’ve been hearing about the station’s “major risk factors” for years, well before the voters nuked the April 2009 referendum proposal for a brand new, triple-the-size cop shop which also was intended to address those risk factors.  Frankly, it almost sounds as if the physical conditions that create or contribute to those purported “major risk factors” may have been around since the police station was constructed, yet we’ve never heard of any actual incidents arising out of those factors.

Not that we would want to, mind you.  But if every member of this community were preoccupied with reducing or eliminating all the “risk factors” we face on a daily basis, we wouldn’t have the time or the money left to do much else. 

We assume that Mr. Cincinelli and his fellow Task Force members will come up with an actual report that will ultimately get presented to the City Council’s Public Safety Commission at an upcoming COW meeting.  Maybe by then he or somebody else tied to this project will try to answer the questions that we’ve been asking ever since then-mayor Howard Frimark and his “Purple Ribbon” Council became obsessed with the big new cop shop back in 2006-07:

• How have the current police station conditions impaired the apprehension and prosecution of criminals?
• How have the current police station conditions resulted in actual harm to PRPD employees and/or the public? 

Until those questions can be answered in ways that are acceptable to the taxpayers, we do not see the wisdom of spending $1.1 million to eliminate “risk factors” that remain unquantified either by likelihood of occurrence or by their consequences.  And we don’t see how coming up with ways to spend a lot of money furthers the Task Force’s mission. 

Then again, we’ve become accustomed to “mission creep” – both at the local level and at all higher levels of government.

And it’s never a good thing. 

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