After spending a few days away for quality time with the lovely Mrs. Shabazz, we return to our regularly scheduled pontificating on local government. And of course that means a look at what’s been going on with public safety. Between news conferences, umpteen rallies, bugs that don’t work, internal tug-of-wars, we have to admit it’s the stuff that keeps Indianapolis interesting. So with all this going on, I figured the best way to do this is to go down the list of key players and offer up an opinion and some advice.
Mayor Greg Ballard
Good job in stepping up this past weekend and getting in front of the situation. Your announcements about the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department reforms as well as speaking at the Sunday biker rally were the right moves to do. You need to keep the momentum going and stay in front of the news. You ran on public safety and this issue can and will make or break your administration. The last thing you want to do is adopt a “bunker” mentality. Also, there is only so much your public safety director and chief of police can do, you are the Mayor and you have to be the face of the city during this time of crisis in public safety confidence. Do not let your opponents control the news cycle. If you don’t speak out on a regular basis, your opponents will gladly fill the void. Also, you know as I do that there are differing opinions in your administration on how to handle this situation and that has led to some serious internal strife at times. My advice, listen to all sides, make an informed decision and stick with it. At the end of the day, you run the show.
Public Safety Director Frank Straub & Chief Paul Ciesielski
I have never believed in conspiracies, so I am not going to start now. I don’t think either of you would purposely cover-up anything because in the 21st Century, information has a way of leaking out, and only an idiot would try to hide information that would eventually get out. I would make it a point to be as open and honest with the public as possible and putting out every bit of information you can. I frankly don’t mind hearing about bad officers, because I’d be more worried if the information never got out. I know there is some bad blood that has built up with the Fraternal Order of Police leadership lately, but like in the film ‘The Defiant Ones” you both are chained together and will need each other to survive.
Fraternal Order of Police
Guys, I know a lot of you have issues with some of the reforms that are being proposed as well as your public image right now. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but right now it’s best that if you remind the rank and file to do everything by the book, on and off duty. There are a lot of people in this town who traditionally have supported law enforcement who are at best skeptical. We all agree that 90% of officers are doing their jobs, but you’re going to have to step up and help deal with the other 10% that are causing grief and hassle for the rest of you. And as much as some of you have issues with the Chief and Public Safety Director, you may want to read the last sentence in the above paragraph.
City-Council Republicans
Good move on the reform proposal. Stay engaged. I would not rule out the Democrats’ idea of a bi-partisan investigative panel, but I would wait until after the current investigations have been completed.
City-Council Democrats
I’m going to surprise you guys and say for once, you have an idea that makes sense. It would be nice if you had more of them over the past three years. I think a bi-partisan panel to review the Bisard case is a good idea, once you get all the facts in and the current investigations are completed.
Baptist Ministers Alliance of Indianapolis
I’ve got a special post written just for you, so stay tuned.
The General Public
You are well within your rights to be mad and skeptical at the events of late. Keep demanding accountability and transparency. But also remember, the average officer is a decent man or woman who gets up everyday and puts his or her life on the line to keep us safe. And out of 1700 employees, someone is bound to cross the line. We should support officers who are doing their jobs and continue to call for the removal of those who won’t do their jobs and violate the public trust.
This weekend the lovely Mrs. Shabazz and I are celebrating our one-year anniversary. It’s been a great year. Lots of highs, an occasional low, and a love that grows everyday, and I’m not talking about me for myself. So that means the blogging and tweeting is going to be kept down to a bear minimum.
To mark the occasion, we’re going to recreate our first date. I’m going to take her to dinner, say something inappropriate, she’s going to slap me, throw her drink in my face and tell me to lose her number. Seriously though, my wife is the most patient and well-grounded person I’ve ever met. And depending on your perspective I am the either the luckiest or most blessed person in the world. Come to think of it, she is too.
Enjoy your Labor Day weekend. I’ll be back Tuesday.
Although my time lately has been spent preparing for the the first weeks of college teaching and more importantly, making sure everything goes well for my first anniversary this weekend, I’ve still been keeping close tabs on the situation involving the latest troubles regarding the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
I was not surprised that the Baptist Ministers Alliance of Indianapolis called, for the 20th bajillionth time for Frank Straub’s resignation/termination/flogging/tarring/feathering as Public Safety Director. Nor was I surprised that some Democrats on the City-Council are trying to politicize and capitalize on the tragic death of Eric Wells. If they say they’re not being political, don’t believe them, their latest news release was put out by Adam Kirsch, Executive Director of the Marion County Democratic Party.
Where I am puzzled is with all the recent discussions about what did all the parties the day of the Bisard crash and when did they know it. My fellow brothers and sisters in the press have reported that the day of the incident Deputy Chief Daryl Pierce and Assistant Chief Ron Hicks went out to the scene but were called back by Chief Paul Ciesielski to talk about a news conference regarding the image of Director Straub.
There have been references to conversations and text messages, but no one has produced anything in writing. There is a lot of “he said/he said” but I would assume that the easiest way to clear up this controversy would be for the parties involved to release the text messages that transpired that day. With the back and forth between the culture and the command structure of IMPD, a review of the text message communications of that day would clear up confusion and we would know what everyone else knew. Was it a failure of command at the scene or was the Chief more concerned about public relations?
And here’s something else a release of the text messages would show, did any of IMPD’s field command tell the Chief that the scene was so bad they weren’t going to come back to the office, but stay there and supervise? That has been in the back of my mind since this controversy began. I know IMPD has a pending investigation so they may not want to release anything until the findings are complete, but there is nothing to stop Hicks, John Conley or Pierce from releasing information through their attorneys.
I’ll be paying close attention to see how this part of the drama all plays out.
I had a very good conversation with U.S. Senator Dick Lugar Tuesday evening. We talked about Iraq, Afghanistan, the 2010 midterm elections and his own re-election bid.
I asked him his reaction to critics who say he’s been in office too long and what he thinks about a primary challenger? He told me he will serve until his fellow Hoosiers decide it’s time for him to do something else. And when asked about a possible primary challenger in 2010 , he said “it’s a free country and people are entitled to do what they wish.” He says he has a lot of energy left and looks forward to the race.
I bring this up, because Lugar has been in the U.S. Senate since 1976, for some people that’s too long. For me, I’ve always believed you should serve until you are no longer effective. For some politicians that means serving one-term, others that could mean a couple decades. I also think that if the voters have had enough of someone they should get together and remove that person from office. It has been done before, just ask Lisa Murkowski, Robert Bennett and Arlan Specter. Each was an incumbent and each lost. Granted it was a primary, but they still lost.
Of course critics would say the above examples are the exception, not the rule. I will freely admit incumbency always brings a certain amount of inherent advantages. However, at the end of the day, it’s the votes that count. I think we can make voting more competitive by eliminating blatant gerrymandering and the creation of districts that look like a Rorschach test. We can also neutralize some of the power of entrenched incumbency by putting term limits on committee assignments. Just because you should be allowed to serve until you die, doesn’t mean you can keep the same spot in perpetuity.
Of course, if people would get off their rear ends and exercise their civic duties and stay engaged in the process, this discussion wouldn’t be necessary.
I had a couple minutes today so I decided to do some cruising through Facebook just to see how some of Indiana’s candidates are doing with their social network worlds. I tried to use campaign Facebook websites where possible. Now this is not to say whether your “friends” will translate into votes, but I think it does provide a peak into how candidates are using the medium to reach the populace.
Word of caution, I am friends or following all of the candidates because it helps me keep track of their campaigns and it is not to be taken as an endorsement of their candidacies. I like and dislike everybody equally.
So with that said, here’s where everybody stands as of when I wrote this post this morning, the numbers may have changed slightly since then.
*Just for the record, if Facebook friends were votes, Libertarian Mike Wherry helps Libertarians keep their ballot access because he get seven percent of the total vote.
**State parties have a couple pages that I pulled the data from. HT to Matt Stone for the info.
I knew this was coming. I figured one unit of local government would get ready to head to the Department of Local Government and Finance and ask for a property tax levy appeal so they could max out on what they could get from the taxpayers. This time it’s the Marion County Public Library and IndyGo.
IndyGo is what it is, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it. The library is another matter altogether. The library wants $1.8 million more of your property tax dollars because it hasn’t hit the ceiling on what it can levy. No offense, but I really think the library needs to look at its business model and ask itself what is the role of a library in the 21st Century.
A very good friend of mine who is a big library supporter had me raise an eyebrow when he said he went to an eastside library recently and where he expected to see kids studying, he saw grown ups playing on their Facebook pages. No offense, but I don’t think the mission of a library should be for individuals to play on the Internet. I’ve also never been a big fan of new DVD rentals coming out of libraries either.
I’ve always believed libraries should reinvent themselves as neighborhood multi-service centers. Instead of just books, they house a medical clinic, police substation, family counseling, other city offices etc., etc. At the very least the taxpayers can more bang for their buck by a number of agencies literally in their neighborhoods.
That approach has always made more sense to me than simply putting up a library. In the 21st Century, there is not that much money running around anymore and it behooves all levels of local government to give taxpayers the biggest bang for their buck.
I spent some time this weekend at the Feast of Lanterns, a near east side community event. I volunteered to sit in the dunk tank for an hour. I managed to get dunked by Democratic City-County Council candidate Zach Adamson, an 11-year old and wife my . I’m not sure who had the most fun throwing baseballs at me, but it was for a good cause. Clerk Beth White was there and just missed me by a few minutes. Frankly, I thought more Marion County Democrats would have showed up. They could have killed two birds with one stone, help a good cause and drop me in a tub of gross water. There’s always next year. Enjoy the photo.
If you are rooting for Indiana Republicans to take back the State House of Representatives, I’ve got some good news for you and some bad news for you. First, the good news. If the election were held today, you would win by a very comfortable margin.
I’ve been doing some analysis as of late and things potentially look better for the House GOP than I expected. Generic polling shows Indiana House Republicans with a comfortable lead over their Democratic counterparts. Mitch Daniels and Aiming Higher are raising buckets of money. Evansville-area Democratic candidates are running against the Capitol Improvement Board instead of focusing on local issues. The State Teachers Union has endorsed Mark Messmer, the Republican candidate in House District 63. Overall, not a bad place to be.
Now here’s the bad news. The election is not today, it’s 64 days from now and anything can happen. Democrats privately say they are confident things are coming together, despite the national trends. In addition, there 36 Libertarian House candidates on the ballot this year, the most in the last decade, which could split the vote in some places.
Despite those pitfalls, the political winds, for now, are at the backs of the Republicans for the Statehouse. And if the GOP should take back the House, expect some major leadership changes on the Democratic side. The word on the street is that if Democrats lose, Bauer will step down as leader and Bill Crawford is not expected to run for another term, so a power vacuum would definitely open up.
However, we’re in the Midwest and we all know the winds can change at a moments notice. That’s why this stuff is so much fun to watch.
As someone who spends a lot of time in downtown Indianapolis, there’s nothing more disturbing and frightening than listening to a report about someone on the roof of a parking garage firing shots.
Luckily, no one on the street was injured. Unfortunately the entire incident was the end result of a murder-suicide. However, one thing I have to say is thank God the cops were there.
As much bad press as IMPD has received lately, and a good chunk of it deservedly so, I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t happy to see the police show up Thursday afternoon.
Yesterday’s incident is also a reminder of the danger police face when they go into a life-threatening situation. For every officer who responded, there was a chance that he or she might not have come back, but they still went and did their jobs. These are the officers we should never forget about and lift up whenever possible.
We should also remember that for every David Bisard or Matt Elam, there are the men and women who responded to that emergency call downtown, that run into burning buildings, and make life a lot safer for all of us. I will never condemn them for the actions of bad actors, however I am going to ask them and stand up and show the same courage to help weed out the bad seeds and help improve IMPD’s reputation as they do when they commit other acts of bravery.
We need you more than ever guys. I hope you’re willing to take on this tough assignment.
Quick note, I’m hearing the early word on the federal review of the Brandon Johnson excessive force case is that Indianapolis Metropolitan Police followed proper investigative protocol in its review of the matter.
Some members of the Indianapolis community have been calling for a federal investigation of the case.
