Emergency personnel have to reside here in the high taxation, high cost of living state of Pennsylvania too. As police department employees (through their unions) make demands upon their respective municipalities for higher wages and benefits, the taxpayers feel strapped and are against spending even more money for training and protective equipment.

Due to the above, many other states have established funded programs to assist their law enforcement agencies obtain the latest training and technology. Pennsylvania does not, because our high paid professional state lawmakers have never been pressured by the public to assist local efforts to strive for a higher level of performance. They have more important things to worry about.

The public is not aware that the current system is under manned, and in many cases outdated, and will probably never perform better because the press (with their own agenda) does not inquire if the situation could have been handled differently, and report it. Ever notice that the delivery of modern police services (or lack of) is not on their list of topics to follow ... even when there is a video tape involved?

RR, I'm sure not going to give you a kiss. The Federal gov. a one time, gave out money for hiring and equipment, but that has dried up. you are so right when you say the the leg. does not care about police services. Pa. is one of the few states that has numerous local Pd's. Most states have county wide Pd's. The least the State of Pa. could do would be to have school district wide Pd's. The small Dept's. don't have the manpower or finances to do training on a regular basis or but the needed equipment. Our leg. does not listen to the police when they ask for anything. A good example is radar. Every other state in the union lets there municipal police use radar. Ours won't let us use it because they say we will use it to make money for the municipalities. We could do that with the speed equipment the the Pd's already have. The cops want radar because it is much safer to use and you can use it on all the roads in your area not just ones where you will be able to see a set on line for 200 ft. Another example is pension plans. Each municipality has there own plan. So each one has to pay an administration fee. This amount to millions of dollars in admin fees. We want a state wide pension plan with one admin cost which would save millions of dollars. Those idiot in Hbg. won't know a good thing if it jumped up and slapped them in the face.

The companies who handle all these pension plans are represented very effectively in Harrisburg by lobbyists, who arrange for nice contributions into the candidates reelection campaigns. Need I say more?

Folks,
Police are not undermanned!
Now let me explain before everyone gets too exited.
Police have run around for years answering call's that are, in the aggregate, a complete waste of time. Police have done this ever since the two way radios were put in cars and the 911 system just made it worse, much much worse.
What do police officers spend most of their time doing? Answering minor calls from citizens, ie. vandalisms, minor disturbances etc. and doing traffic. Even in larger departments this takes up most of the officers time. The police officer today is a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Tasks should be very specific to each officer. There should be in progress teams, investigative teams and traffic teams, for example. Many calls for service could be handled by phone or by civilian personel. I also never understood why the Detective division is a seperate entity. I had a friend who was burglarized and it took several weeks for a detective to contact them. Wouldn't it make more sense to have certain crimes assigned to a detective right away such as a burglary?
There should be greater emphasis on identifying problem people. A good example would be having daily checks on people who are on probation and parole. Also having probation officers work directly with the police so the officers know the terms of probation.
Policing seems to be stuck in the 1930's and their doesn't seem to be any incentive to move forward and think of innovative tactics and techniques by police managment. The old ones certainly aren't working and havn't worked for a long time. The answer always seems to be to throw more money and officers at the probem at the tax payers expense. How about a drastic change in tactics and doctrine?

Yes ... this is sorely needed.

And not only at the police department level. Bring in school districts. Education and public safety probably represent about 70% to 90% of the local taxation requirements. The savings possible between modernizing and consolidating public safety and education would run into the billions.

This is the type of progressive government leadership that we should be expecting to receive from our high paid state legislators ... and would certainly be worth a pay raise!