Flint Police Officer Speaks Up

The following article appeared in the March 6, 2007 issue of The Flint Journal on the "Opinion Page". Having a son who is also a law enforcement officer (thankfully, NOT in Flint) I can, to some degree, empathize with Officer Tolbert's situation. The idea of having one-man cars for officers patrolling the third most dangerous city in the country seems ludicrous and dangerous.

The decision to have officers patrol in one man cars was probably NOT made by a person having thorough knowledge and experience in police work. In fact, if you recall, the decision was made in such haste and with so little forethought that on the first night of the one man patrols there were not enough vehicles for the officers to patrol as one man units!

This certainly is no way to help deter crime and, overall, is a decision that puts the officers of the Flint Police Department in danger as well as all the citizens of the city.

I certainly hope that Officer Tolbert is not reprimanded for making his informed opinion known to us.

One-man cars dangerous for Flint officers, public

As a 21-year veteran of the Flint Police Department who has worked plainclothes narcot­ics, the gang squad, and now uniformed patrol, I want to share my opinion about one­man cars.

Flint patrol officers are cur­rently assigned to one-man units in the third most violent city in the United States. The changes were announced in a press conference to the crimi­nal element of the city. Those assignments resulted in the following incidents, in my opin­ion:

• A lone officer responded on New Year's Eve to a shots-fired and weapons call. Being a one­man unit is indirectly respon­sible for that officer shooting a citizen.

• I was dispatched to a fight between two adult brothers as a one-man car. One brother decided that he wanted to fight me. As he later explained to me, "You had no backup." I spent the rest of my working shift at Hurley Medical Center Emer­gency Room having him treated at taxpayer expense because, in his words, he wanted to "try me."

• Two days later I was sent to a city residence as a one-man unit. A woman had climbed out of her window to escape her husband, who had beaten her and pointed a .40-caliber semi­automatic handgun at her. As I showed up, the husband escaped from the rear of the home. I was unable to watch four sides of the house. I pursued this suspect on my 40-years-plus legs in sub­zero temperatures. I sit at home using sick time and recovering from a sinus infection because, without a partner, I was unable to see the rear of the house and thus prevent this felony suspect from escaping into the neighbor­hood.

• African-American offi­cers have all been transferred throughout the department in retaliation for speaking to the City Council with their concerns about the community they have served longer than our current elected mayor.

There is fallout from other changes in the police depart­ment as well, such as an officer suspended by the mayor in viola­tion of the collective bargaining agreement between the city and the officers' union.

The mayor has shifted the focus of the Special Operations Bureau to prostitution stings instead of raiding drug houses, allowing street-level drug deal­ers to operate openly at inter­sections without fear of arrest. Prostitution stings are profitable - they generate impound and storage fees. Remember that the mayor said "Let's run this city like a business" during his cam­paign.

I want to thank the citizens of Flint for allowing a convicted felon (with all of his law enforce­ment experience) to run the Flint Police Department.

Randolph Tolbert

Flint