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Deputies patroling Belleair is a bad idea

Re: Let the Sheriff's Office handle Belleair policing, editorial, April 30.

This is a prescription for disaster. The present community-based police force serves the community's public safety and medical emergency needs well. Its police officers are fully aware of the community's people and the events that take place within Belleair on a day-to-day basis.

It is unrealistic to believe that public safety in Belleair would be a priority in a system of countywide police servicing. Belleair is by its very nature a quiet bedroom residential community. Under the Sheriff's Office the only police presence would be an occasional cruiser drive-through.

An analogy would be the problematic state of county-based public education in Florida. The finest public education in the nation is to be found in the community school districts of the northern states. Are we going to allow the same thing to happen to our police services?

Re: Let the Sheriff's Office handle Belleair policing, editorial, April 30.

I am constantly bemused by the prattling of anonymous editors who attempt to speak with authority about a subject on which they know next to nothing.

Perhaps the editor was unfamiliar with a survey taken in the past in which the citizens of Belleair strongly supported local control over law enforcement. Without question, the sheriff could probably supply the service cheaper, but that is not what it is about in our town.

You derided my friends and neighbors because they expressed their support, trust and confidence in police officers who do more than prevent crime in this virtually crime-free community, such as rounding up and returning errant pets, reminding us our garage doors are open late at night, getting to know us and keeping an eye on things very much like the fabled constables of yore.

We already have, through interagency agreements, access to those services which our small force cannot provide. It is being provided right now by Largo while Belleair searches for a new chief. The same is true in the rare event that a serious crime occurs requiring forensic science.

We live in a community where the electorate is well informed, highly educated, politically astute and actively involved in government and public issues. Those same citizens soundly supported fluoridating our water supply when I first moved here over 20 years ago. And they just as soundly rejected the town's assuming ownership of our electric service.

Your editorial accurately notes the short tenures and troubled histories of some of our recent police chiefs and other personnel. So, you would throw the baby out with the bathwater and paint the entire Police Department with the same broad brush?

True, there have been some management issues and our officers could be better paid, outfitted and trained. But isn't it interesting that the only real problems have been in the leadership of the department, and not in its competency or effectiveness? And since when does the rank and file of any organization, business, enterprise or institution dictate fundamental principles of governance, priorities and policy?

I bear witness to what the citizens of Belleair want in their law enforcement presence, and it is not the Sheriff's Office. Call it a parochial, personal or even self-centered position, but it is one that I share with the majority of my neighbors.

Our officers operate in a relatively small geographic area and have little in the way of crime-fighting to do. It is not an exciting job. Their primary job is to intimately know the town and its residents and prevent trouble.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Police Department that better leadership would not cure. That is the only "problem" that I have seen of late. Any concerns about "fundamental problems with operations" are more properly directed at the brass who have fomented dissension and controversy, not at the troops who get the real job done. I do, however, agree that they should be paid better and this town can certainly afford it.

If Belleair needs a "classy" Police Department to match its image (as the editor suggests), it is not by bringing in the ubiquitous green and white of the Sheriff's Office. It is by elevating our own police officers in status with better pay, adequate training and much improved leadership. If our officers need better wages, training and support, by all means give it to them!

[Last modified May 4, 2006, 00:59:16]