Comments on: Chief of Police Tom Emely – Police Management View

By: s10man

s10man — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:42:29 +0000

There was probably a female blond driver in need of close inspection

By: Observation

Observation — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:16:10 +0000

Cynni,

Might it be possible the officer was performing police business in Roanoke or Ft. Wayne? Maybe the officer was going to training in another city. Who said the car was pulled over simply for a tail light being out? The person could have been drunk, high on drugs, had active warrants or maybe the officer simply needed additional assistance of some legitimate reason. Would you stop and offer any assistance if an officer was fighting with the person along the road? Most times there is a very simple reason for what appears to others to be something mysterious.

By: cynni

cynni — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 02:39:35 +0000

You say that these are all city miles. Then Why was I on my way from Ft. Wayne and met a Huntington Police car just a 1/2 mile from Roanoke?
Why does it also take 2 cars to pull someone over for a tail light?

By: Jay Rinehart

Jay Rinehart — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 14:15:30 +0000

With the economy in the state that it currently in, the crime rate is surely to be on the rise. People are going to do, and will do whatever it takes to survive. When it comes to police protection, I would rather have more than enough rather than be short on staffing and, or patrols.

Management is the key here as is rules and regulations. The police cars in our force belong to us, the taxpayers. I have no problem with seeing multiple cars out on the street at any given time. But I would have a problem if any car was used on a personal basis and using our fuel rather than the individual the car was being used by.

By: Wonka

Wonka — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:07:45 +0000

You must remember however stealth that even though some of your points are well taken…These vehicles aren’t your everyday family vehicles. They are police vehicles which are put to high stress driving on a normal basis. These are also all city miles not highway which even is worse on the vehicles.

By: stealth

stealth — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:05:16 +0000

I’d like to thank Emely for explaining the car situation in such detail. It is very much appreciated that someone actually ran the math.

BUT, I think one flippant comment shows the disconnect between this administration and the situation the people of Huntington are facing.

“The average year of manufacture for the current fleet of police vehicles is 2002, with the average miles per vehicle at 63,000. If you owned a six-year-old vehicle with that number of miles, would you consider it a new vehicle?”

I would contend most in Huntington, that are not government employees would say no to this, whereas, life long city employees like Emely and the Updike clan, think this is a no brainer to upgrade cars. Even myself, 6 years/63k mile would be a tremendous improvement over my 11 year/ 180k mile car. But then if I had the ability to raise my own income, had a pension, and job security, I would be looking for the latest and greatest as well.

My point is: this Updike administration of lifelong public leaches have no experience doing without. No wonder Pam Updike was crying at the LOIT meeting that they have cut everything possible. Maybe from her government employee persective that is the case. By I’m sure I can find some areas to cut. How about one of the 4 administrative positions in the parks department? For a department that does very little, why do you need 4 administrators.

And how about the Police department. According to the City website they have 36 officers, 5 reserves, and 10 dispatch. For comparison, Westfield has 24 officers for a growing city of 24k. They will add 3 more this coming year. I’m thinking Huntington could lose a couple of positions here. And this is just an example, I’m sure every city department could due without one position, thus if you can cut 10 positions city wide at an average salary of $30K + benefits, that is tremendous savings to the public.

The city needs to realize that the people of Huntington are already stretched very thin, and its about time the City and its employees felt that same stretch. Then and only then will Huntington begin attracting more business.