Jackson Mayor Pete Muldoon said Monday that he wants to take a look at the Jackson Police Department funding. Muldoon said that there has been a lot of public comment over the last few months about police funding levels, calling it a robust local and national conversation. Muldoon noted that with the retirement of Jackson Police Chief Todd Smith, it would be an ideal time to look at the that budget, and he asked Town Manager Larry Pardee to produce a report detailing changes that could be made to the police budget.
Chief Smith reacted to the comments, saying he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with reviewing any town or county department’s budget and operations plan when there is a legitimate reason to do so. “However,” Smith noted. “It’s not something that should be driven by national politics being brought into our backyard.”
Moreover, Smith says law enforcement here has worked hard to have good working relationships with our community and provide a host of critical services to them. Councilman Jim Stanford, who has previously defended the police spending admitted “It’s good to have a dialogue, but that it should wait until the winter or the beginning of next year’s budget process.” He said council has a backlog of work that he thinks the they should work on first. Arne Jorgensen said he was proud of our local police department and he didn’t want the community to think that this was discussion of defunding the police.
In that regard, Smith says many of those calling for defunding of the police have little, to no knowledge about their local law enforcement or the community itself for that matter. Even the Mayor, Smith says has never spent time with the department to better understand its intricacies and operations, which could be beneficial to helping to set policy and budgets if you first knew what we do and why we do it a particular.
Muldoon admits that he approved the police budget during the recently-passed fiscal year budget without really understanding it. Smith encourages future candidates running for public office to do their due diligence and commit to learning what work law enforcement does for the community, and dedicate some of their time to learn more than simply asking a few questions during a meeting.
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