McKinley would be well served to check his facts. At one point, while Miller was still City Manager, (and during Batts' tenure as chief), Long Beach did have over 1,000 sworn officers. Not now. Under Foster and West that number has declined very substantially. We may be more like Oakland than we care to admit.

I can't help but wonder how many people, like myself, voted for Foster because of his campaign promise to add a net increase of 100 sworn officers in his first 4 years as mayor. Instead "we" got a decline of about the same magnitude.

Too bad former Chief Batts didnt write one word of the mentioned article. I believe it was a female commander. Credit where credit is due.

Esteemed Mr. Toad: Although you aren't the first here to mention that you voted for Mayor Foster, at least in part, because of his "campaign promise to add a net increase of 100 sworn officers in his first 4 years as mayor" I would discourage you and others from ever voting for a CLB Mayor for that or similar reasons in the future. The Mayor has no statutory authority to "add" anyone (other than his own staff) to our City employee ranks, let alone 100 someones, sworn or not. He is the City's Chief Legislative Officer and, as such, has the authority to veto Council actions, such as budgets and budget items, but the Council can, in turn, override his veto.

1real1: I think you may be mistaken when you assert that Chief Batts didn't write one word of the mentioned article. But even if it were true that he had nothing to do with the article's actual writing, I feel confident that as the Chief of Police, the final version was not submitted for publication without his final review and approval. The female Commander you mention was a Police Lieutenant with considerable law enforcement experience at the time and her formal education is in the area of English Literature so she would seem, to me, the ideal candidate to co-author such an article with Dr. Batts. As to "credit where credit is due", the article in question gives full credit not only to then Lieutenant Renaud but also to Sgt. Paul Gallo in the preparation of the article. See for yourself at page 8 of volume 75, number 1 of the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin:

http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2006/jan06l...

Hello John--To refresh your memory, we had two choices for Mayor.

One was promising, while on the campaign trail, to add no less than a net increase of 300 sworn officers to the ranks of LBPD in his first 4 years in office. This was, and still is, in my opinion neither doable nor desirable. Among other things, adding too many officers too quickly causes major problems later on when they all retire at once. LB has been down that road before.

The other (successful) candidate, as stated before, promised to add 100 officers. This was both very desirable and quite doable. Hence my vote for Foster. If you will examine our budgeting process, I believe the Mayor has more power than you give him credit for. He can "tweek" the Manager's proposed budget before it goes to council AND he can veto a council-passed budget, subject to a 6 vote override. I don't see where he has attempted to take either action even once in the last 3 budget cycles. He has simply not made a good faith effort to keep his campaign promise.

Given the current economic climate in LB, I fear we may see a repeat of the Spring of '92. Things were not nearly as dire then as they are now. I believe that we are just one "spark" away from mayhem again. Our police department should be staffed to meet that possibility; it is not. I hope we have maintained a close relationship with Marines at Camp Pendleton AND that they are not all in the middle-east.

I further fear that the die has been cast for crime stats to reverse trend and begin to go up substantially. This may take a year or two, but as you well know, seasoned, productive cops are a "long lead-time" item (3 to 5 years). Once crime stats start heading upward, there is no "quick fix". Foster's re-election seems assured at this point, but not because he is a man of his word. And, realistically, if crime does jump hugely in the next 4 years, is anybody going to recall him?

Esteemed Mr. T: The point, of course, is that we cannot possibly control what some politicians promise us; all we as critical thinkers and descerning voters can do is compare those promises to the facts of the statutory limitations on the office the politician is aspiring to.

Like the City Manager, The Mayor can only make budget "recommendations" and he or she can veto, subject to Council override, all or part of any given City budget.

Neither of these options, however, give the Mayor the statutory authority to hire or to otherwise "add" more cops thus any campaign promise to that effect should have been seen by the electorate as specious and unfulfillable. In short, we should have known better and not been swayed by such a promise.

I appreciate and share your concerns about current police staffing levels. I served this city during the dark and difficult times that you mention. It was not an experience I would care to repeat.

But in truth, at the end of the day, the only people that can have a direct and lasting impact on police staffing levels in our city are the voters. We can do so by electing Council members who are as committed to increasing police staffing as we are. We can elect Council members that are more committed to the path of fiscal conservatism so that there will always exist sufficient municipal funds to hire the number of cops we desire for our city and to compensate those cops fairly. We can elect Council members who, in turn, will appoint City Managers who understand our direction in this area and will fulfill the day-to-day management of our City accordingly.

But, as it always does, it all comes back to us, the electorate, and the people we elect to represent us in each of our Council Districts.

She wrote ALL of it. Idea, everything. Nice try!!!!!!!!

1real1: It may very well be as you say. It's possible that you have direct knowledge of and can prove your assertions in this area. Perhaps you would be willing to explain how you have come by such knowledge and share with us those proofs?

In any case your original comment seemed to indicate that you felt that Cmdr. Renaud did not receive sufficient credit for the article and mine is that she most certainly did, twice, and in both cases she was listed before Dr. Batts, as was appropriate.