Budget cuts lead to assault and rape in Oregon

[Knightshade Dragon]

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/21/185839248/loss-of-timber-payments-cuts-deep-in-oregon

I can't believe this, but apparently a woman was assault and raped by her ex-husband because the local government didn't have funding to get police coverage. 

[Gratch]

I call BS.  We've been assured over and over again that randomly slashing the federal budget has zero negative repercussions at a local level.  It only affects those dirty government workers, who are all a bunch of freeloading lazy asses anyways.

(Seriously though, what an awful story.  Can you imagine being told "sorry, I have no one to send" when you call 911?)

[ATB]

This is such BS.

You're telling me the federal government can't prioritize the money they cut?  How about not buying one plane or one tank. There's 10s of millions right there.  Don't pay reps and senators for a day. Again 10s of millions.

Sure the cuts hurt, but this is more of a thumb in the eye to the people than it has anything to do with budget cuts resulting in this women getting raped.

Also, NPR is a liberal mouthpiece so of course they're going to side with the administration.

Lastly, if the local government is relying entirely on federal funding to man a police force, well that's a whole other problem.

[hepcat]

Calm down people.  We need to wait for Fox News to weigh in.

[Moliere]

Calling the police when someone is in the process of breaking into your house doesn't accomplish much besides telling them where to file a report. If you break into my house it better be worth facing this upon entry:

[Gratch]

Calling the police when someone is in the process of breaking into your house doesn't accomplish much besides telling them where to file a report.

From the article:

TEMPLETON: The dispatcher stays on the phone with the woman for 10 minutes and 21 seconds. She tells the caller to try to hide in the house...

...According to police records, a few minutes later, the woman's ex-boyfriend, Michael Bellah, used a piece of metal to pry open her front door.

I can pretty well guarantee that if I called 911 there would be police at my house within 10 minutes.  The one time I've had to call, EMT teams were there in less than that.

[Moliere]

Response times- city to city

In Atlanta last year it took, on average, 11 minutes and 12 seconds from the time a high-priority 911 call was received until an Atlanta police officer showed up at the scene. The response times reported by the El Paso (Texas) Police Department were only one second quicker than Atlanta’s, with an average of 11 minutes and 11 seconds.

The Denver Police Department posted a response time of 11 minutes flat. According to the Journal Constitution story, police in Tucson, Ariz., responded, on average, in 10 minutes and 11 seconds.
See Also

Police in Kansas City, Mo., and Oklahoma City posted average response times of less than 10 minutes. In Nashville-Davidson County, police recorded average response times below 9 minutes.

Denver

The department recently released data showing that, on average, it took 15.75 minutes to respond to high priority 911 calls through the first 10 months of this year. In the first 10 months of last year, the average response time was 14.03 minutes, the department data shows.

"We're doing some things to address this, but there is no silver bullet," Murray said.

The average time it took an officer to respond to such 911 calls through all of 2011 was 14.21 minutes. For 2010, the average was 13.49 minutes, and in 2009, 14.38 minutes.

The department released the data after two high-profile incidents involving 911 response by police. Last month, White ordered the internal affairs bureau to investigate a nearly 6 ½ -hour delay between a 911 call reporting a violent domestic dispute and the discovery of a woman's body in her southwest home.

[Purge]

The title is misleading - unless budget cuts where why he was breaking in to rape/sodomize her.

It's sad to see that the response times are slow - but according to the targets set (at least here in Canada) the response time should be no more than 8min, 59 seconds. No province has been able to hit that target. Looks like 911 is just a call, and 10+ minutes away.

[Eco-Logic]

At least hepcat is consistent in his objective to add nothing to the discussion.
Tragic story, and I agree completely with ATB.

[hepcat]

Tragic story, and I agree completely with ATB.

Tragic story, and I agree completely with Eco.

[Exodor]

The issue with these counties is they mostly relied on the timber industry which is all but dead.

So for years they've relied on handouts from the federal government.  Those handouts were extended several times but finally dried up.

When levies are placed on the ballot to increase property taxes to fund public safety they get voted down despite these counties having some of the lowest tax rates in Oregon.


I'm very sorry for the woman who was attacked but I've got no sympathy for anti-tax zealots who expect a high level of government service but are unwilling to pay the taxes to fund it and expect the federal government (ie everyone else) to pay for it..  Fuck those people.

[Fireball1244]

Don't pay reps and senators for a day. Again 10s of millions.

Point of information: you can't do that. The Twenty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution, passed by Congress in 1789 and ratified in 1992, states: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened." Ergo, you can't pass a law that sequesters, docks, denies or otherwise reduces the pay of sitting members of Congress to provide incentive for them to do something.

Also, not paying Senators and Representatives for a day would save only $255,000.

[ATB]

300 Million for Syria but no money for police.

[Fireball1244]

300 Million for Syria but no money for police.

You do realize that, by law, money allocated by Congress for discretionary spending for military operations or aid overseas cannot be redirected to domestic funding priorities, don't you?

[Exodor]

300 Million for Syria but no money for police.

Why should federal dollars be spent on local law enforcement if the people living there won't fund it themselves?