Taylor for Tulsa - A Look at the Promise of Police

No question about it, Tulsa has problems on many fronts. However, one issue in the upcoming mayorial race that seems to be near the top (if not the key issue) is the problem of crime. Surely, every candidate will be addressing this, and laying out their path for improvement. It certainly may be the deciding issue for me. So with that in mind, I wanted to take a look at each candidates position.

With that, we are off to Kathy Taylor's website. This is a pretty decent website, and not anything that was thrown together overnight (based on my experience). There is a full page on the discussion of crime in the city, and her thoughts on how to make Tulsa safer. After reading the entire page, one thing struck me. There are approximately 2028 words on the page, and in only one sentence was the low number of officers on the street addressed. That sentence was:

"Tulsa needs to bring up its ratio of police to citizens."

Bring it up to what? What is the target? I would suppose ten new officers would mathmatically bring up the police to citizen ratio. Is that sufficient? I would want some clarification.
From that point on, the suggestions from Ms. Taylor focus more on streamlining the daily process like wireless access for laptops used by officers, streamlining paper work, computer aided or automation of Dispatch, Booking, Arraignment and so on. I can tell you from experience in the workforce that there can be an increase in productivity from such things, but I don't think that she is suggesting that we can streamline our way out of current crime problems.

Other suggestions are interesting. One is making sure our streetlights are working. Non working lights should be treated as emergencies. Okay! I'm all for getting this in place. But haven't we had problems paying for the lighting that is working? Tell me about the budget required to get the lights to the point you are talking about. What is the cost of running all of these from dusk till dawn? Another suggestion is a Gang Resistance program that has worked in other cities to help young people resist recruiting. Okay. Probably would prefer that this a function of parents or church organizations rather than government sponsered, but again, what's the cost and where does that money come from.

In fact, the overriding theme is, how are you going to pay for all this? All will be speaking of fighting crime and economic growth. For my vote, I will be looking for the person who can give me the nuts and bolts of how they are going to get to their goal. In normal time, promises might be enough, but with the feeling that Tulsa is at the crossroads, we deserve more.