None of you need me to tell you that times are tough, and look to get tougher. With the economy in a downward spiral, tax incomes will drop, and government at all levels will start looking for places to cut not just fat, but muscle. And, for the first time in history, public safety will not be exempt. Rather than doing more with less, we will be trying to do something with nothing.
The editor of the print edition of Law Officer, Dale Stockton, had as his editorial in the December issue this same theme, and noted as his first bullet point that departments must be careful about cutting training. During past hard times, training was always cut, and these days, with basics such as ammunition not only more expensive than ever but also hard to get, training looks more and more like a prime target. A cutback in firearms training can save a department lot of money quickly. It looks good to the bean counters.
But the basic questions must be asked: Why do we train? What will be the real cost if we fail to train? Can we get away with doing less firearms training, or even none at all? Some of you live in states where you are required, by law, to train and/or qualify with your firearms. Do you really think you are exempt to the budget cuts? Who will enforce that statute? Are there any real penalties attached to it? Benjamin Franklin stated, “laws without penalties are just advice.” Do your town fathers or county supervisors really care about this, or will they trust that “since a line-of-duty death hasn’t happened, it won’t”? This is one place where such faith is not an option.
The death of a police officer in the line of duty is a rare event. Many departments have never experienced a line-of-duty death among their members. Even in larger departments, the ratio of felonious deaths to officers is really quite low. So, in truth, the probability of an officer on your department being killed is small, but the possibility exists every day, on every shift. And if it is you or your partner or a friend who dies, none of the statistics matter. How much comfort would it be to your significant other to hear “well, statistically he should not have been killed”?
Let us examine the costs of a line-of-duty death. We will, in these hard times, presume that the city fathers will plan on not replacing the officer who is lost, thus saving a significant amount of cash in their budget. No recruiting, screening, background investigation, hiring, training, uniforms, equipment, retirement contributions, etc. etc., even if the reduction in manpower does increase the risk to the rest of your officers. After all, it’s not the city fathers responding to that “man with a gun” call at 0300 alone.
So, get your calculator out, and have some spare batteries on hand. We will start with the investigation of the officer’s death, and the search for his killer. Rather than paying the officers who could have made the arrest for the initial crime, it will now involve multiple officers, detectives, CSI, perhaps SWAT, command staff, public information officers, prosecutors, even the city fathers. Overtime will, of course, not be a consideration in the apprehension of the outlaw who did this! (But watch its effect on the budget!)
When the suspect is apprehended, there will be more investigation, more prosecutors, more crime scene(s) to be processed. Of course, the defendant will need his/her/its rights protected by a team of public defenders, along with their investigators, at public expense. There may be a psychiatric exam (after all, no sane person kills a police officer), perhaps more than one, all paid from the public treasury.
Don’t forget all the press, who will descend on your city like locusts, requiring handholding by your public information officers. Press conferences and briefings require heated/cooled space, or at least a tent, to be cleaned before and after by city employees. And there will be added security for your prisoner(s), as they are moved from point to point for hearings and motions. You can expect pre-trial work to take a year, perhaps more, with lots of overtime for all involved, and “hang the expense.”
We are not even close to considering all the costs and we are only considering actual dollars, not emotional costs. How about the expenses of the actual funeral the family, in their grief, are not going to pay for it, nor should they! More cash flows out of the city coffers, in large amounts. There may be overtime for officers to cover the city during the event, as well as for those conducting crowd control all along the route. Flowers, statues, headstones, even the food and drink for the reception after the funeral all cost dollars, freely spent in the memory of the deceased officer.
After the funeral, there will still be demands upon the department and city counseling for family members (and department members too), death benefits, memorial services, perhaps even a trip for the family to the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.
There are some time bombs hidden in here as well. What if the family, after the initial grief has passed, sues the department or city for failure to adequately train their beloved officer? Even if the family loses the lawsuit, the city will be out more money in lawyer’s fees. Then there is the issue of other officers who may decide that it’s not safe to work in this city and move to other departments, or to other lines of work. At some point, the city will have the expense of finding, hiring, and training more officers.
Back in the 1980s, a friend with a medium-sized police department actually computed all the costs including some I may have missed. His figure was $1,000,000 that is one million 1980s dollars, for the death of a mid career officer. With inflation, how much more will it cost today? (Editor’s Note: According to the Consumer Price Index calculator on the U.S. Dept. of Labor web site, it would require $2,577,973.30 today to equal the buying power of $1,000,000 in 1980.)
In short, the death of an officer in the line of duty is a budget buster of nuclear proportions. It would break the bank of most of the 18,000+ police departments in this country. We can prove that:
- Training officers saves their lives
- It is required by law
- It is cheaper than losing an officer in the line of duty, even once in a decade.
If you are the training officer for your department, it’s time right now to start gathering these numbers. When the hammer falls, you want to be ready with factual information to show to the city fathers that training saves lives, and must not be cut. If you have some fat, sacrifice it. But keep the core of your program, so you will be able to look yourself in the mirror and say “I have done all I can to keep my officers well trained, and alive!”