I received this comment last week and my immediate response was to just delete it. Then I thought about my days studying journalism in college in the 80s, and how it was preached to me to be open-minded. We all have opinions based on our experiences and the writer of this message is expressing his. I’ll reprint it here (with some minor editing for language only - the rest is printed as received) and then offer my opinions to a few of his thoughts. This was sent last Sunday and it was in response to the blog question “Is Saginaw really Dying?”:
“Ill tell you why saginaw is dying no one gives a s#!t including the cowards that call them selves cops I see young BLACK THUGS doing what ever the hell they want shooting guns off all hours of the night robbing 711 on court how many times this year? I think the cops are ckicken s#!t! oh sure lets sit out side the scottish inn and write dui tickets while 3 blocks away some one is getting shot I personaly know a guy who had 4 drinks at the bar got taken to jail and while in jail the scum that likes to steal your plumbing broke in and about destroyd his house why is the city wasting scarce resources on dui ck points ? there answer to prevent dui deaths. The chances of getting shot in this city is far gtreater than getting hit by a drunk I think there is more $ in dui tickets than arresting gang bangers! You look around and people are stealing aluminum siding off of houses in broad day light cops dont do s#!t! so f!%k you cops you are a bunch of chicken s#!ts!
First of all, I hear this type of stuff a lot so it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. I am sure anybody who reads this will draw their own conclusions. But, I would like to make a few points.
Yes, there is a boatload of crime - of all types - in Saginaw. I believe city police respond to about 65,000 - 70,000 calls for service each year and, as most citizens know, a lot of property crime reports are now taken only at the front desk when there is no suspect and the crime is discovered after the fact. These are mostly for insurance claims. Considering that, there are probably well over 100,000 calls for police assistance that are received each year in the city. So, yes, there is huge crime in Saginaw. If you look up per capita crime rates and compare cities, Saginaw outranks many places that would surprise a lot of people.
Yes, there are gunshots going off all day and night, and the convenience stores get robbed far too often. The sad part is, considering the call volume and the number of cops working any given shift, there simply is not enough manpower to be as pro-active as we would like to be. If somebody can figure out how to predict what stores will be robbed at what times - I can count about 20 convenience stores on the west side alone - they would make a great deal of money with that talent. Oddly, I often hear people make the joke that 7-Eleven stores are the safest place to be because that’s all the cops do is hang out inside those stores. Interestingly enough, the last time the 7-Eleven on Court Street was robbed, it was an off-duty SPD officer who saw something wrong in the store and who came to the aid of the clerk and helped catch the suspect.
I’m not sure what to say about the DUI arrests except that, over the years when I have arrested people for various offenses, they usually complain that I should be arresting somebody else. Whatever their offense is, they usually minimize it by saying some other offense needs more attention. If they raped somebody, I should be catching bank robbers. If they robbed a bank, I should be catching murderers. If they killed somebody, I should be catching those dirty dope-dealing punks that are peddling dope to our children. The bottom line is this: Citizens elect politicians to make laws, which cops are hired to enforce. If drunken driving was not against the law, then it wouldn’t be enforced. Likewise, there is a lot of debate in this country about legalizing streets drugs. I have my opinions about that, but if drugs were legalized, I would have no problem with that in terms of police enforcement - one less thing to worry about. It’s obvious some people want cops to pick and choose which laws to enforce (usually, I find, they would like you to not enforce the laws they are breaking or the laws they consider bullshit). Some people think enforcing DUIs is baloney. But would they feel that way if their wife, husband, brother, sister, mother or father had been killed by a drunken driver? Maybe. Maybe not. Cops are given a lot of descretion when it comes to enforcing the law and how they spent their non-calls-for-service-driven time. Their perceptions, and therefore their actions, are probably based upon things such as personal experiences, attitudes and training. I guess the million dollar question is: If cops are always enforcing the wrong laws, what laws should they be enforcing, and to what extent?
Finally, there is the question of cops being a bunch of “chicken s#!ts”. I know cops who have been shot, who have shot others and cops who have had to kill people and had to live with that. I personally have not killed when I could have, and I have lived to be content with that decision. I do know when the gun calls go out, and the shots fired calls go out, like they do each and every day, the men and women I work with head for the calls and do their jobs as best they can. Why? I can’t speak for everybody, but for me it’s because that is my job and it’s the right thing to do. Does this response to violence make the cops at the SPD big, bad, tough, heroes? No, not really. Does it make them cowards and “chicken s#!ts?” I don’t think so, but that is a matter of opinion.
Being a cop is, by far, not the hardest job in the world. Nor is it the easiest. I will say until you’ve spent a few years doing this work, you can’t honestly know what it’s all about.