FOP Wants To Raise Taxes To Hire 500 New Police Officers

Hopefully, the members of the Indianapolis City-County Council are wise enough not to take advice from the FOP when it comes to figuring out how to fund public safety. According to WISH-TV's Julian Grace, its leadership says the city needs to hire 500 more police officers and it has a plan how to achieve it: raise local income taxes. The last time the FOP supported a 65% increase in a local income tax in 2007 to fund 100 new police officers, in its contract negotiations with the Ballard administration it traded off those new police hires for pay raises. Color me skeptical, but I think the FOP leadership's primary aim here is to ensure a pot of money to support pay raises for future contract negotiations, not to hire additional police officers. One of the things that irritates me is how the number of police officers in Indianapolis is always compared to cities of similar size. Those comparisons never toss in the additional police officers working for other police departments within the city limits, including Lawrence, Speedway, Beech Grove, Southport, Meridian Hills, Homecroft, Rocky Ripple, Clermont and Cumberland.

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