I used to live in Clayton County so I can speak directly to being "on hold" for a cop.

It STINKS!!!!

Granted, it was *just* a burglary (my camera had been stolen from the garage door which had been left OPEN). Totally MY FAULT and I was thankful it wasn't worse.

Took about an hour and a half for "crime scene" rep to get there, and he showed me smudge marks that he thought were proof the crooks wore gloves. He did at least dust for prints....

The other time I had to call police was for a unattended barking dog who was tied outside when owners left for vacation. It was at night and fortunately ClayCo animal control came out pretty quickly to save the dog, which had been left with an empty water dish.

Needless to say our next door neighbor who did this had NO CLASS!. But we did have a lot of good neighbors in that neighborhood too, and thankfully we have that at our current home also.

Point is, you won't miss the cops until you need them. A town of 38,000 people has lots of police needs (remember the court fines are WAY down this year; another sign the cops are too busy dealing with other "calls").

Agree: We will miss police protection when it is gone.

True Story: I was put on hold by Atlanta 911. I was sitting at a red light in east Atlanta, the lead car. I was right on top of the intersection. Right in front of me, two cars had a horrific collision. I immediately dialed 911 and said "I have just witnessed a bad accident at the cross streets of ......" Reply: "Please hold."

Unbelieveable. And we are headed right for the same poor level of service when we can't keep people, we can't be tough on crime and the local cops get discouraged and start just marking time.

John you bring up an interesting point. I have been told by a former PTC officer that Wed Court was a "Game Day" & the officer that left w/ the most fine $'s WON! Is this figure published somewhere?
I have written before that it is a dual edge sword....We feel safe & secure because of the police but they seem to have a heavy hand and make "little" cases.

Come on do you really think anyone is going to believe what you just wrote. If it is true give us the name of the former cop that told you that. O yea there is none just like all the bull you say on this blog. You know, why don't you find something in this life that you can do well like Jumping off a Cliff. Or go back on the internet and talk to some more kids that you can impress that you are such a know it all big boy.

I doubt also that the winning cop gets a prize that day.
However, we would have to be considered ignorant if we thought that there is no record of fines and who wrote them up!
Budgets are necessarily produced with a certain dollars in mind for fines. That doesn't mean exactly that everyone on the force is expected to contribute. It is a group thing.

Why wouldn't anyone who has an encounter w/ PTC's finest believe what I wrote? When he was in another jurisdiction and put in command he told his people not to bring PTC cases...No day-time running lights out, No 3rd brake lights out,.
If you have ever sat in Wed Court, you will see the cases they bring.
The original post about lack of police about....Did he notice an increase in crime? We can probably do w/ less or a re-deployment to the cart paths.

You are still mad that they enforce the law?? Yes?....Yes, obviously.

Ok....what did they get you for this time?? Oh go on tell us.....it's just the 3 or 4 of us here.......
Those of us who do deal with PTC cops at least once a week know you are full of it. They don't have time for petty things like tail light out unless you are doing something else majorly wrong.

Last week I tailgated a cop in my red convertible for at least 5 miles(not on purpose he was going the same way I was) My music was blaring it was a beautiful day, and he could have easily popped me for noise violation and following to close......(no I wasn't purposely tailgating him,... he just wasn't driving fast enough ....I was trying to push him along)!

If anything our cops are way, way more lenient than the sheriff's dept. or the zone 2 cops in Buckhead.

The point is he didn't have time for this petty foolishness........so I call BS on your stupid post.

Seriously .....you need your meds.....No one believes you here.

quote:They don't have time for petty things like tail light out unless you are doing something else majorly wrong.unquote

Actually, they will stop you for having a tail light, head light, or brake light out. And technically, they can write you a ticket just for that, because it is against the law. But they usually won't write the ticket unless there are other violations, too. They will stop you just for that, though, to warn you that it is out. Some people don't know that they have a light out, until the officer tells them. Since it is a safety issue, I appreciate that they do these kind of stops. I know of one particular car in PTC that was stopped 3 times in a 2 month period for a headlight out. I think the 3rd time they finally gave her a ticket... maybe it was bladderq or his child, lol!

Skyspy, we are usually in agreement on our views on PTC police, so I hope you will take this in the tone it was written.

I was grateful that someone was watching out for me, and I was even more grateful to get a warning instead of a ticket.

I think our cops are very fair. They aren't as unreasonable, or as power happy, as this bladderq person would like everyone to believe.

I have to say the cop I was following last week threw me curve when he made a full stop at a stop sign. It was one of those stops where you can clearly see no one was coming from the other direction. My cd's almost ended up in his backseat.

I made it all up. I made up that a cop turned on me to follow me down Willow Rd thru 2 other stop signs to stop at Olive for a brake light @ 8:20 am. Over a mile. This lead to a tix which I went to 3 Wed. courts to finally beat because unfortunately you don't have to have a law degree to be a policeman in PTC and I was right and he was wrong.
I made up that my kid gits her D/L and is pulled over more than once for lights out or that she is given a tix for "racing". Pleasssse, the gerbils in that wheel cage won't spin fast enough for that child to even think about racing. I made up that my son was pulled for a brake light out. Just a warning. I made up that a woman I worked w/ was stopped for day-time running light out...just a courtesy stop.
You got me, I won't name a former officer (even though I believe he is out of state) who moved on to a command position and said it was a game on Wed court days. You got me. It's all a "pigment" of my imagination. Thanks for the reality check.

When you tell the truth, instead of a half-truth or no truth at all.

Doesn't this feel better.

Clayton County residents face long response times even for more emergent situations, unfortunately. That is *after* they finally get through to someone at 911. I've heard the Clayton County 911 line ring more than 10 times, more than once. In Fayette, it is rare for a 911 call to not be answered after the first ring. And you will never get an "on hold" message like you do in other metro counties.

Your explanation of the use of the force is about as clear as saying that there are only 100 soldiers in Iraq at a particular headquarters.
Four officers and one supervisor per shift equal five.
Five times four shifts (to cover weekends) equal twenty, total?
Is twenty all they have?
No one ever accounts for the whole force!

PCPD works 10 hr shifts, which overlap each other by a couple of hours. So your 5x4=20 doesn't work. I can't give you the exact number of officers required, total, because I don't know. I don't work in the PCPD, and so don't have access to *all* the info they do when determining how many officers are needed.

However, remember that I said 5 was the bare minimum needed on a shift. Optimally, there are 5 zone officers (a 5th zone covers part of another zone, in the area of The Avenues/Planterra/Walmart/Market Place Connector), plus a traffic officer, plus a city-wide officer, plus a supervisor. So that is 8, right there. Then add in detectives, crime scene investigators, and school resource officers (1 for each high school & middle school, plus 1 to cover all the elementary schools).