HB Officers will no longer respond to non-injury accidents

H.B. police reduce some services to cope with cuts


Police no longer respond to most non-injury traffic incidents and have reduced desk hours in an effort to trim $1.8 million from budget.


By JAIMEE LYNN FLETCHER / THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER



HUNTINGTON BEACH – Changes to staffing, hours and equipment replacement are under way as the Huntington Beach Police Department copes with budget cuts.

The police department has had to make several changes to cut $1.5 million from its $58.8 million 2011-12 budget and is looking for more options to meet an additional $1.1 million in cuts next fiscal year.

As of this month, police no longer respond to non-injury traffic accidents, but there are some exceptions including accidents in which drinking and driving is suspected or those that involve vehicles blocking the roadway, said Lt. Mitch O'Brien.

O'Brien said there are about 3,000 traffic accidents in the city every year and about 2,000 of them are non-injury.

Desk hours were also reduced, and the department is encouraging residents to take advantage of online crime reporting instead of calling an officer out to their homes for property crimes....


http://www.ocregister.com/news/police-359651-department-beach.html

Good.

Hmmm

No traffic control?
No insurance reports?
No calls for clean up or towing services?
No field sobriety analysis?



Won't last long.

Oh, grew up in HB. Awesome community.

We were talking about this yesterday.

Why should the police do the insurance adjusters job?

So the insurance companies dont have to hire as many adjusters and can pass the savings on to the rate payers

Without a police report, I hope you have a video camera running in your car at all times, because without it or a police report, the insurance companies will fall over each other to see who can screw you the fastest. I speak from experience on that one.

This is apparently the norm in Tucson now as well. I recently witnessed a young airman plow into a truck after it turned in front of him. EMS showed up pretty quickly since they were stationed just down the street but TPD never showed. The EMS guys pushed his car out of the intersection since it couldn’t move under its own power and left due to no injuries. About 10 minutes later a Pima County Sherriff’s Deputy pulled up simply because she was passing by and was all up in this kid’s face for moving his vehicle into a position that was partially blocking traffic. I gave him my number and his insurance company had me make a recorded statement about what I saw. Hopefully it went his way.

Cut enough and something has to give. You do have to wonder if there are actually better savings to be found by having non-sworn officers do more of the safe work.

I'm alright with it, as long as I have a way to satisfy the "police report" conditions, when I file an insurance claim.

I've had a couple non-injury accidents and a few cases of theft. All the officer does is take a bunch of info down, and file it. Every time. Shit, *I* can do that.

If it saves money, I'm all for it. Would I like an all out task force dedicated to recovering my car stereo? Yes. Am I willing to pay for it? No.

I didn't know any police agency in SoCal even responded to any non-injury crashes. This has been the norm for years from my experience.

I guess it takes away time from writing tickets to bring the locality more money - so they don't care.

This is because we didn't approve the tax increase. It has nothing to do with manpower. Start looking around and you will see 4-6 units sitting on a low priority or a code-4 call with their thumbs up their asses, so that they are too busy to repond to crashes or burglaries.

The city of Tucson is full of corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.

I hate traffic tickets as much as the next guy (speeding tickets are among the most chickenshit examples I can think of), but except in rare circumstances (one horse towns who make it official policy), I'm reasonably certain that all things considered, writing traffic tickets actually costs the department money.

time to break out the 79 Delta 88 apparently

Don't forget the fact that most people I know (myself included) who have received speeding tickiets have received them for 10,15, or 20+ over the limit. It's not just a speeding ticket, it's usually a "Dude, I just can't let 50% over the limit slide" ticket.

Because the cops are "unbiased" onto which side caused the accident. Adjusters work for the insurance company.

Phone reports are common. Call dispatch, officer calls you back, you give your info, they file a report. Good gig for light duty injury officers.

Meh.....Run in the red and you get what you get. What's HB's pension libility?

I wonder how much they could trim the shortfall by getting rid of some of the layers of ranked staff?

After all the guy in the accident does not care if it's a patrolman or a watch commander that shows up. Put 'em on the street after formation.

That was my last one. "I hate writing you guys tickets, because it messes with your license, but dude, 82 in a 70, in a kenworth?" He did write it as an ordinance violation though, so no points, nothing on my record.

That's been the policy around here for years. Exchange information at the accident, go to police station and file report later.

Sounds like a good reason to cut even further until what you get matches what you pay for.

I had my tools stolen out of my locked utility bed, in my driveway. About $6k worth. I had to file a report online. Never even talked to a cop.

That has always been the case with TPD. It is not uncommon to roll up on a “crime” scene and see what looks like the entire department standing around. My neighbor called TPD to report some kids throwing rocks at her house around 10 PM the other night. TPD rolled up at almost 2 AM and treated her like the suspect.

My brother has a windshield mounted video camera, might be wise to get one myself. Not only for "accidents" but I could have had video of the Mothers Day UFO that damn near flew right over my vehicle.

And if you talked to one in the flesh, the (non-satisfactory) outcome would have effectively been the same.

July 1, FL is cutting out Short Forms.. so everything is either a do it yourself report or a long form (injury, etc) - I don't see that lasting long,

I live in HB. For starters, the city owns several of the most expensive helo's of any department in the country. And, we got more than 2 of them...... in the air.....at any given time.
For what it costs to levitate a single ghetto hawk, you can deploy a fleet of officers.

For years, the city invested really heavily in the eye in the sky, and they lease them out to neighboring cities. (The amount of money given simply will never add up to the real cost of flying the helos.)

Time to cut, and cut heavily. I do really like many of the officers in HB. I am good friends with many of them. But money is money, and wasted money is gone, and not coming back.........


BTW, this is about 10 years OVERDUE.

Kenworths can do 82 ?

The thieves left some things behind, like a stainless steel drywall mud pan that they removed. It would have only mine and their finger prints on it. It seems kind of hit and miss what they consider worthy of dusting for finger prints.

The calls about accidents involving parking lot scrapes by now-absent second vehicles need to go away.

I don't agree with how far some of these agencies sound like they are cutting back.

You guys who claim there is so much "waste" in departments...this is the reality of what you'll get if you keep cutting out of the mistaken belief that there is a lot of "waste"

Half of the idiots on arfcom GD think that any police department today with a budget larger than Andy Taylor's in Mayberry circa 1959 is a waste of tax money and a threat to liberty.

When they verbalize that sentiment I'll just keep clicking.

They WANT LE to be ineffective and reactive.

The town in Indiana my sister and her family live in have volunteer "officers" that do parking tickets, crowd control, etc. http://www.highlandpolice.com/

One of my ex-girlfriends was in the EMA in the town I used to live in, she did stuff like flagging for seatbelt checkpoints, and crowd control.

Problem was, she did a lot of criminal activity for someone involved in that(like smoke pot.)

This is what I'm doing right now. Desk duty due to on-duty injury.

My agency doesn't respond to non-injury accidents on private property at all. We will respond if you insist, without injury, to accidents on the street.

Copyright © 1996 - 2013 :: AR15.Com LLC :: All Rights Reserved.
Any use of this content without express written consent is prohibited.