In today's Daily Freeman, Mayor Sottile and a few Aldermen announced that they want to "reconsider" Kingston's participation in URGENT. This position is an overreaction and potentially an extremely foolish one.
There is no question that an audit must be done of URGENT. The allegations pending against a former leader of this organization merits a full review. However, if the audit and review shows only dishonesty from one individual, it would be unwise to withdraw from the program, especially in light of the tremendous success the program has had on crime in the City of Kingston.
Arrest after arrest has been made by the URGENT team. I urge my readers to do a search of prior articles over the last 2 years in the Daily Freeman. You will see involvement by URGENT in almost every drug arrest cited therein.
I understand the anger and frustration felt by all involving the allegations against Tim Matthews. I share these feelings. Nevertheless, it would not serve the public to be penny wise and pound foolish. Let's wait and see the results of the audit and investigation. Once completed, if it is shown that only one man was involved, then some simple changes to URGENT regulations to prevent reoccurrence will solve the problem.
If we overreact and destroy URGENT, the only winners will the drug dealers and criminals.
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2 comments:
I agree with you 100% on this one. The city should not do anything stupid. And before they do anything, they should be consulting with law enforcement officials. City politicians do not know enough to make an informed discission.
I agree that we should wait for the data before making any decisions but I'd like to see the data reflect how many arrests were made as a result of Urgent investigations, what percentage of those arrests resulted in convictions, of those convictions, what were the sentences and lastly how much did each case cost the taxpayer (police and prosecution costs)?
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