I Blame Halliburton

Via Internet128.com:

The Boston Herald'’s Michele McPhee has a piece on Boston'’s police shortage. As Boston'’s police department has lost strength, violent crime has soared. In the mean time, the number of public school students in Boston dropped to 58,000 in 2005 from 63,000 in 1995, while the number of teachers increased from 4,300 to 5,200 over the same period, according to the Boston Globe.

And, because I'm always willing to help:

Open Letter to Boston Mayor Tom Menino

Dear Tom,

I hear you're in need of some money for the hiring of additional police officers. Allow me to assist.

It's quite simple really. All you need to do is put a rookie cop at every intersection on Washington Street where there's a "buses/right turn only" lane (e.g. Mass. Ave., Melnea Cass Blvd., E. Brookline St.), and have him or her do nothing all day but ticket drivers who go straight through the intersection from that lane.

During the morning commute alone, that one police officer will issue enough citations (at, say, $75 a pop) to pay the salaries of three full-time officers. They'd need write only nine tickets per eight-hour shift. I'm overwhelmingly confident in the ability of Boston's finest to hit that goal.

One cop generating the revenue for three. That's a net gain of twelve new cops on the beat, for just the three locations mentioned above. This initiative will have the added benefit of punishing those who sit there at the red light, preventing me from turning right onto Mass Ave. on my into work each morning.

Nail those fuckers! It's "for the children".

Your buddy,

~ Bruce