Abnormal Interests

Is this true?

The Flexible Work Schedule, adopted by the police commission on September 19, 2001 and enacted in November of 2001, allows 8, 10, and 12-hour shifts. As I understand it, when an officer is assigned a schedule having 12 hour shifts that officer works three such shifts a week or 36 hours per week. Not all officers work 12 hour shifts. Now, 36 hours is not the common 40 hours of much of industry. But it is far more than 60% time implied by Park's ad. Parks was against the Flexible Work Schedule from the beginning. It is part of the reason he is not longer Police Chief. Park left the force in June of 2002.

The claim about police officers only working 3 days a week follows a claim that the current mayor can not be trusted. Now I don't know if the current mayor can or can not be trusted. I do know, based on this ad, that Parks can not be trusted. He tells half truths at best.

Parks makes another claim in this ad. He claims that homicides are up in the city. You be the judge. Based on official police data the following shows the number of homicides by year.

• 2000 - 544


• 2001 - 591


• 2002 - 647


• 2003 - 514


• 2004 - 512

February 17, 2004 to February 17, 2005 homicides were down 12% according to the same source.

Now, during his whole tenure, homicides did drop 45% under Parks as Chief. He did well. But they did not increase under the current chief or the current system. The increase he is talking about appears, from a letter from Parks to the Police Commission, to be his city counsel district and his district did have a bad early part of the year. Parks needs to tell us that is concern is for his district and not the city as a whole. His concern is legitimate but is very misleading when he does not give enough details to understand what he is talking about. It looks like he changed the subject, without tell anyone from the whole city to his district!

We need to stop this kind of false or misleading campaign advertising by making it clear that those who try it will not be elected. We must not let this stuff go on at any level. Out right lies, half truths and purposely misleading statements should disqualify a candidate in the mind of all voters. No exceptions.