Wagman says cops believe crime-fighting tools being ’stripped away’
March 13, 2009 at 8:13 am by Wayne GarciaMy series of interviews with the St. Petersburg mayoral candidates continued this week, and I am late in getting the full audio online here for my discussion of the issues with Scott Wagman. Sorry about that.
Listen to the entire interview with Scott Wagman here.
An excerpt from my print story about the interview:
Are street cops being constrained from doing their jobs?
I’m hearing there is a disconnect between the boots on the street, the street cop, and the upper-tier leadership. There is a difference between what the leadership is saying and from what I’m hearing from the street cop.
What is that message they hear?
As an example with the no-pursuit policy, a lot of the street cops are believing and feel that many of the tools they have at their disposal to fight crime, to not just fight it after it happens but to prevent crime, have been stripped away layer by layer from their arsenal of tools. They’re being told… — by told it may not be directly but its by supposition — that we don’t want any horrendous activity or event that could taint St. Petersburg as we had the 1996 “disturbances,” as some people like to call the riots we had, or the tent-slashing event. It’s this newsmaking headline event that is to avoided at all cost.
…In doing our job in providing for public safety for our citizens, occassionally something may be newsworthy that we can’t control, but you have to go a higher level of citizen protection.
