Re: Indio, California the New Wild West?!?!

[Damian (Instructor)]

The same is occurring here in Washington State. And, on top of that, police are reducing personnel to off set budget cuts. In 2009, my department took a $10M cut – that equated to 40+ deputy positions – nearly a 5% reduction. No physical bodies were layed off, just unfilled positions gone for good. This year (2010), the department took another $1.3M cut. Again, that was about 10 unfilled positions (due to retirements over the year) gone. Over the past two years, that is 700 commissioned deputy down to 650 to cover the 14th most populated county in the nation covering 2,134 square miles with a total population of 1.9M people (400,000? living out of cities); my department also contracts police services for 12 cities out of 39 in King County – roughly 1:950.