Trenton City Council tabled an idiotic appropriation to purchase $200,000 in unnecessary new handguns for the Trenton Police Department Thursday night, after it was revealed that the department's current supplier offered to resupply the entire department with new weapons at no cost.
Of course the numb-skulls leading the effort to procure the new .45-caliber Springfield guns in place of the current Glock .40s were none other than the henchman of the reportedly outgoing, disgraced Police Director Joseph Santiago.
The measure was placed on City Council's docket unceremoniously this week, with a recommendation from Police Captain Paul "Sleepy" Messina and some of Mr. Santiago's other cronies that getting larger-caliber guns would give the Trenton Police Department better, safer firepower.
Excuse me, but anyone who has fired a gun before will tell you that the improvement in power, force and range in the .45 versus the .40 is not that great.
In fact, one police source this week said that with the current .40s, any suspect struck by a round is likely to stop doing whatever it is that they may be doing.
The other argument was that female officers and so-called "bad shooters" could better handle the larger weapons.
Police officers have already debunked the idea that some female officers cannot fire the smaller weapon safely, pointing out that there have been no safety issues in the department with firearms for decades.
There haven't been many accidental shootings in recent memory, except maybe that time when one of Mr. Santiago's boys discharged his weapon into the front of a vehicle that was speeding towards a hospital with a wounded man inside.
The move towards the new guns would have probably ended up being one of his last official impacts on the department, but luckily it seems that cooler heads might prevail.
One council member correctly pointed out that $200,000 is one cent worth of tax rate, and the way things are going now, this city simply cannot currently afford to spend more tax dollars on such an unnecessary expenditure.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Shoot this proposal down
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2 comments:
It does make you wonder:
Where did this proposal come from initially and why?
Who does the vendor know?
Was the "committee" who made the recommendation to change weapons qualified to make such a determination (as in are they firearms experts/instructors)?
Maybe we should get a group of citizens together to conduct a controlled test at a licensed range. Then that blue ribbon panel could be the committee that makes the final determination on which guns to use/how much money to spend.
Santiago et al really can't be serious about all this, can they?
Heck, you can stop someone in their tracks with bird shot. Ask Dick Cheney.
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