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It's not unnecessary. Police officers need to be trained to deal with a multitude of situations and scenarios. One of these situations or scenarios is an "Active Shooter" scenario. The county UCERT team is great but they have to respond and it could take up to 45 minutes. A lot can happen in that time meaning innocent people can be injured or killed. Police departments all over the country are forming teams, conducting this type of training and equipping their officers. This training is a result from Incidents such as the North Hollywood Shootout, The Columbine school shooting and the Virginia Tech Massacre. Incidents like the ones listed above can happen in any community at anytime. Police officers are "first responders" they need to have the training to deal with these situations. Training officers properly and equipping them properly reduces the liability the town can incur that can cost tens of millions of tax dollars. 23,000 or whatever the amount is a small cost to pay. Public safety should never have a dollar sign in front of it!
ReplyDeleteFirst Active Shooter is mandated training that has nothing to do with The Westfield ESU unit. It is no cost training because it is commenced while most members of the Department are on duty so in other words no monies or comp time credited to the police budget. Second if a major event occurs and special service units are needed to respond The Union County Emergency Unit will have a much better response time than that of Westfields own , The response time is based on the fact the Union County Team runs on a scheduled on call back time, in other words there are members that are waiting to be called in , The Westfield Unit has no call back schedule so it is quite possible that no one will even be around to respond and based on the fact the only way anyone will come to work on overtime is to be ordered in the odds are no one will answer the phone or page anyway and if its a softball night and the call back is after 2100 hrs the odds are the whole unit will be intoxicated anyway, drinking with Captain Davey. I think its time to be realistic disband that unit and save the taxpayers money. Keeping public safety at the forefront let the professionals at the County Level handle any crisis situations, It is embarrassing for Westfield Police Officers to go to football games with Black special ops gear and automatic weapons, Captain Davey when you gave the order for Westfield ESU to guard the football game was it because the opposing team was from Plainfield? Can this site please find out what the cost a year is to run that unit, its strange that the ESU budget also supplies clothes for the Chief and Captain Wayman to work in, that is day to day operations not ESU training. Also its my understanding that Captain Wayman has spent over 175000 dollars on ESU over the last three years including high end weapons, specialized training that was conducted in Las Vegas,water safety training, and thousands of rounds of ammunition so Davey and Johny can go shoot for fun with automatic weapons? While your at investigating the cost of ESU at Westfield can you please disclose Captain Waymans overtime for himself.
ReplyDeleteI don't live in Westfield nor am I an officer for the department. I can tell you I wish the Linden police chief would call out the ESU team when certain towns come to the football games. There are fights between certain towns. Mainly gang violence.
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