Changing times

[CW Spook]

Feralmerril's comment in the "Not made in China" thread got me reminiscing about changes in law enforcement. When I came home from the Navy in 1972, I picked up a part-time job as weekend dispatcher for the county sheriff's office. At that time, the office and jail were both in a 100-yr old brick building, the upstairs of which was home to the sheriff and his family. It made the Mayberry office look positively metropolitan. We were still on low band VHF...37.10 Mhz, though we did have VHF high band for Point-to-Point comms with the Iowa Highway Patrol (which is what it was called then rather than Iowa State Patrol), but no teletype and of course, no computers. There were 4 full time officers, including the sheriff and there were never more than 2 on duty at any given time. Everyone carried Model 19s.

Today, in the same rural county with effectively zero population growth since 1972, the department has about 18 officers including two detectives. Communications are all digitally encrypted, weapons are mostly plastic but include things like a full-auto suppressed MP5K, and the office and jail are in a newly constructed 5-million dollar building. Funny thing...I don't feel a bit safer than I did back in the day.

Oh yeah...back then the undertakers drove the ambulances too, as their services were likely to be required by anyone actually calling for an ambulance.
..and the wet behind the ears deputy I used to ride with on Saturday nights is now the sheriff and thinking about retirement...

 

[nipster]

Empire building and money from the government is the reason.

I used to work in Government and they have to justify their existance, so they spend their budgets IN FULL every year, plus the 10% padding they add every year.

Especially the silly things like encrypted radios, law enforcement today operates under the mindset that everything they do is critical to national security and they cannot do with out the absolute best everything. They dont understand having to operate with budgetary constraints and fall back on the "critical to life function" mantra when they get told no come budget time.

I live in the second biggest county in my state, and like I said used to work for local govt. At any one time, there were more parked police / sheriff cruisers than some counties had in their entire fleet. And they get replaced every 3 years, if they need it or not. Every podunk county has some sort of SWAT team, if they need it or not, etc, etc.

 

[feralmerril]

I was talking about Leon "specks" murty. He was married to helen, moms 1st cousin. Specks solved the hugest murder/ goul/ cannibal case at that time where Ed Gein robbed graves and killed a disputed number of women. His wife helen also was sheriff once due to term limits. They were a pair. In the early days she would cook and take care of the prisioners. I think specks was sheriff up to about 1956 just before the gein case broke. Not positive, but I think specks was navy prior to the war. He was sheriff of waushara county wisconsin and the office/jail county seat is at wautoma.
The last time I seen specks was about 1979. I had flew home and went and visited him and helen with my folks. He really opened up to me and dad about the gein case and his resentment for the new sheriff. To start with he told about being elected and at first haveing only one deputy, (Dan Chase), haveing to use his own personnal car etc, working sometimes days at a time without sleep etc on starvation wages.
Finaly he gave the job up. I am guessing he and helen had the office about 15 years. The new sheriff shly had no experiance. Shly was only in office a very short time when the gein case come to light. He called specks for help when the first lady was murdered. They knew they had a high profile world wide spotlight case and shly sugested they sit on the story. Specks agreed and shly sold the story to life magazine. He cut specks out of the deal although specks solved the case and let shly take most of the credit. Shly built that department up from about 5 officers to over 60 officers in those years. They probley have many more now and from what I seen I belive there are less people than when I was raised there in the 40s and 50s. Specks was bitter about it.

 

[fiasconva]

Remember when you had to be a certain height and weight to be even considered?

 

[nani.tracy]

I was talking about Leon "specks" murty. He was married to helen, moms 1st cousin. Specks solved the hugest murder/ goul/ cannibal case at that time where Ed Gein robbed graves and killed a disputed number of women. His wife helen also was sheriff once due to term limits. They were a pair. In the early days she would cook and take care of the prisioners. I think specks was sheriff up to about 1956 just before the gein case broke. Not positive, but I think specks was navy prior to the war. He was sheriff of waushara county wisconsin and the office/jail county seat is at wautoma.
The last time I seen specks was about 1979. I had flew home and went and visited him and helen with my folks. He really opened up to me and dad about the gein case and his resentment for the new sheriff. To start with he told about being elected and at first haveing only one deputy, (Dan Chase), haveing to use his own personnal car etc, working sometimes days at a time without sleep etc on starvation wages.
Finaly he gave the job up. I am guessing he and helen had the office about 15 years. The new sheriff shly had no experiance. Shly was only in office a very short time when the gein case come to light. He called specks for help when the first lady was murdered. They knew they had a high profile world wide spotlight case and shly sugested they sit on the story. Specks agreed and shly sold the story to life magazine. He cut specks out of the deal although specks solved the case and let shly take most of the credit. Shly built that department up from about 5 officers to over 60 officers in those years. They probley have many more now and from what I seen I belive there are less people than when I was raised there in the 40s and 50s. Specks was bitter about it.

Leon "Specks" Murty was the brother of Mildred Ione Murty. My great grandmother

 

[rwsmith]

When we moved out here there were no stores and 3/4" of a mile away was the only traffic light and it was a blinking yellow caution light. Now we are inundated with perpetual heavy traffic and stoplights one after the other with stores and strip malls EVERYWHERE. A 2000 sf house in my neighborhood is on the market for a quarter of a million. When my folks moved into the house I grew up in it cost them $12,000. The Navy Yard that was always going to be there closed up 30 years ago. The paper mill where I worked that was built in the 1930s is being leveled to become part of the Ports Authority. I can only presume that the three paper machines and chemical plant are going to be sold to foreign interests. Yep, the only constant is change.

 

[bamashooter]

Empire building and money from the government is the reason.

I used to work in Government and they have to justify their existance, so they spend their budgets IN FULL every year, plus the 10% padding they add every year.

Especially the silly things like encrypted radios, law enforcement today operates under the mindset that everything they do is critical to national security and they cannot do with out the absolute best everything. They dont understand having to operate with budgetary constraints and fall back on the "critical to life function" mantra when they get told no come budget time.

I live in the second biggest county in my state, and like I said used to work for local govt. At any one time, there were more parked police / sheriff cruisers than some counties had in their entire fleet. And they get replaced every 3 years, if they need it or not. Every podunk county has some sort of SWAT team, if they need it or not, etc, etc.

I have found after talking with deputy buddies of mine when the county went from analog to digital comms, some appreciated "help" quickly disappeared. The rural public were near addicted to manning their scanners both at home and work. The "eyes and ears" of the community as some put it. With the expense and for some, the difficulty of setting up digital scanners, those "eyes and ears" quickly disappeared. Regarding "empire building", I too worked for the feds and know all too well that bs. What did surprise me was that they tell me the signals aren't much better with digital in our hilly terrain. Our city police comms can be monitored on a commercial phone app many times. The app is nothing more than a mic set up next to a digital receiver. That blew me away. So far, that hasn't happened with the county. 5.0 Police for Apple and 5-0 Police for Android may be worth a look. I am now listening to the county via the 5-0 Police app.

 

[The Last Standing Knight]

CW Spook, you bring up some interesting points.

Used to be the standard issue police unit had a single Federal Signal Beacon ray bubblegum machine and a siren and not the multi-noise/multi purpose noise making devices of today. Now they look and sound like a UFO and sound worse when running code. Yes, traffic has increased and has actually gotten more irresponsible in their driving habits. I'm sure we all see this daily.

Police wore a simple uniform...now they dress like something out of Soldier of Fortune magazine circa 1980 and carry what I would call a full combat load of gear. I didn't carry that much on my cartridge belt/782 gear when I was in the Marines. I've seen (and "spoken to") collegues in my line of work who had so much gear on their duty belt that if they fell down they couldn't get up without help...and that is private security!

I am NOT a conspiracy buff nor do I wear a tin foil hat. Yes, times have changed significantly (and NOT for the better IMHO). But there is a reason that is the "elephant in the room" so to speak for this. So understand this is NOT the point I am trying to make. It is merely based on my personal observations and dealings.

A lot of this I believe is merely preparation for what IS to come. If you think it's bad now...give it a few years. None of us have seen anything yet. Parts of some major cities right now are something straight out of the third world. Things our grandparents would've never believed could happen here. From my observation, smaller jurisdictions are in an even worse position; small agencies with limited resourses combating organized gangs spilling over from the big cities knowing that fact.

Remember when the controversy came out a few years ago about the feds publishing a report on combating a zombie apocolypse? Media downcried it as a waste of taxpayer money. The powers that be played it off as a gag or joke. It wasn't. Substitute "zombie" for the masses. Especially rioting ones.

This isn't just here, but a worldwide issue. It has to do with a government maintaining some level of control and order over populations who are little more than entitled lunatics who believe and often correctly so they can get away with anything. Governments do what they do....regardless of our personal judgements and feelings....for a reason. That is why you see police with military grade armored personnel carriers even in small jurisdictions.

I don't like it either. It is as a friend calls it "life in the 21st century".

 

[LVSteve]

 

[The Last Standing Knight]

View attachment 774478

OUCH! Didn't notice that!

 

[LVSteve]

Don't worry, we've all done it, and it was another user who kicked it off.

 

[olfart]

Feralmerril's comment in the "Not made in China" thread got me reminiscing about changes in law enforcement. When I came home from the Navy in 1972, I picked up a part-time job as weekend dispatcher for the county sheriff's office. At that time, the office and jail were both in a 100-yr old brick building, the upstairs of which was home to the sheriff and his family. It made the Mayberry office look positively metropolitan. We were still on low band VHF...37.10 Mhz, though we did have VHF high band for Point-to-Point comms with the Iowa Highway Patrol (which is what it was called then rather than Iowa State Patrol), but no teletype and of course, no computers. There were 4 full time officers, including the sheriff and there were never more than 2 on duty at any given time. Everyone carried Model 19s.

Today, in the same rural county with effectively zero population growth since 1972, the department has about 18 officers including two detectives. Communications are all digitally encrypted, weapons are mostly plastic but include things like a full-auto suppressed MP5K, and the office and jail are in a newly constructed 5-million dollar building. Funny thing...I don't feel a bit safer than I did back in the day.

Oh yeah...back then the undertakers drove the ambulances too, as their services were likely to be required by anyone actually calling for an ambulance.
..and the wet behind the ears deputy I used to ride with on Saturday nights is now the sheriff and thinking about retirement...

Yep. When I came to work for the S.O. here in 1988 we had 8 deputies and the Sheriff to cover a 931 square mile county of about 29,000 population. We had no deputies on duty from 2:00 AM to 8:00 AM, so whoever lived closest to the call got called out during those hours. Several places in our county could only be reached by going into an adjoining county. Our jail capacity was 20, and we had 3 jailers that rotated shifts, one per shift. The jailers were also the dispatchers. They'd call in the on-duty deputy to bring them lunch. Our cars were old dodges and chevrolets that had spent most of their lives as cabs in some faraway city. We had just gone from VHF low band to VHF high band and were still dealing with the dead spots in the county. Our "scanner fans" were very helpful. Our cars were equipped with gumball machines on top and siren/PA straight out of the Gall's catalog for volunteer firefighters. You couldn't hear my siren standing in front of the car.

I had worked in Dallas County before coming here and had carried a 6" S&W 28. My new boss said he didn't want his deputies to look like Dirty Harry, so I had to buy a 4" 686. The county provided a shotgun with each car. Most of the shotguns were either from seized property or donated by helpful citizens. Mine was an old Ithaca featherweight, and it kicked like a mule. We also had to buy our uniforms from the only police supply in the area, 35 miles away. The county "reimbursed" us at the rate of $6 a month for "uniform maintenance".

We built a new jail in 1992, and I escorted the borrowed cattle trailer we used for transporting the 26 inmates to the new jail about a mile away. That was the next best thing to a parade. The Sheriff drove his pickup to pull the trailer and was smiling and waving out the window. People lined the streets to watch the procession, and the inmates were shouting and waving to their fans as we passed.

Now the S.O. has 16 deputies and mostly new vehicles, Dodge Durangos. They have all the bells and whistles with the new low profile LED light bars. The uniforms have gone from the tan shirt with dark brown trousers to whatever they want to wear on a given day. They just slip on their external ballistic vest with badge attached and don their baseball cap with a county patch on the front and call it a uniform. Now we have deputies on duty 24/7, so that's a good change.

 

[Rustyt1953]

I don't mind resurrected threads that have topics still worthy of discussion.

Besides, I got to dig through FeralMerril's archive.

He was a stitch.