If Stockton, or any city, was rated as the safest place for people to live, it wouldn’t bother me if the police were the highest payed in the country. But Stockton? One of highest crime rates in the state. What are people getting for their money?
Around here, every year when the FBI releases its crime stats for the previous year, our local police chief is like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day. He pops his head out of a hole, looks around and if the local crime rates went down, it was due to his, "aggressive new police initiatives, the quality of the officers and proactive law enforcement." If on the other hand, the stats go up, it was no doubt, a "reflection of changing socio-economic conditions," or possibly, "budget cuts."