Police officials report this year's Fall Welcome brought less crime, arrests

Incidence of crime continues downward trend – so, isn’t it about time to begin cutting the amount spent on public safety? E Lansing should look at not refilling positions as a way of aligning public safety staffing with public safety needs.

I don’t think cuts to public safety are in order for East Lansing. With an economy likely to be in trouble for years and years, theft, house invasion, and serious crime, even if initiated from outside our borders, are probably going to increase. We have an aging population, which is more vulnerable to crime, and will need more emergency service help.

What we should not need to be spending public safety money on is misbehaving college students. Even though some students object to the loss of their preschool party week, the new shorter orientation has clearly helped, and I hope it has also prevented the alcoholism among incoming freshmen, which perhaps carries over to change the “you have to get sick drunk to have fun” culture. (I saw very few sick drunks wandering around campus during football games last year, though I continue to worry about alcoholic alumni at tailgates.)

Now that we are rid of that scoundrel Staton, and if we can elect a couple of new members of Council who are capable of problem solving and program assessment, we may be able to save money on public safety by focusing on effectiveness. Having had to put up with Staton and Loomis’ incompetence with dealing with a nuisance rental, that only became okay because the nuisance tenants happened to be replaced by nice tenants, as most MSU students are, I think a lot of money can be saved by forcing lazy landlords who just collect rents and ignore their properties to behave like good landlords, who would never have put up with those kind of tenants (who were in constant violation of their lease). I also think the “creative solutions,” that are typical Staton PR stunts, involving spending money on making nice between residents who like students and students who never make trouble, need to be thrown away (encourage this at a grassroots, neighborhood level, which would be more effective—but Staton and Loomis hate anything initiated from the grassroots because they like a dictatorial, corporate, model for government, not democracy).

East Lansing needs to save money. That starts by getting rid of special interest taxes—phase out the DDA (we can’t afford to pull the plug immediately, because it has already accumulated so much debt with its special interest, wasteful spending). It means no more reckless real estate speculation, no more money squandered on ill-conceived government-subsidized development projects with developers who are pals with government officials, no more economic development projects that are all hype with no assessment.

A post-Staton government can also stop with the self-promotional PR campaign. There are some public safety, as well as general community, issues that can be dealt with by talking openly about problems, instead of covering them up, and basically calling on East Lansing citizens, all of us not just students, to be better citizens and watch out for their neighbors. There is no excuse for people letting their sidewalks get dangerously icy in the winter or letting blowing trash lie in the street in front of their house for weeks. These should not be law enforcement problems. But it takes leadership—something the likes of Staton and Loomis lack—to say to the community, take some responsibility.

Eliot, I agree with almost 100% of the time, and I agree on many other points of your comment, but I completely disagree with the fact we should not cut more police in East Lansing. East Lansing has one of the largest police per capita anywhere in Michigan, if you include all departments that have jurisdiction(Ingham County, Meridian, Lansing, EL, MSU Campus, State Police HQ) . And those ‘misbehaving students’ are often made out that way by East Lansing police. The police stop any student who might otherwise trip, or slightly stumble who is causing no problems whatsoever. if that student asks why he is being bothered and even remotely disrespects the officer, they will arrest you. I’ve seen this happen multiple times

I don’t speak for all EL officers, but many of them feel they are above the law. If you’ve ever driven through the city during the school year at night, you’ve probably been pulled over at least once, and probably for no reason whatsoever except them bullshitting an excuse to see if you’ve been drinking or not.

I agree with everything else you’ve said though. In my opinion though, lets send a good chunk of these excess cops to Lansing and see if they can actually handle REAL police work. The cops in Lansing bust their asses, get less pay, and deal with a lot of violent crime.

I always find it interesting when people comment on what people/organizations should or shouldn’t do, when they don’t have any knowledge of whether the thing is already being done.

ELPD has reduced the size of their police force over the past few years.