Which Big City Police Departments Are Professional And Cost Efficient?

     When there is wastefulness, city residents are the ones that pay. Not only financially, but also by reduced public safety. If ever there appears more of a near extinct breed called true investigative reporters to replace the existing pack of lazy sensationalizing reporters (especially in a certain big city), maybe answers will be found as to which city police departments are truly professional and cost efficient.
      Meanwhile, the following can be researched:  1. What is the number of exempt ranks on the department? What are their roles and responsibilities? What is the number of staff assigned to each, and what are their responsibilities and salaries? The basic mission of a police department is to serve and protect through patrol. Everything else is secondary and auxiliary. Effective patrol should include patrol on foot, not just vehicular, but that is a different subject matter. Some of the secondary services needed are essential. But many are not, and may serve no other purpose than to provide some political hack with a do nothing job.
       2. What is the explanation and reason for the existence of each nonessential police unit? What is the job of each exempt person assigned to such a unit?
        3. Are all exempt rank officials and their units held accountable for their time? Do they clock in somewhere? What are their day to day responsibilities? What do they do all day?
        4. Is there a duplication of responsibility between captains and lieutenants? Why are both ranks necessary?
        5.  What are the expense accounts of exempt rank people? What perks do they receive? If they are assigned credit cards, who is it that monitors their expenses to make sure they are strictly job related?
         6. What about the use of unmarked city vehicles assigned to exempt rank officials full time? Who monitors their use to ensure they are not used for personal matters, including for vacations, etc.
         7. In an age when there is supposed to be some level of adult responsibility, and since officers in patrol units are already supervised by street sgts, what is the purpose of highly paid inspectors that serve no purpose other than to write officers up for minor infractions? There are already layers of well paid supervisors, so having highly paid inspectors do a relatively unimportant, morale draining job that sgts already are responsible for is not a wise use of resources. Many things are done on police departments because that is the way it has been done, with no consideration regarding cost and efficacy.
           8.  By doing a side to side comparison of a number of large city police departments, it is possible to see which cities are diverting resources from patrol into unnecessary units. It is possible to see which cities are management top heavy, which is an expensive burden for cities to bear in terms of safety and cost.
           The above are but a few of the things that can be explored. Problem is, in the absence of true journalists, who will do the looking? All police departments need to free themselves of clout, cronyism, political favoritism, unnecessary positions and units. Police departments need to be lean and professional, with a focus on patrol. Police departments should not be sanctuaries for well connected people to hide from work or to be pampered. They should not be bloated, inefficient, needlessly expensive bureaucracies.