Next to a big new library, a big new police station has been the most enduring pie-in-the-sky project in our community since we borrowed tens of millions of dollars several years ago to bring long-awaited “redevelopment” to Uptown.  And that project has been hemorrhaging red ink ever since.

Three years ago the voters rejected – by an 83.39% to 16.61% referendum vote – building a new police station.  Back then, proponents of the new cop shop panic-peddled dire warnings of lawsuits, unhealthy working conditions, crime sprees, and just about everything short of Al Qaeda attacks and swarms of locusts if the new cop shop wasn’t built.  Fortunately, the voters weren’t bamboozled.

And guess what?  Nothing happened.  Nothing.  Nada.

But only three short years later, the cop shop is back.  This time, however, it’s on a much smaller scale – “only” $1.1-1.3 million (best case) over several years, all the better to fly under the radar and thereby minimize the chance of a referendum where the voters might express their views in ways that can be counted objectively by the Board of Elections.  Plus, the target audience this time around is an eminently-bamboozleable City Council.

The new cop shop plan is called “Cost Effective Strategies to Address Risk Factors at the Police Facility,” a power-point presentation that appears to be the work product primarily of Frank Gruba-McCallister, Ralph Cincinelli, and some other members of the Police Chief’s Advisory Task Force.  We grudgingly have to commend them on incorporating “risk factors” in the title: an up-front scare tactic never hurts when trying to create a stampede, even if only a four-alderman one. 

The rest of the 75-page presentation is loaded with enough other disconcerting words and phrases to elicit vacuous, knee-jerk agreement from most uncritical thinkers.  While it would take us far too long to identify and comment on all the half-truths and factually questionable assertions jammed into that document, you can get the flavor from a few examples (with our parenthetical comments):

Page 5:  “Prisoners – 600 to 700 prisoners processed annually.”  [PW: That averages out to under two prisoners per day.  That’s less than Andy and Barney deposited in the Mayberry jail, not counting Otis Campbell’s regular Saturday night visits and the occasional dust-ups between the Darling Family and Ernest T. Bass.] 

Page 7:  “Intake – Path using front steps…poses risks of physical injury to officers, staff and prisoners.” [PW: Virtually everything we do involves “risks,” but how many actual injuries to “officers, staff and prisoners” have been sustained on those front steps in the past 1-3-5 years?]

Page 16: “Prisoner Processing… Trip and Falls – Prisoners and Staff.” [PW: The Report is silent on how many incidents of trip & fall injury or liability there have there over the past 1-3-5 years, but it does try to scare us with several examples from…wait for it…the New York City police department.  Is that because whenever people talk about police issues, NYC and Park Ridge invariably are spoken of in the same breath?]

Back in 2008-09, when local resident Joe Egan and his allies collected the signatures needed to put the new cop shop on the April 2009 referendum ballot (after then-mayor Howard Frimark and a majority of his alderpuppets refused to do it), we asked a few basic questions in an effort to get to the heart of the new cop shop rationale, including:

Has the size and condition of the current police station impeded or jeopardized the investigation and prosecution of any crimes? 

Has the size and condition of the current police station significantly compromised the safety of the people of Park Ridge? 

Has the size and condition of the current police station resulted in any actual financial liability for the City?

Not surprisingly, not one of those questions was answered in the affirmative, either by any of our public officials at that time or by the new cop shop cheering section.  But we’d still love to have those questions answered this time around – maybe by Chief Kaminski, Mr. Gruba-McCallister, or Mr. Cincinelli?

And while they’re answering those questions, we’d love for them to tell the City Council and the taxpayers why their multi-year, million dollar-plus project puts off until Year 3 – the final year – what would appear to be the single most health/safety-threatening condition of the current cop shop: mold?

Frankly, if there actually is a mold problem (as Pages 33 through 38 of the Report insist), Chief Kaminski and City Mgr. Hock owe the Police Department employees and the taxpayers a darn good explanation for: (a) why they haven’t demanded the City Council budget for mold remediation well before now; and (b) how they can justify deferring mold remediation until the final year/phase of their new cop shop plan, behind such dubious “needs” as “bike storage”? 

Or maybe Mr. Gruba-McCallister and Mr. Cincinelli could take a crack at those questions, too?

Not that the aldermen falling all over themselves in support of this project care about the answers to questions such as these.  Led by Alds. Sal Raspanti (4th) and Rich DiPietro (2nd), they voted 5-1 (Knight dissenting, Bernick…surprise!…absent) at the February 27 COW meeting to jack up vehicle sticker charges by 30% (they’re calling it a one-year “surcharge”) so that they can move forward with the project ASAP.

Predictably, Mayor Dave Schmidt questioned the rush to judgment on a million dollar project that has not been anything close to fully vetted by the Council, while Knight opposed raising the vehicle sticker charge and wanted Hock to find the money elsewhere.

But the other aldermen are stampeding, and it looks like it will take more than Schmidt and Knight to turn that herd.

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