Your safety is the top priority

By P.T. Larson

Protecting and serving are not exclusively the missions of the Cedar Rapids Police Department. It needs to become the top priority of the mayor.

The greatest loss we experienced in our change of government was that of our public safety commissioner. No one in our new local government structure has filled this void of leadership and accountability.

I have a zero tolerance for murder. In the past decade, we have become a destination city for this crime. A new cold and calculated disrespect for life and the law has emerged. This was illustrated by the dice-game-gone-awry murder in northeast Cedar Rapids this year. After the crime was committed, the killer simply walked away and has yet to be apprehended.

We're an after-prison market community. We have more issues to deal with than the smaller prison cities in Iowa do. If we're not demanding the same response time and location of where we place our police officers as we do for where we site our fire department substations to achieve best response timing to fires, we're in trouble in two critical areas:

1. Preventing crime from occurring.

2. Apprehending the criminal.

That's why the importance of police substations or precincts to aid response time and enhance community policing efforts are vital.

Fighting crime in a community is a lot like playing a football game. You need your police force to play offense and defense, at a high level of expertise, in a continual chess game with criminals. Crime continues to repeat itself in the same areas and vicinities, so consistently being there at those hot spots with police presence is essential.

As mayor, I intend to dispense public safety in the most tech-savvy ways and make your protection level second to none in the state of Iowa. You will not be hammered for information by inquisitive police dispatchers in your contact with police, should you choose to call the anonymous 1-(800) CR-CRIME.

E-mail interaction with police, as well as social networking and texting options, along with direct connect cell phone access to police while in their squad cars will be explored as additional contact venues to allow vital and timely police tips to arrive sooner, rather than later, or not at all.

One of the hidden crimes within our community's dark side, child pornography on the Internet, needs to begin to take a higher priority in both enforcement and police coverage. One more Jetseta Gage or Evelyn Miller case in Eastern Iowa is not needed to send me the message as mayor that a massive crackdown of this magnificent obsession's destructive power needs to occur. I'll spearhead the effort to hold hundreds of sex offenders accountable for their crimes before I allow the consequences to occur of allowing just one more innocent child not afforded the dignity and grace of living his or her life out to its rightful conclusion.

There are many safety issues I want to be accountable to you on as mayor. For there are public safety issues galore, spread across Cedar Rapids - ones that need to be addressed and regularly reviewed by your top city leader. And that's why I want to work for you full-time, unlike my dynamic duo of part-time mayoral competitors. Because when you're moonlighting as mayor, you don't have the time to deal with and lead in all the areas necessary. You rely too much on bottom-up decision making and million-dollar consultants to do your job.

Isn't it high time that our elected mayor has the courage, responsibility and full-time commitment to represent you?

P.T. Larson is a project worker at ACT Inc.