Commisioner Bruce Roberts resonds to our crime report

In case you missed it, I compiled some stats that quantitatively suggested Imperial Point was experiencing somewhat of a crime wave.  A partial report is here:
http://imperialpoint.multiply.com/journal/item/14/Fort_Lauderdale_Police_Crime_is_up_HUGE_in_the_Point.

I've been doing a lot of number crunching to compare us to other neighborhoods and the results are surprising.  I'm going to work some more on the report in the coming days and publish something comprehensive.

In the meantime, I asked Commissioner Robers for his reaction to this report; what follows is his response, verbatim:

Brett, 
I am having difficulty sending mail via the city server, so I had to redo
the email from home. Sorry for any confusion this may create.

At any rate, your analysis is correct. Two crime categories accounting for
the major increases are vehicular and residential burglaries. This also
reflects a citywide trend.

The reasons are twofold:
	1. Poor economic conditions
	2. Inadequate police staffing

During my tenure as Police Chief, we had 510 allocated police officer
positions. Currently, only 498 are budgeted. Of those, 42 are in the police
academy or in training with Field Training Officers; 10 positions are
vacant; 4 officers are on active military duty; and 14 officers are on some
form of light duty (sick, injured, pregnant, etc.). That equates to more
than 80 officers off the street.

As you can see, we do not have an issue with hiring (42 officers in
training), but we do have a problem with retention. We hire and train
officers for other agencies. I am determined to reveres that trend. In the
short term, I have directed that additional overtime funding be provided to
staff more officers for crime reduction action plans.

Rest assured that I will remain an advocate for our neighborhood and for
public safety citywide. In these difficult times, it is also incumbent on
all of us to step up our affirmative crime prevention precautions such as
locking car doors, removing valuables from plain view, being more vigilant
on our own streets and reporting suspicious activity.