Public safety hang-ups
I'm not sure how else to put this, so here goes. I was in the men's room at Fenway Park the other night, quite literally minding my own business, when I came face to face with a future that I never in my wildest dreams imagined could be mine.
It was an advertisement, strategically placed on the wall at eye-level where I, well, stood, a recruitment sign urging Red Sox fans to apply for a position on the Scottsdale Police Department.
Seriously.
This, of course, conjured up a few questions, most notably: Why? Were they looking for men with great aim? Was I on film? What exactly are the town fathers of Scottsdale seeking for their local constabulary: beer-guzzling baseball lovers who barely acknowledge the letter R?
But, wait a minute -- Scottsdale, Scottsdale, that's in Arizona, home to blue skies, 80-degree spring days, and this big round yellow thing that we used to call the sun. What could possibly count as a crime in such a place: Driving under the influence of happiness? Sunscreen trafficking? Dropping a ball more than two club-lengths from a hazard?
I can see it now, Scottsdale's finest, guns drawn, barking out, "Put your hands over your head and step away from the golf cart, dirt bag. We saw you ground your club in that last bunker."
So I called the number, 480-312-1933, and found myself on the phone with a man as pleasant as the city he represents, Greg Carlin, the chief recruiting officer for the Scottsdale PD.
He explained that the city and state are so awash in law enforcement money that they have recruited every available man and woman around town, so they have now cast their net afar. It began last year at
"You guys always get sellouts," Carlin said. "And, it's tough to get on with the police department there. We try a lot of ads with people looking to get out of the bad weather and out of an area where the job market is not good."
Really, the weather's bad here? I hadn't noticed.
I ask him how bad crime must be in Scottsdale if they're desperately recruiting officers from all over the nation.
"We don't have a real high crime rate," Carlin responds. "It's a great community to live in."
The statistics bear him out. Last year, Scottsdale, a city of 237,000 residents, had five murders. Count 'em, five. It has, according to Carlin, 435 officers on the Police Department, and it is urgently hiring more.
Boston, on the other hand, had 74 murders last year and a department of roughly 2,000 officers, and the state government offers a few broken peanut shells to bring on a few more cops .
Why the difference?
"The city is in a good economic position, so we can add on positions that we need," Carlin said. "Our city councilor and city manager see the importance of public safety. They're not cut back, cut back. They're more, more, more."
Then, he mentions something called a "public safety tax," which I come to find out is a 0 .1 percent city sales tax that was passed in 2004, with all the money devoted to public safety, as promised.
That's great, isn't it? In a city with virtually no crime, they pass a funding mechanism to add more cops. Here, in a city with a rising murder rate, weak-kneed pols like House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi and his marble-minded minions starve the cities we should be trying to help.
Anyway, I ask Carlin if he has had any response from Boston. He said they had a strong reaction from Detroit last year, and they have already had interest from Ohio and Seattle this year.
Carlin said he got only one call from Boston, from a guy who was actually using the men's room, telling him so in language I can't use in the paper. And the guy hung up.
That's just perfect, a crank call, the only one -- Boston in a nutshell. In so many parts of life, we don't know how to get out of our own way.
Brian McGrory is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at mcgrory@globe.com. 