Are you sure about this?
Anyways, the fact is that what we are seeing in Indy is just what happens in big urban area politics. At the federal level, this country is a double W, or WW country, or whatever you want to call it. The Ws stand for warfare and welfare. Huge "gains" in our country are due solely to waring and bailing out individuals and businesses. People are shocked that local governments of larger urban areas took this same path. We have taxpayer funded stadiums, hotels, parking garages, etc.. However, many of these facilities have nothing to do with government, they are operated by "private" businesses who take more than they give back.
As these governments grew, certain areas went overboard on wages and pension benefits. Part of this is due to the changing nature of LE. We went from a job where if someone just stole something, you shot them in the back and went from there. As law makers and judges passed more and more restrictions, this requires people with more logic skills than may have been needed in the past. As such, wages had to go up. The downside is that too many of these big-government areas had politicians that were in bed with public unions. Pensions were tied to wages, and as wages went up, so did pension obligations. Not only that, rules were lax in some areas, where someone could get promoted their last year of service and have their entire life pension based on that one last year of service where they were making $7-$10K more per year.
This was unsustainable, collapse is inevitable, and we are seeing the collapse happen right now. A city in Rhode Island slashed pension payments by 50%. Bankruptcy courts are going to be ruling on these pension issues for years to come.
Oh, this is why I don't live in Indy. The property tax caps make it a little less easier to consider living in the city, but the fear of enormous tax hikes to bailout such a free spending pay-to-play government is just too much.
You know nothing about the average IMPD officer, but I understand your opinion.
