Much ado about nothing, Jeffrey. Zilch, nada … ничего.
New Albany police chief questions motivation for 911 dispatch merger, by Erin Walden (Let Them Eat Fake)
NEW ALBANY — The need for a joint city-county dispatch center in New Albany is disputed by the city’s police chief.
Chief Todd Bailey called a news conference Friday, when he accused City Council President Al Knable of telling a falsehood to show a need for a unified dispatch. Bailey also said the push for joint dispatch is political.
In short, another round of made-for-somnolent-media bile and spittle.
Chief Bailey sadly pursued the same contrived attack line at last week’s council meeting, hoisting Jeff Gahan’s jockstrap like a maypole as the mayor beamed happily from the bunker’s shadows, his increasingly nervous appointed minions trotting out to join forces with the remaining jellied Democratic spines on the city’s legislative body to sing a rousing chorus of “Job Security Uber Alles.”
In an interview following the news conference, Knable maintained there was a call made, but said he believed the error was on his end, not a result of the two dispatch centers. Knable said he did make a call, and turned over his phone records to the chief of police to prove it, but he used Siri to do so. As Knable explains it, he has the New Albany Police Department’s tip line saved in his phone under “911/NAPD,” so when he instructed Siri to call 911, the virtual phone assistant called the wrong line.
By the time he hung up from the tip line, he had assessed the situation and helped the young child, who had been scared and screaming “fire” and “help,” said Knable, adding at that point he realized it wasn’t an emergency. He said he did not make claims of an alarm sounding.
Knable contends Bailey’s focus on the anecdote is a distraction from the bigger conversation, merging the two centers and “making sure the taxpayers have the safest, most-efficient system out there.”
“I’m looking to get the chief of police, sheriff, mayor and commissioners to the table,” Knable said.
The fact is that throughout this entire 9-1-1 call center non-discussion, Bailey’s professional integrity hasn’t ever been questioned, not even once.
Rather, certain Republicans, joined by some like-minded independents and even a Democrat or two, are petitioning for a discussion of costs and potential savings.
Is this also a political position? Yes, just as much as Gahan’s benumbed, rote insistence that past county government fiscal turpitude — a habit of suicide by starvation pioneered not by the GOP but by old-school Strom Thurmondesque pretend Democrats like Ted Heavrin and Larry McAllister — somehow forms an eternal excuse for the mayor to erect straw men and gather municipal power into a veneer salesman’s idea of an unbearably vapid cult of personality.
Another day and another display of petty, time-wasting theatrics by Team Gahan’s resident DemoDisneyDixiecrats.
Is this really the best that local government has to offer?
Previously: The devil’s in the framing, and it’s public safety versus cold hard cash in the discussion about merging city and county dispatch centers.
