{"id":11327,"date":"2015-10-18T02:40:47","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T02:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11327"},"modified":"2015-10-18T02:40:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T02:40:47","slug":"all-councilman-needs-is-a-mask-and-white-steed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11327","title":{"rendered":"All councilman needs is a mask and white steed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"demerson\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lone Ranger rides again.<\/p>\n

He’s at Amarillo City Hall these days, dressed as a new city councilman who has proposed massive changes in the way Amarillo’s police department does it job.<\/p>\n

This is another sign of the change that’s arrived at Amarillo’s municipal government.<\/p>\n

Councilman Elisha Demerson has made what I believe is a good-faith effort to improve policing in Amarillo. He wants the city to hire 23 more officers and he wants the PD to become more of a “community policing” agency, with officers connecting more personally with the neighborhoods they are sworn to protect.<\/p>\n

It’s all good, councilman.<\/p>\n

The mayor, Paul Harpole, makes a sound point in criticizing what Demerson is doing. He’s seeming to speak for the entire City Council. Coming forward as he has done, Demerson has taken the lead on a process that generally has been done at the senior administrative level, with recommendations coming from the police chief in coordination with his immediate supervisor, the city manager.<\/p>\n

However, since City Manager Jarrett Atkinson’s tenure at City Hall is about to end — and was put in jeopardy almost immediately after the May election — Demerson is acting as the agent of change within the police department.<\/p>\n

This is a slippery slope that could produce some trouble for the councilman, the cops, the city administration, the rest of the council and perhaps even the public.<\/p>\n

We have a council\/manager form of government here. Council members generally do not put their hands directly on the levers that operate the city’s massive government apparatus. That includes the police department.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a particular problem with the proposals per se that Demerson has put forward. I do have a problem, though, any council member acting as the Lone Ranger.<\/p>\n

Harpole has suggested that council members have told city employees to “come to a commissioner to resolve problems.”<\/p>\n

Interesting. There once was a chain of command at City Hall. It used to work pretty well, with administrators handling those concerns within their departments, while the city manager oversaw the solutions being implemented.<\/p>\n

Is it no longer a team effort at City Hall?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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The Lone Ranger rides again. He’s at Amarillo City Hall these days, dressed as a new city councilman who has proposed massive changes in the way Amarillo’s police department does it job. This is another sign of the change that’s arrived at Amarillo’s municipal government. Councilman Elisha Demerson has made what I believe is a … Continue reading All councilman needs is a mask and white steed<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11328,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11327\/revisions\/11328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}