Moon Over Parma
Parma, Missouri, (pop 700) has a new mayor! Suddenly, though, they are without a police department and several other key officials:
Voters in Parma, Missouri voted in their first African-American female mayor.
Tyrus Byrd will be sworn in as mayor on Tuesday evening, April 14, at the Parma Community Building.
According to Mayor Randall Ramsey, five out of six police officers resigned this week, effectively immediately.
Mayor Ramsey said the city’s attorney, the clerk and the waste water treatment plant supervisor also turned in resignation letters citing “safety concerns.”
This is being portrayed as largely a racism or racism/sexism issue. I find myself thinking that there is more to it than that. The first thing is that… a town of 700 people has six officers? Really? Why? Even residents of Parma don’t seem to know:
Some say they’re not worried about their safety and it wasn’t necessary to have that many on staff for a city the size of Parma.
Some say they’re relieved about the situation and that Parma doesn’t have that many problems in town to require so many officers.
“I think it was pretty dirty the way they all quit without giving her a chance, but I don’t think they hurt the town with quitting because who needs six police for 740 people?” said Martha Miller of Parma.
Then there were the other officials. The city’s computers were apparently wiped on exit.
This doesn’t sound like run-of-the-mill racism (though it could be that in part – it often is with good ole boy networks). This sounds like corruption. The king is gone, so the kingsmen are heading for the hills either because the gang is up or to create a crisis to put the king back in power (at the next election – this metaphor has limitations). There is a good chance at least some of these people were getting paid to do very little, and since the gig was up, they were going to move on one way or another and this allowed them to do it on their own terms.
(And I really don’t mean to diminish the racial/gender component here. It is not unlikely that the new mayor’s demographic characteristics sent a powerful symbol that she she would not “work with them…” A while man could have elicited the same response, but probably would have had to do more to do so.)
{link via Saul Degraw}
Read more:
I didn’t consider the corruption angle when I learned of this story via Saul. Its an interesting and probably correct interpretation. Many of the officials who quit probably enjoyed comfortable sinecures under the old Mayor. A town with 700 people doesn’t really need six police officers or several others.Report
Is six officers really all that many though? I assumed you want to have at least one on-duty officer at all times, at least one officer available for backup, and then you also have to cover days off/sick days/vacations/emergencies.
Policework isn’t like the 7-11 (I’d wager the average 7-11 employs more than six people to cover all shifts), where in a worst-case staffing scenario you can just close the store for a couple hours. Six almost seems like a reasonable minimum number to me, assuming the community is large enough to need police at all (and maybe 700 people isn’t large enough, I dunno). Does anyone know?Report
700 is small enough that State Police would handle it in PA, often enough. And they have a 3 hour “get to your door” time. (if you EVER wonder why I’m pro-gun… that’s too long).
I’d say you could have two, plus a parttimer for emergencies.Report
It depends on what police officers need to do though. If there isn’t much crime or other public safety issues like traffic control than a lot of times, the police are just going to be sitting there. In a small town with seemingly little public safety problems, six seems excessive. With cars, you can have one police force for the entire county and do things reasonably well.Report
Yeah, it’s not even “distance” or “crime” I am thinking of, just “24/7, close to 100% area, coverage”.
My wife’s store is small and isn’t open 24/7, and I am pretty sure they have around six employees on payroll – not all are full-time, but there’s always going to be someone who needs a day off or calls in or whatever, and they have to have a deep-enough bench that the store can still stay open for its scheduled hours. And if they HAD to close the store for a few hours, it’s just lost revenue and not the end of the world; but if the police department “closes” for a couple hours and something happens to go down, that’s a real problem.Report
In cases like this, you ordinarily subcontract with the county or some other department for help. Honestly, in cases like this you should probably just sign a contract with the county, which is probably what the new mayor is going to do (assuming that their state is like our state). There are also options for being “on call” and volunteer deputies (though that can get trickier).
Small town departments are not typically expected to do what big city departments are. They can’t turn off the lights at the 7-11, exactly, but nor are they actually chained to patrol car.Report
On call, just like the doctor?Report
Basically, yeah. 911 calls go out to everybody, but non-emergency calls go to an officer with a pager. Though I’d guess they don’t carry pagers anymore.Report
This story from Sunday’s front page of the Washington post (a tale of race and policing in small town America), states that it has/had a force of 11 officers for a town of about 8,000.Report
11 for 8000 is really small, though I imagine they’re using county cops for most of the police work (I’d be surprised if those 11 weren’t doing primarily traffic enforcement).Report
Per the WaPo article (and wikipedia), they only have the police force they have because of Seattle ex-urban sprawl that saw their town nearly double in size since 2000 (3,700 – 7000, not 8000), after also nearly doubling in size between 1990 and 2000, (2100 to 3700), and this growth brought in an undesirable element that never went to the Elks lodge. Also, per the article, the town is basically on a nearly dead end to the slopes of Mt Ranier, on a route to one of the National Park entrances that doesn’t allow private owned vehicles to pass, so doesn’t get much through traffic.Report
The little townlet where I was raised had about 4,000 people, and next to it was a town of another 4,000 people, and they shared a police department. Each town had to have a patrollman on duty at all times. There were a total of 8 officers.
Callie, Arapaho (pop 4000) had 5-7 officers and most of those were part-time. However, they could have been considered a supplement of the Sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office has (according to the county website) seven professional deputies and three reserve. Less than 10,000 people in the county, though it’s the size of Delaware and cut up by mountains.Report
Thanks. So just based on those numbers, it seems like there’s usually roughly a 1 to 1000 ratio?Report
Closer to 1000 than 100, but Chris says that’s (1/1000) on the small side and he has more experience in ruralia than I do. I think the size is partly a function of how they use county departments.
TBH, I’m sort of suspicious of the existence of a municipal police department for any location with fewer than 5,000 people.Report
It’s going to depend on the specifics of the area. City parks, for example, require local policing (either city or county cops), residents always freak out about through highways and speeding, so you need speed traps on those, and wealthier towns frequently have higher cop-to-resident ratios. Large employers in small towns will also influence how many cops the towns have (GM moves into a small town, it’s going to want some safety assurances both for its property and its employees, e.g.).
Like I said above, 11 for 8k is a pretty small force, but if it’s a mostly residential town with no large employers and a sufficient county police force, it’s probably sufficient. My hometown spent most of the 80s, pre-Saturn plant, at around 8k, and we had a force of 30-odd cops.
The town immediately to our north, which was significantly wealthier back then (home to a lot of wealthy Nashville big wigs and some major country music stars), had about 6k residents for most of that time, and about the same number of cops as my hometown. It was known for its speed traps, and because the cops seemed to be everywhere, people frequently joked that there were two of them for every Brentwood resident. (To see how absurd their department was, they bought and extensively used an ultralight. An ultralight.)Report
I’ll add that because the two largest towns in the county, Franklin and Brentwood, had self-sufficient police forces, the county police force was smaller and focused mostly on policing the smaller incorporated and unincorporated towns.
Looking at one of those towns, which has grown up to around 7,500 residents over the last few years, it now has a police department with 15 paid and 4 reserve officers, relying extensively on county emergency services:
http://www.fairview-tn.org/depts-services/police-department/
It’s able to have a force that small because Franklin and Brentwood (about 100k residents combined now) have built a large county emergency response system, and Fairview is close enough that if there are real problems, they can call in Franklin cops as well.
By the way, when reading that, you have to pronounce “Fairview” properly, that is, “Far-view.”Report
It’s almost as though every itty-bitty postage stamp sized town doesn’t need it’s own complete police department and infrastructure.Report
Because it’s Okay if the cops are 3 hours away!
Welcome to Fayettenam!Report
Town I grew up in had 650 people and two sworn officers (& one patrol car, it was green, we called it Pickles). They patrolled in rotating shifts and were on call if off shift.Report
My town doesn’t have cops. The incorporated Village does but we rely on the State police. Fortunately, they have a barracks nearby (very close to my part of town but still a decent drive for other parts). We have very little crime, but still… not only is the response time high but the Staties seem to have very little interest in dealing with small time crap. They get very angry about responding to false burglar alarms.Report
Dude, there’s a town named after ham?Report
Clearly you’re not a Stendhal fan, and don’t follow Serie A (though Parma is going to be relegated to Serie B after this season).Report
I’ve eaten in Parma (the one in Italy) and I can attest to the fact that there is more than ham available there.
For instance, there is a cheese you may have heard of named for the region. Also note that a neighboring community is Modena, from which a particular style of vinegar is rather famous (try a few drops of it on strawberries or slices of pear, and thank me later).
As for Parma, Missouri, I’ve not been there myself but it sure looks to me like the resignations were personal to such an extent that the fact that the new mayor is black and female, while maybe not irrelevant, is probably overpowered by the dislike of her as an individual. Personally I might not be as worried about the police quitting given that it’s a small town with likely very little crime, as much as the water treatment plant operator quitting as this is about as essential as infrastructure gets. That was a really shitty thing to do to the town.Report
Ha; I phantsied @burt-likko would make this comment a couple hours ago! I nearly did, but recalling he’s actually been to parma, I waited for more authentic voice. Rewarded,too. Thanks, Burt.Report
Ask, receive; good things to those who wait, &etc. &etc. &etc. Cheers!Report
I’ve never been to Parma, but I would love to go because of the novel, which is one of my favorites.
Did you visit the charterhouse?Report
No, although I regret that now. My wife and I took a diversion from the autostrada for lunch, on our way from a microscopically small town in the mountains about halfway between Pisa and La Spezia where my cousin has a B&B, to our evening’s hotel reservation in Ravenna. It happened that we drove near Parma at about mid-day so, WTH, let’s go have lunch in Parma, both to actually get really good food and to make all of our foodie-friends jealous that we could so easily just drop by and visit in Gustatory Mecca.Report
Here is the race/gender angle NOT being explored…
What are the races and genders of those involved in this potential corruption? Because, ya know, we should avoid THOSE types of people in government if they prove to be so untrustworthy…Report
It’s a given that the computers were wiped to hide incriminating materials.
Those hard drives should be secured.Report
“Those hard drives should be secured.”
This. Odds are excellent that they weren’t so tech savvy as to actually wipe the hard drives so that the data couldn’t be retrieved by an expert.Report
Here’s a paper on the topic (PDF)
OK, I tried to link, but it’s the download link on my computer; this is from a paper, “An analysis of police department staffing: How many officers do you really need?” published by ICMA. You’ll have to google it yourself; or perhaps someone can explain to me how to link it?
What it says on per-capita staffing:
Report
That’s just fantastic, @zic , thanks for passing it along.Report
Yeah, that’s great. Interesting that 2.6 is the upper limit, but the average is 2.5.
It suggests that the towns around where I grew up were over-policed, but anyone who lived there would not find that surprising. (Again, a friggin’ ultralight.)Report
Interesting.
I looked up the ratios for Edmonton, where I live now (1.9 officers per 1,000); Saskatoon, where I grew up (2.29 per 1,000); and Munich Germany, the city where I felt the most ridiculously over-policed (somewhere between 2.7 and 5.0 per 1,000 – I’m not sure whether the Munich police also cover the suburbs or if they have their own PDs)
Parma MO having 8.5 officers per 1,000 seems just insane – unless the police are all very much part part-time there,.Report
So basically the town elected a new mayor and pretty much emptied itself of corruption? I would call that a productive little election.Report
Yeah, true; who can I vote for, that will make most of the police quit? 😉Report
I just took a look at where Parma is on the map. Not very appealing. That’s the New Madrid area, below Sikeston and just above the Boot Heel. Creepy place. Think “Deliverance.”
I don’t know if any of you have ever been to this neck of the woods, but this is what I call “the creepy part” of Missouri. And being Missouri, that’s really saying something.
That is active Klan country there.Report
In Parma’s defense, a town that’s 2/3 white did elect a black mayor. Which doesn’t prove anything, but does warrant some slack given maybe for the town.Report
Parma is closer (really close) to Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky than it is to any major Missouri city. It’s probably pretty culturally distinct, in addition to being beyond BFE.Report
It’s actually located right next to the new US capital in an RPG I used to play.
As y’all know, I (not-entirely-earnestly) favor moving the US capital to Nebraska. The idea actually occurred to me because of the RPG. An idiot character managed to destroy Washington DC. Rather than rebuild, I had it relocated to Mississippi County, Missouri. The idea kind of took off in my mind, after that, except Nebraska instead of Missouri.
(If you’re wondering why I put it in Missouri instead of trying to put it in the center at the time, I was raised near water and my thought at the time was that you can’t really have important cities away from water. Also, I wanted it in a multistate area.)Report
If the U.S. capital really was placed in that area, I’d hope they’d actually call it BFE.Report
Replace the District of Columbia with Federal Entity and you could maybe do that. Brasilia, FE…Report
Oops! Wish I’d seen this before I did my OTC post on it.Report
You also shouldn’t put three paragraph posts in OTC! 🙂Report
I get the idea that we probably shouldn’t jump to race – the tidbit about the wiped computers basically screams corruption – but it is worth noting that the former mayor (who had spent 37 years on the job) mentioned that those leaving were fearful for their safety. That seems like it is almost certainly a dog whistle, except without the dog part, so instead, just a regular whistle being blown very loudly by a man who lost list control on a seat that had been his for amounts to forever.
Presumably, more will come out, and along the way, the mayor’s people will insist that we shouldn’t focus on the past.Report
I agree about the whistle. I just find myself in the odd position of thinking that they may be using racism as an excuse.
Bring racist won’t land them in jail. Corruption could (though, as I said in Tod’s post, I don’t think it will) .Report
Somewhat of a tangent, but: I’m wondering if there’s a consistent pattern of PD over-staffing and the kind of problems revealed by the Ferguson report in general.
I’ve been trying to google it, not coming up with much except some stuff in Canada: http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/66181
If anyone knows of research or other tidbits, feel free to share.Report
And I found this, but it will take me a good bit of time to understand if it’s even meaningful to my question.
Anyone have a plain-English elevator speech for this study?Report
The Post-Dispatch has a good article about it this morning. Unsurprisingly, it’s about race.Report
Sounds like race was one of several factors, including the sort of pettiness that can plague small towns where everyone knows everyone.Report
That’s my current takeaway.Report
Yes. I know a guy who got elected to be mayor of his town, as some sort of elaborate practical joke. I think his parents still don’t know about it, he had so much fun quickly getting out of the job.Report
I’m about to go read it, but before I do, my guess is that the former officials needed reason to hide their corruption and actions, and race was the plausible explanation, at least in their minds. I think they thought people would accept their actions if they explained it as fear of racism (because conservative white Christians are being prosecuted!) and not dig deeper.
So I’m dropping this here before I read, and I re-evaluate the question suspicion after.
Just because it’s raining and I’ve got nothing better do do that I want to do right now.
#gamesiplaywithmyselfReport
It doesn’t look like there was any real corruption. I mean, the police and city officials were assholes, ’cause they were entrenched and they were police, so they’re gonna be assholes. And there was some borrowing from the city treasury for personal purchases, but I don’t have any problem with that when those people were likely paid less than shit, and they had a system for paying the city back promptly (take it out of their paychecks). Oh, and the place was run pretty inefficiently, as the article shows when talking about where the records are kept, but we’ve learned from Tulsa that even big cities can be bad about that.Report
Oh, and the place was run pretty inefficiently, as the article shows when talking about where the records are kept, but we’ve learned from Tulsa that even big cities can be bad about that.
Actually, this was really common. My mother served as town clerk when I was a kid, and all the town records were in our living room, which she used as an office. My Step-grandmother the same for her town. We owned land in Easton, NH until 2007, and all the town’s records there were, at that time, in the Clerk’s home, too.
These are all similar towns; populations of less then 1,000; and it’s probably cheaper to let the clerk work out of her home then to keep a town office open all day.
After reading this, I suspect that there wasn’t much ‘corruption’ of the direct, feathering-my-pocket, kind. Probably a pattern of police harassment to earn fine money. I’d guess the biggest problem was nepotism; awarding town contracts to buddies, and probably a whole lot of taking the TP home type stuff. I don’t think the town had a big-enough budget for massive theft.
But I do think they’re hiding something, and I still think assumption of some kind of social-media-sparked revenge/shamestorm/harassment suggests it’s probably related to cop’s behavior. I’m a bettin’ those officers read the Ferguson report, and recognized themselves.Report
This is a racial issue in that the kind of predatory corruption we’re all presuming is overwhelmingly associated with whites. Whether that’s for cultural reasons or because whites are genetically more likely to be corrupt remains an open question.Report
Where did my comments go?Report
They’re in the other thread.Report
Okay i didnt realize there were two threads on the same topic.Report