Vox Populi Vox Dei Ch. 01

"Tell you what." I said. "I'll take that up when I talk to the Detectives about the changes to their ranks." I then said loudly, to everyone: "The reasons for many of these changes is scalability. While I've opposed the expansion of Precincts, I am aware that there could come a day when the County grows enough to warrant more Precincts. So I'm looking to the future."

"Sir," said Theo Washington, "there are rumors that if the new Charter you're writing fails, there will be an election to separate the Town and County again. Is that true?"

"Is that even legal?" Joanne asked. "Once we merged, doesn't it take an Act of the State Legislature to overturn it?"

"One thing at a time." I said. "In our case, we don't need the Legislature to act. The Town did not give up its City Limits when the Merger happened; the Council is still divided along those Town Limit lines. If we had erased the lines, like Athens, Georgia did when it merged with Clarke County, GA, some years ago, then it would take an Act of the Legislature."

"As to the rumors of a re-separation," I said, "I've heard them, and I'm not at the point where I think we need to worry about that."

"What about Lieutenants, sir?" asked Lieutenant Rudistan. "And the Uniformed ranks?"

"Right now," I said, "we have Precinct Lieutenants. If we grow, then we'll have multiple Lieutenants in each Precinct, as team leaders, and that one Precinct Lieutenant position doesn't go by that name any longer. We have written provisions for multiple Lieutenants, but we're not likely to see that put into practice just yet."

"As to the Uniform ranks," I said, "we streamlined them and got rid of the superfluous stuff, and we slightly modified the insignia. The Master Sergeant and Technical Sergeant ranks were done away with, as they were never used and weren't going to be used. In the overall, you won't see hardly any changes affecting the Uniformed Officers..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After everyone but the Detectives were dismissed, I addressed their structure.

"What we are doing," I said, "is streamlining the ranks and taking out a lot of redundancy. Some of you are still grandfathered in to the old Senior Detective rank, which is a gold bar with two or three black squares. Since we're giving up gold insignia, and since the Supervisor rank will no longer exist at all and no one left as a Supervisor, you Senior Detectives will wear the silver bar with three black squares." The Senior Detectives in the room seemed to be happy about that.

"There will be only four Detective ranks left." I said. "Detective-1, Detective-2, Detective-3, which is Detective Sergeant, and Senior Detective. Detective Sergeant is equivalent to Senior Sergeant in the Uniform ranks."

"Eventually," I said, "if the Town & County grows enough, we might have multiple Lieutenants leading multiple teams. And if we really grow to the point we need multiple Captains, then we'd create a 'Commander of Detectives' position equivalent to what Captain Croyle is going to be. But that... is a ways away."

"Is that like if we get assigned to Precincts?" Joanne asked, mentioning the unmentionable.

"It might be." I said. "But don't start any rumors. This County is still not big enough for that yet. Heck, the MCD room is barely half full, and we just lost Geiger. And you, Warner, are going to be taking maternity leave later this year."

"Whether she wants to or not." said Captain Perlman.

"That is exactly right." I said, reinforcing that point.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

12:30pm, Thursday, August 8th. I treated my Angels and Our Sheriff to lunch at the Cop Bar. As usual at Angels Meetings and lunches of this nature, ranks were off... but today they were the subject of conversation.

"Well, ladies," I said after we ordered, "what did you think?"

"For the most part, I loved it." said Cindy.

"For the most part, you wrote it." the Sheriff growled, generating laughs.

"Did she really create a rank structure with her over you?" Teresa asked me, mostly to start 'trouble'.

"Oh, yeahhhhh." I said. "She submits this draft where the Deputy Chief is two ranks above the Police Commander, with the Chief having three stars and her having two-stars and me the bird-colonel rank, and me basically being little more than Chief of Detectives. She was torturing me with that draft proposal, saying the Sheriff loved it and had approved of it."

"And I wanted to tell him it was my draft proposal, but she was having too much fun with it." said the Sheriff.

"And Don wasn't fooled one bit." Cindy replied, her ice-blue eyes twinkling as the Sheriff's mustaches twitched merrily. "He looks at it and then just looks at me and says 'Okay, where's the real page?'. Didn't even blink, much less show surprise."

"That's because I'm used to working with sneaky Angels." I said. The Sheriff chuckled at at that.

"Well," said Teresa, "this sneaky Angel was shocked that you have me up for a promotion like that. Real promotion, with real pay increase?"

"Yes." I said. "Since I'm biting the bullet and promoting the Precinct Captains to full Captain... where they really should've been in the first place but I put in that extra rank to stop Reginald B.F. Lewis from creating a bunch of Precincts... then you have to have authority over them in the chain-of-command. We could've put you in the Major slot, but I don't want you or whoever is in that position quibbling with the Installation people, like what was happening in the Fire Department."

"And there's one further reason." said the Sheriff. "If, perish forbid, something happened to Chief Moynahan, Crowbar, and Cindy, I wanted there to be no doubt who would be in charge of the Police Force."

Our food came, so we paused, then I picked it back up as everyone dug in to their delicious meals: "And speaking of that, we debated elevating the Captain of Detectives position, but we knew you'd let it go to your head, Tanya." Cindy and the Sheriff chuckled.

"I knew I should've bribed the Deputy Chief with more doughnuts." Tanya said with mock sadness. Cindy nodded vigorously in agreement.

"Well, as the Sheriff told me during several of our many talks," I said, "organization diagrams should have branches, not straight lines. For example, the Police Chief has two direct subordinates, the Police Commander and the Deputy Chief. I'm the Operations Officer, and Cindy is the XO. My branches are Detectives, Uniformed Officers, and Internal Affairs. Cindy's branches are Personnel & Records, Physical Properties, and Public Relations. And they're branches."

"If we created a new 'Superintendent of Detectives' or Commander of Detectives'," I continued, "you'd still be over Detective Lieutenants. Nothing would change, and we wouldn't need a Captain of Detectives doing the same exact job. We'd have to be the size of the City to have enough Captains to need a higher level supervisor over them."

Tanya nodded. "I understand. I just hate being at the bottom of totem pole, at least at this table." She was trying to sound jokingly jovial about it, but we could sense a reality to it.

"There's a simple solution to that." growled Griswold. "Run for Sheriff. I'll endorse you, then I'll go catch fish after you win." Teresa and Cindy chuckled. My eyes were wide at that, and not humorously.

"But we've already got the best Sheriff in Town." said Tanya, in a brilliant display of asskissing.

"You got that right." I said. Sheriff Griswold waved us off, but he could not hide the twitching of his mustaches that showed how he really felt about our compliments...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

3:00pm, Thursday, August 8th. The Sheriff and I returned from our presentation to the Fire Department leadership at Fire Department Headquarters at their Range and training facility north of Town. Cindy knocked on my door and came in when she saw me return.

"How did it go?" she asked as I had her sit down in a hot chair.

"Pretty good, actually" I said. "The Battalion Chiefs still aren't too happy about it, but the Fire Department's Captain's Union was a lot 'less unhappy', shall we say? And the streamlining to give the Captains more authority within their units was well-received."

"When did they not have that?" Cindy asked.

"In the vast majority of Fire Departments in America," I said, "Captains are usually de facto installation commanders where their units are housed. Here, we had Watch Captains, and Superintendents over them. We're going to have fewer Superintendents, who will be over multiple Fire Stations, and Captains instead of Watch Captains, whose duties Lieutenants will take over."

I continued: "I think the biggest complaint was having to go to silver insignia, though the stars of the top brass will be gold. There was complaining that I was using my position on the Charter Commission to, quote, 'impose the Police Department's will', unquote, on the Fire Department."

"Are you frickin' kidding me?" Cindy all but exploded. "We had to have the Public Safety Legion of Excellence medal created just to compete with the Fire Department's Conspicuous Service Medal and Exemplary Service Medals, for which we have no equivalent------"

"I know, I know." I said, holding up my hand. "And they were clean getting away with a lot of upward creep in their ranks, too... not to mention using red MOV rectangles to denote Fire Crosses. But let not your heart be troubled. As I said before, it is good to be the Charter Commission Chairman."

Cindy burst out laughing, then quickly became solemn again. "One other thing. She's not saying it out loud, but I was getting a vibe that Tanya is inwardly unhappy about the new structure, particularly with regard to Teresa's promotion."

"Well, it hasn't even happened." I said. "The People have to vote it in."

"We are not fooled." Cindy replied. "Sheriff Griswold said that if the plebiscite on the new Charter fails, he'll submit the Public Safety parts to the Council for approval."

"Chances of it passing there are slim at best." I said.

"The Sheriff thinks Reginald B.F. Lewis will help pass it," said Cindy, "because it allows the scalability for more Precincts. And if the Charter passes, the Sheriff will try to get the structural changes passed so we can make the promotions and insignia changes good on November 1st."

"That assumes we'll have that plebiscite before Election Day." I said.

"Which sources tell me the Commission is shooting for." Cindy replied. "But back to Tanya..."

"Yeah." I said. "Well, she said it out loud: she feels like she's at the bottom of the totem pole among you Angels. But the we truly could not justify doing anything else."

"Yeah, it's hard for her." Cindy said. "But not as hard as it was when she wasn't with us here in the TCPD. You getting her back in was the best thing that ever happened to her, so she'll have to get over staying a Police Captain."

"Yeah, she knows she won't be promoted again," I said, "... until she becomes Deputy Chief after you retire." Cindy did not react with as much surprise as I expected. And for some reason that bothered me...

Part 4 - Amber Alert

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Channel Two News!" shouted the redheaded MILF reporterette at 7:00am, Friday, August 9th, from the KXTC studios. "The Public Safety Department restructuring as part of the new Town & County Charter has been learned, and it's a disaster in the making for Commander Donald Troy and the Charter Commission!"

Bettina began: "Sources tell Channel Two News that briefings provided by Charter Chairman Donald Troy, Sheriff Griswold, and other Charter Commission members to the Police and Fire Department leadership revealed changes that were very poorly received. The Battalion Chief position has been effectively demoted to the same level as the Superintendent position, which the Fire Captains' Union says will cause confusion and disarray in the chain of command for our firefighters."

More Bettina: "And while boosting the Precinct Captains to full Captains in the Police Department was well-received, the promotion of the Captain of Operations position to Commander of Operations also leads to confusion amongst the Detectives, who now are not sure who their chain of command runs through, and also seems like an unnecessary layer of overhead."

Bettina: "Council Member Reginald F. Lewis issued a statement welcoming the promotion of Precinct Captains to full Captain, but said that should've been done to start with, and that the new structure does not adequate provide scalability for dispersing Detectives to the Precincts, which he believes must happen. Commander Donald Troy has not responded to KXTC's repeated requests for comment on dispersing Detectives to the Precincts."

Bettina: "In State news, Citizens for Police Accountability spokespersons Jay Swenson and Ken Eidex did not show up for the first hearing in Police Commander Donald Troy's lawsuit against them, and they did not turned over subpoenaed documents. In accordance with a subpoena issued by Superior Court Judge Rodney K. Watts, the SBI's Office of Financial Investigations raided the CFPA offices in the City. However, they found the offices abandoned and completely emptied of any files or paperwork. Warrants for Mr. Swenson and Mr. Eidex have been issued, but they remain at large at this time. Commander Donald Troy has not responded to KXTC's repeated requests for comment."

Yet more Bettina: "And Channel Two News has learned that U.S. Attorney Richard Baldwin has been assigned to the Edward Blassingame racketeering case, and that a possible plea deal is being worked out involving immunity for Edward's son Peter Blassingame, who is being held under heavy guard at our County Jail for the alleged double murder of University students Stephen Walter Henry and Wendy Withers. Peter Blassingame's trial is due to start as early as next week. Commander Donald Troy has not responded to KXTC's multiple requests for comment on these cases..."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I swear to God," said Tanya Perlman as we drank coffee in the Chief's Conference Room, "that I did not leak any of that to the Press, nor did I complain in any way other than jokingly with you guys at lunch yesterday."

"It could've come from anywhere." I said. "Someone at the Cop Bar might've heard us talking. Or someone heard the Detectives talking. And no matter what was said to her, Bettina made sure to distort it to something negative."

"I agree." growled Sheriff Griswold. "The Fire Captain's Union was happy about the proposals, or so they told me both during and after the presentation meeting."

"The way Bettina said that, "I said, "I would suspect one or both of the Battalion Chiefs is her inaccurate source. And then someone overhears us at lunch, and Bettina turns that into non-existent complaints of 'confusion'."

I continued: "What really pisses me off is that talk about dispersing the Detectives to Precincts. That's not going to happen. So either Reginald B.F. Lewis or Bettina is deliberately trying to demoralize my Detectives."

"Changing the subject," Cindy said, feeling my anger, "Don, you're dressed in civilian clothes again?" I was wearing the same suit and tie I'd worn the day before, though I had a fresh shirt on today.

"Court appearance again." I replied. "Amber Harris's hearing is today, and Paulina asked me to attend and watch. They're negotiating a plea deal, but Paulina suspects something weird is going on."

"That's right, you told us yesterday." Tanya said. "So Paulina is the ADA for this?" I knew what she meant.

"It's a hearing and expected plea deal, so yes." I replied. "I suspect Miriam Walters does not want Savannah Fineman handling a case involving such a respected journalist, since the Media might hold it against Savannah if she runs for Solicitor in the next Election."

"It's funny..." said Cindy, getting a vibe, insight, or going into a reverie, "Bettina never mentioned Amber's case coming up. Not a word."

"I'll bet she's waiting for the results of the Court case today." said Teresa Croyle. I nodded vigorously in agreement...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

8:55am. I went into the modern-looking smaller courtroom and nodded to the Deputies, who knew who I was. It was nearly full of people in attendance, most of them reporters.

I strode up to the front row of pews and sat down on the right side, behind the Prosecutor's table. Paulina was wearing her beige-pink jacket and skirt with matching high heel pumps and white blouse, and she was looking tasty to me.

"Hi Don." Paulina said. "Have you met my new Deputy Assistant D.A.? This is Hannah Doss. Hannah, this is Police Commander Don Troy."

Hannah was a woman in her late 20s, shorter than Paulina (most women were), white, with truly brown hair cut in a short hairstyle, a cute but not beautiful face, and a physically fit, wiry body.

"The Iron Crowbar?" Hannah gasped, then said in awe: "It's an honor to meet you, sir."

"I see Paulina has trained you well." I said with a grin as I shook her hand. "Nice to meet you. So, what's going on with this case?"

"Take a look at this." Paulina said, handing me a file folder with a few pages in it. "That's the Defense's plea deal offer."

I scanned the pages as Amber Harris and her attorney, Gwen Munson of Prodder, Ryder & Reems, P.C. came in. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Munson was most very unhappy at my presence, and my collaboration with Paulina.

"Yes, that's strange." I said. "You offered six months at the Midvale Minimum Security Facility, an all-women's facility, and three years parole.. They're asking for two years at Sunnydale Medium Security Prison, with possible time off for good behavior, and absolutely no parole."

"Midvale is practically a resort." said Hannah. "Sunnydale isn't nearly a harsh as State Women's Prison in Madison County, but it is a prison. When I pointed that out to Gwen Munson, she didn't bat an eyelash."

"Yes, that's a... strangeness." I said.

"What would you like us to do?" Paulina asked.

"Hmmm." I said. "Offer to give them all of that except Sunnydale. Offer Midvale or nothing. See how they react."

"Oyez oyez oyez!" called out the Bailiff. "All rise! Court is in session, the Honorable Patrick R. Folsom presiding."

"Please be seated." said Judge Folsom as he sat down behind the Bench. "First case?"

The Court Reporter said "Case Number 27022, Town & County v. Amber Harris."

"I've read the complaint, as well as the plea deal offers." said Folsom. "Prosecution?"

Paulina stood up. "We are prepared to accept all of the Defense's offer, with one exception: our offer was the Midvale Minimum Security facility, and we don't understand why the Defense wants a Medium Security prison. The Defendant is pregnant, which is one reason we've offered six months and the minimum security prison Therefore, we insist upon Midvale, or at least not Sunnydale."

I looked over at the Defense table. Gwen Munson looked unperturbed, though I cold see it was experience that allowed her to keep a straight face. Amber, not so much: she looked very agitated at that, and was shaking her head vigorously.

Paulina glanced at me and I shook my head and whispered "Whatever you do, do not let her go to Sunnydale. We'll figure it out later."

Gwen Munson noticed us talking and said "Your Honor, may I approach the Bench?"

"Both sides, approach." said Judge Folsom. Munson and Paulina hurried up. I write here what Paulina told me later:

"Your Honor," said Gwen Munson, "I have noticed that Commander Troy is in the Courtroom, though he is expected to be called as a witness. Furthermore, he is having conversations with the Prosecution."

"Your Honor," said Paulina, "Commander Troy is an Officer of the Court, as well as a Principal for the County. Additionally, he is in a similar position as any D.A.'s Office Investigator that would keep me informed of any changing developments. I am consulting him on the... 'strangeness' of asking for a medium security prison over a minimum security facility. And since we're negotiating the plea deal and not in the actual trial phase, there's no reason Commander Troy can't be in here."