I walked into the Clarkston police station at 3 East Church last week and stopped dead in my tracks.
Call it surprise, call it disbelief, picture a giant question mark over my head; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
There, behind the counter, was a Clarkston police officer. Asleep.
‘Hello??
I said it as casually as I could.
Nothing.
Not only was the officer asleep, the officer was sound asleep.
For a brief second I considered speaking again, louder, or maybe reaching over and tapping the officer on the shoulder, but opted against it.
I was out of there.
I thought long and hard before deciding to write about it, but a napping cop in a department that usually only runs one officer on a shift, sometimes two, seemed noteworthy, if not newsworthy.
To make matters worse, the department is transitioning through changes sparked by the recent firing of the police chief. Everybody’s watching.
Ernest Combs was fired March 5 in a move the city council said was a long time coming’they wanted the chief out mingling in the community.
The chief, they said, just wanted to hang around the station.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one.
A uniformed police officer asleep in the station’in plain view of anyone walking through the front door’does not look good.
In fact, it looks downright bad, especially as the department is planning to reclaim its midnight shift from the Oakland County Sheriff’s Department in an effort to save money and reassure residents.
How reassured would residents feel, I wonder, if they had to wake the officer for help?
How much money would they city save, really, by paying a sleeping officer?
These are, of course, generalizations. I’m not suggesting this is something that happens all the time. It could be the first time ever.
But the city budgeted about $239,000 to the police department last year, and spends a great deal of time and energy defending its reasons for maintaining that department.
Independence Township and the OCSD claim Clarkston could shave about $100,000 from the budget’minus theoretical overtime and extra-service charges, says the city’by subcontracting with the township for full time service by OCSD.
But Clarkston, for the most part, is not interested. Long-time residents remember a time when the city received what they call a ‘drive-thru? service by the sheriff’s department, and it wasn’t enough.
Clarkston has a major state highway running through its center, and a number of parades and large community functions that require extra policing.
But many in the city want to go a step further; they want police officers out on the street talking to people, officers who know which car belongs at which house, and officers who smile and wave.
They want Maybury, RFD.
But I wonder if they already have it’I think I remember an episode of two of the Andy Griffith show where Andy or Barney was kicked back having a nap in the station.
? LauraLColvin@aol.com