The LPD Strategic Plan that Fell Flat

[XLFD]

When we first took a look at the Ludington Police Department's (LPD's) invitation to join them on April Fool's Day to have a listen to their three-year strategic plan, we found what looked to be the Durham (New Hampshire) PD's strategic plan almost entirely intact except for the replacement of city names, and other cosmetic changes.  While it is unknown whether that changed Chief Christopher Jones' presentation given last night, he definitely did something at the beginning of this meeting that he failed to do in the plan.  He acknowledged that the Ludington plan was modeled after Durham's with their permission.

About three dozen people showed up for the 6 PM gathering at the council chambers in city hall, several familiar faces around the city including several city officials.  The chief and LPD Captain Mike Haveman sat at the front desk looking to present a power point presentation to the folks, it looked like this just before the meeting.

One couldn't help but notice the full beards the chief and captain were sporting on their faces, it made one wonder how much more entertaining this might be if they took up a couple of guitars, cowboy hats, and some cheap sunglasses to do a rendition of "La Grange" or at least a lip-sync.  

Ask an older person if you don't get the reference or consult the very last alphabetical entry of your Wikipedia.  Seeing Haveman be clean-shaven as an officer of the LPD for decades and then seeing him going full-Amish elder since his promotion to captain made one visualize what he may look like in the near future, while once again tapping into the wayback machine for the late 1970s:

These fanciful ruminations were shattered once Chief Jones called the presentation to order and took a few minutes to explain how the LPD did everything according to Hoyle in getting the rights to use the DPD's strategic plan as they saw fit, this part of the program had one wondering whether he had read the latest ideas on what to do when you're caught (shown here):

The majority in attendance who didn't read the local news before going to the meeting probably wondered why he was heaping such praise on Durham, but we know why.  In explaining the interrelated exercises seen on p. 2 of the plan Chief Jones was a bit disappointed that his citizen survey had only 132 respondents with a city of nearly 8000 people, probably thinking that the poor reviews were over-represented rather than the community consensus.  

Jones would cover the LPD's Mission and Value Statements, which were uniquely Ludington's own, and then go over the objectives in some detail.  On Easter, the Ludington Torch had a couple of credible reports from upstanding citizens regarding outrageous behavior by the LPD, so when the chief was talking about extensive training, de-escalation, and serious training in de-escalation for all LPD officers, this reporter had a hard time not doing a spit-take.

The chief's presentation continued for another 15 minutes explaining how interested the city is in the voices of the community, how they wanted to better serve the citizens, and other caring sentiments in going over the objectives and a few key points beyond those.  The chief then opened the floor for questions from those assembled.  Had there not been a crowd of people the questions from the Ludington Torch would probably have went much like this:

But the crowd was definitely more police-friendly than the survey's respondents were.  One praised the LPD and other police agencies for their response times.  One asked about how their staffing was going (15 FT officers).  One asked about the preparations for alcohol being sold at the beach (and was told that alcohol is already legal on the beach, so they don't expect issues).  One asked about problems with immigrants (none so far), another asked about how bad the city's drug problem was (it wasn't good). 

Citizen Janice Masters asked about how to register complaints against officers, was told that there are complaint forms, and when she said nothing had been done with the complaint she field was asked to come in and meet with the chief.  She indicated a willingness to do so, as she has been the still-innocent target of one certain officer for a while, Mr. Center-of-the-universe:

Chief Jones recognized me towards the end of the Q&A, and I had a couple of questions.  Throughout the meeting, Jones had stressed how important the input from the community was, touching on that for several answers and in his objectives.  I asked a simple question about why the LPD does not allow for two-way communications for their social media (Facebook) page.  One would think that if the objective was to continually get feedback from the community, this would be one of the best ways to do so.  

The problem is that once you look over the LPD FB page you see many posts over the last year with one or more comments made, and those comments are all superlatives.  The LPD limit who can comment on their pages, but what they do is selectively choose who can respond, probably choose which posts they like, and that is viewpoint discrimination on what has become a public forum.  

The excuse the chief uses is that he doesn't have the manpower to administer the LPD page, even though he's fully staffed and has saved quite a lot of time by borrowing strategic plans.  If I can run an alternative news website and a Facebook page by my lonesome and do a host of other things, they can surely maintain a website that offers commenting by the people they say they care about so much for.  Time isn't the issue, it's cowardice.  

I then briefly noted that one of their objectives was for transparency, and that the prior LPD administration was actually respectable in that matter, granting FOIA requests for incidents and accidents without any struggle or charge.  Then wondered why the current administration is charging many hundreds of dollars for body cam footage of simple arrests where all the action happens in a matter of a few minutes.  Here's the relevant portion of what I got for a recent arrest report with bodycam footage:

I'm supposed to believe that it will take Captain Kuh-Haveman over two days non-stop to edit out an arrest that was likely performed in under ten minutes.  I was diplomatic enough in trying to find out why they have changed FOIA policy with the LPD when the city council has not changed its fee policy since 2019.  I did touch on the fact that the worksheet they used for one of my requests was not authorized.  Chief Jones could only answer that he did nothing wrong and lied about them not changing policy, when I and he have a record of all my past responses, and so can anyone else if they have enough cash to be extorted by this charlatan.  

The LPD's attack against transparency just shows how this likely-plagiarized strategic plan is not worth the paper it is printed on and that they don't really want to hear from you unless you're licking their boots, and they assuredly don't want to let you know what they're doing, just like they want to hide from the general public with their new ghost-lettered black vehicles.  These are all acts of cowardice, opacity, and deafness, so when a couple more tamer questions followed mine and the chief touched back on his listening to the people for his answer, it was clear he was operating on a different plane of existence.