Crime & Safety

Would you support tax increase if money went to public safety?

SWAT standoff early Wednesday results in arrest at South Cobb Drive bank.

A day after a news report indicating that a Cobb County grand jury has suggested that county police officers should receive better pay and benefits, Cobb’s finest were just outside Smyrna early Wednesday morning helping thwart a bank robbery.

According to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, the bank alarm at the Well’s Fargo located at 2055 South Cobb Drive near Pat Mell Road was set off shortly after 2 a.m. Someone was reportedly spotted inside the building and both Cobb and surrounded the bank before a SWAT team was brought in.

At approximately 5:40 a.m., a black male suspect was apprehended trying to escape through a window according to authorities. Taken into custody without incident was the 14-year-old juvenil,e who was processed into the Marietta Regional Youth Detention Center and charged with burglary.

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On Tuesday, The Marietta Daily Journal reported that Cobb’s November-December Superior Court grand jury said that county police officers needed increased pay and benefits to help reduce the amount of turnover in the department.

According to the newspaper, grand jurors said because of the solid training that officers receive in Cobb, local and federal agencies make strong pitches to hire county officers away. The grand jury was told by Cobb Police Chief John Houser that the department’s turnover rate was twice that in 2011 then the previous year.

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Of course the issue here is that additional funding would have to be approved by the Cobb Board of Commissioners, whose chairman has indicated in the past that increased police compensation would be difficult to see through.

“We just have too many officers, and that’s too big of a capital investment to do that,” Chairman Tim Lee told the MDJ.

Here in Smyrna, although they’ve received a monetary bonus at the end of each year, police officers, like all city employees, haven’t received a wage increase in three years. What do you think of this?

In Smyrna or Cobb, would you support a tax increase if the money went to public safety? Let us know in the comment box below.


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