GOB,

In my county, there are so many police officers driving around all the time that I would be very surprised if the response time is more than 3 or 4 minutes. As an example, a couple of weeks ago I was out riding my bike with a friend of mine. We saw a little kid, approximately 3 years old, run out into traffic and luckily the cars in the 2 oncoming lanes of traffic stopped in the middle of the rode, as did both of the cars in our lanes. One of the women in the oncoming cars got out of her car and grabbed the kid by the hand. My buddy went over there to help the lady as I stayed on the other side of the road. As I was watching, I saw a county officer driving by and I flagged him down. Just after he made the u-turn, another officer came from the oncoming traffic side and he had his lights on, so I am assuming that he was responding to a call made by somebody in the car. So, the response time in this county is pretty good. However, we pay a ton in property taxes and we pay 3.1% of AGI to the county, which is almost as much as our state income tax. If anybody happens to live in a city in this county that is incorporated, then they pay even more taxes.

I prepare the tax return for a friend of mine that is an LEO in a neighboring county and he made $76,000 last year. I know the LEO's in our county make $60,000 easily. I DO NOT MIND THAT THEY MAKE THIS MUCH.

I am completely in agreement with you that LEO's should be paid a very good salary, even if we have to pay more in taxes. We should have some of the best, most honorable LEO's possible. Too many people feel like the police are not there to protect them when they are actually in trouble, but that LEO's are there only for cleanup. I feel this way myself.

I could only WISH we could get that kind of money to pay our officers. Maybe then we could keep good ones all the time. In the year and a few months I have been in the department I have seen two officers positions that we filled 19 times! Each time the officer would work for a month or so then decide to move to Houston/Dallas/etc so they could get the "BIG" bucks (sometimes as much as double the pay particularly if they are fluent in spanish).

GoodOlBoy