PO-PO, Forest Park makes mayor warlord [FP]

Should a village mayor have the power to deputize six of his posse to hassle political opponents or intimidate critics?

Forest Park has passed an ordinance that gives the mayor this power. See Forest Park Review (Seth Stern) and the editorial (scroll down to "checks and balances") for background. It’s tempting to debate this in the context of the current mayor, Tony Calderone. People who like and trust Calderone will probably be more comfortable with the ordinance; people who mostly disagree with Calderone will probably be suspicious.

I’d like to ask Proviso Probe readers to subtract Calderone from the equation. In the future when somebody else is mayor, does this ordinance make sense?

Here’s a scenario that’s unlikely, but not impossible. Some individual builds a criminal organization. He decides to look for a community to use as his base. He decides Forest Park is attractive for three reasons:

1. It’s small enough that he can elect himself mayor.
2. The fourth district of the state’s attorney office has been very deferential to the community political powers when handling criminal prosecutions.
3. Existing Forest Park ordinance makes it easy to make the gang's enforcers cops.

Does this scenario seem unlikely? Maybe. But how likely is it that the mayor of Forest Park is going to need to be able to raise an auxiliary police force before he can meet with the rest of the commissioners?

These part time police officers have other problems. If the mayor decides who to hire and fire, the chief of police gets cut “out of the loop”. The loyalties of the part time officers are going to be completely different than those of the Forest Park police force. Over time this will undermine good order and discipline.

The incentive structure is completely different too. Traditional police officers get paid for their time, but are also working toward a pension. A cop knows that if he breaks the law he puts his pension at risk. These part time officers won’t be working toward a pension. So if the mayor were to ask them to do something illegal, they would be more likely to do it.

Forest Park is vesting huge amounts of power with the office of the mayor. No compelling case has been made why this is necessary.

I’m skeptical of the part time officer program, but if Forest Park is going to do it, the program should be run by the chief of police—not the mayor—with all deployments pre-approved by the village council.

BTW, what’s the insurance company say about this program? Are there any checks against abuses the Forest Park’s insurer would like to see implemented?