Town Talk Church Point
Town Talk Church Point
A Visit With Chief Dale Thibodeaux: Tackling Crime, Funding and Community Involvement in Church Point
We're welcoming back a familiar face to our show, Chief Dale, who, alongside Mayor Spanky, is here to shed light on law enforcement challenges in Church Point. You wouldn't want to miss their intriguing discussion on the unexpected role that even weather plays in the crime rates and how community vigilance is our best defense. Find out why those dreaded traffic tickets are more than just a nuisance, but a vital tool for safety and financing our police department.
In our deep dive into the challenges of small towns, we tackle the issue of recruiting and retaining police officers, the implications of new laws on reserves, and their impact on crime rates and resources. Discover how shopping local and potential recruitment of new officers could help our town combat crime. As we navigate through the complex world of taxes and budget allocation, it's evident that the financial decisions of a small town police department are far from easy. Tune in to this enlightening and comprehensive conversation about crime, law enforcement, and our responsibility as a community.
Time for another Town Talk podcast. We have a special guest with us today. Obviously Mayor Spanky's here, and then we have Chief Dale with us. Chief wants to talk just a little bit and update on the church point police department. Chief, we had you on when we talked about Marty Graw earlier this year. We hadn't had you on again. I know Mayor Spanky wanted to get you on just to see what's happening in Town a church point in the church point police department. So thanks for coming on and spending some time with us. You have an update.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. Yeah, well, yes, police department and towns been doing very well compared to other towns around us. I don't want to jinx us, but we've been doing pretty good. I do want to make the public aware, though we're back to leaving our cars unlocked again or not securing our vehicles. We have our valuables in our vehicles, such as purses, wallets and stuff like that. And and Lately there for the past couple of months, this 15 to 20 maybe more than that of criminals getting out of jail and Now the Burglar is is starting to pick up again, and not just at night, they're in the day also.
Speaker 1:It's funny to see you know, not just here, you see it nationwide some of the crime that's happening. You think years back it was always nighttime crime. Now it seems it doesn't matter, it could be morning time, afternoon time. If a criminal wants to commit a crime, they are going to do it.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, it's no certain times anymore. And the thing is, I mean we're, we're in a police car, we're not on foot patrol anymore.
Speaker 1:So you coming down the road in a police car with headlights on and there's a criminal in somebody's yard, all they got to do is duck down behind a bush, and then it makes it twice as hard to see it when it comes to summer time I know right now we're at the end of summer, schools coming back in Do you see crime up tick a bit during the summertime, or does crime kind of slow down a little bit during the summertime?
Speaker 2:No, actually, on the summertime, crime does rise, all crimes do rise, and then what we're seeing a lot lately is, I guess, with the extensive heat that we have, people are getting a little more irritable, and what might have just turned into a a little, a couple of words exchanged now, will turn into a total argument, or a fistic encounter or something along those lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is funny what heat can do. I mean hundred, one hundred two degrees, feel like a hundred and fifteen Can take something that should be very, very small and turn it into something that's big, exactly, exactly, mayor, anything you want to add about you know what's happening in town, what's going on with the police department, or I mean in my opinion everything's rolling Very well.
Speaker 3:I mean go look at TV 10, go look at KTC. I mean there's a lot of stuff going in a lot of places and Over here we I mean we have problems, but not compared to when other places have a lot more problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one thing I know you wanted to address and it's a topic that I'm sure you don't like talking about and that's traffic tickets. You know that's one of the things that that happens with police departments, not only here anywhere the writing and the issuing of Tickets. Anything you want to address on that?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'd like to address a lot.
Speaker 1:Let me see how much time we have. Chief, okay, put a pot of coffee on yeah, but my take a while.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the police and people don't like getting tickets. I mean, nobody likes getting a ticket. But when a ticket is written you have committed a criminal violation. It's not that police officers fault that you get in a ticket. Personally, I don't like to get, I don't like to give tickets, my officers don't like to give tickets. It is the necessary evil, for a couple of different reasons. First off is citations for speeding and reckless driving Running stop signs, red light stuff like that. By enforcing those, we reduce the number of crashes in town, which should reduce the serious injuries. If you have someone that speeds all the time gets into an accident. Nine out of ten that little bit of speed can cause serious injuries. Our Traffic crashes due to us aggressively doing traffic enforcement, our traffic crashes have been reduced by about three quarters of what they were. So I mean that's significant.
Speaker 2:Yes crashes here and the ones we do have Parking lot or it might be a fender bender they're not serious injury crashes. That is one of the reasons that we get out there and we do traffic enforcement. The second reason is to be able to provide the safety and security of the town. A lot of people don't understand this and don't know this, but the police department is totally funded on a one cent sales tax. That's it. That's the only funds it gets is a one cent sales tax. Out of that one cent sales tax it normally will generate maybe 700,000 a year for revenue. All right, but if you were to just operate, if I was to tomorrow to start operating on just that sales tax with no other Income coming in, I could tell you right now You'd be. You'd be down to like having about two or three units. You'd be down to one person during the day, one person at night and then watch the crime happen, that's yeah that's.
Speaker 2:That would be a big deal. Yes, part of our budget, part of my budget, is the auditors. The American probably explained a little more than me on that side but the auditors must estimate what revenue we would bring in from traffic crimes and stuff like that. They must estimate that into the budget and that budget. When I'm giving that budget we got to follow it. You know, right now with the department, you have protection we have and being able to get the equipment we need, the tracking systems, the body cameras. None of that's cheap and none of that's free. And with that, the department, you know it's costing about $975,000 a year just give a take to be able to run the department the way it is now, to keep the crime down the way it is now. So that extra money's got to come in from somewhere and that's what's estimated.
Speaker 1:That y'all bring in from traffic tickets From traffic tickets yeah. Mayor, you want to explain a little bit on that and yeah, I mean, the budget is exactly what he says.
Speaker 3:The thing of it is is a one-cent sales tax which brings in, like you said somewhere, as we've had it as low as 700, we've had as high as 800, you know it ebbs and flows, but what happens is when you go to budget with the legislator, auditors and all this stuff, they take all your expenses, what it costs, what everything is, and they put that into a budget and whatever is left over on that 700 or 800,000, that has to come from somewhere and that has to come from tickets. Okay, and that's exactly what he said. If you want no tickets, well, you have to go back to one person at night, one person during the day, which that's not a good situation, and you know we talk about I mean, we've talked about it on other podcasts on how the town makes money, how this, how that, how that. It has to come from somewhere. He has to come from tickets, or that's to come from additional tax.
Speaker 3:Okay, nobody wants to hear additional tax and we've explained before well, okay, shopping town, get that 700, 800,000 to a million and then we don't have to do a tax. But will that happen? Probably not. So it's one of those three choices, it's not any other choice there is Shop local, get more taxes to us, raise a tax. That's the point that's the least favorable, correct.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure to y'all too. Yeah, y'all don't want to do that. No, no.
Speaker 3:Other towns around here, 11s, 12s, and that is a possibility if something doesn't change. And that's why, like I said, I go to the restaurants. Please shop your local vendor, shop your this, because myself and Dale benefit from that. Amazing, you know, youngsville is running off of one sales tax on both, you know, and that's good, but you know how much money's coming in Right, yeah, I think of the businesses, the volume, just everything they have compared to what we have.
Speaker 3:Millions and millions. So you can't say apples to apples. Well, why does this town have one sales tax for police and they making it just fine because they're sitting on a wall, point, they're sitting on these big corporate companies. You know your chillies, your Texas roadhouses those big, big.
Speaker 1:We don't have that.
Speaker 3:And that's what I preach all the time is like this can all go away If everybody shops church porn. More businesses come to church porn and we move it up. We have seen an uptick, but it's not been anything crazy. Would you agree with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And you know, when we hire that officer, whatever officer we hire, that officer is getting paid by your tax dollars. That officer right there works for you. You can have two choices you can have an officer that gets out there. I mean, I pretty much know that everybody who has a job, when they go to work, you are required to do certain things at that job or your employer will get rid of you. Same thing here. It doesn't pay for me to hire an officer who's gonna sit back and just ride around in a unit and ride in circles all day and don't do traffic, don't do nothing. Well then, that's short, changing your tax dollars. I expect 100% from each one of my officers and I expect them to give me that 100% and that's what they do. Now.
Speaker 2:A lot of officers get criticized on the traffic stop, they get towed off, they get cursed out.
Speaker 2:You know, this is the thing, okay, and I'm not gonna tell you what the limit is, because I don't want people to hold me into it and say, oh well, the chief said this Right, there is certain limits that when that officer's doing traffic or he's doing his job, that's certain limits, that anything over that limit. It's a mandatory that you do get a citation and that's directly from me. So this is how I look at it, and the reason I do that is because I want it fairly for everyone. I don't care if you got a million dollars and get a ticket, or you got $1 and get a ticket. I want it fair. That's why I make it a certain threshold. It's mandatory. You get a ticket. So don't jump on the officer's case. Curse the officer, scream at him, yell at him, come to my office, sit down, have a meeting with me. If you're not satisfied, yell at me, because I'm the one that made him do it. But we're doing it because we have to, not just for revenue, to keep the town from just going haywire.
Speaker 1:Right, I come back. Ever since you said you know crashes are down what? Three quarters? Oh yes, that's a staggering number. I mean that's a pretty big deal and that goes to show that y'all are doing your jobs Exactly and doing your part in keeping Church Point safe.
Speaker 3:Now, with that being said too, I'd like to add a little bit of something to that. A tax is mandatory. If you buy something that sells tax, it's mandatory that you pay it. A ticket is a choice. You can choose not to speed or you could choose not to stop at a stop sign and I'm not sitting here a whole other than now I do the same thing.
Speaker 3:I've been pulled over in Mississippi. I've been pulled over in a crotch spray. That you know what. I take my ticket because I was running 75 and 65 and I knew that. But it was my choice and I took my ticket. We paid it and we move about our business and, with that being said, we get told stories all the time. You know, like, let me say this, if I had a dollar every time somebody told me this excuse, I wouldn't have to work no more. Oh, I was speeding because I was on the way to the hospital. Man, I'm going to tell you, if as many people, if everybody, was saying the truth about that, that new hospital would have been built years ago, because everybody says they on the way to the hospital and I'm not saying nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3:I'm just saying we speed, everybody does. Everybody doesn't stop at stop sign. Not all the time. It may be in your mind like whatever, sometimes you get caught, I mean, and that's what it is. You chose to do that it's not a mandatory thing.
Speaker 1:I feel there's a lot more nuts and bolts, if you will, to what you guys do behind the scenes rules to follow, restrictions more than I think the normal citizen understands or knows. There's a lot more going on behind the scenes, is that right? Oh, yes.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, oh yes. Now there's several things within the last year that they've made mandatory.
Speaker 1:you know, I know there's a lot of things coming down for the police department Right. Just being a part of some of the town council meetings, I hear some of that stuff and how a lot of that's changing for you all.
Speaker 2:Right, well, one of the things is reserves. I mean now you put on a reserve who is giving and donating his time and within a year you must send him to a 15 week police academy. That I don't know if anybody who wants to give you the time is going to sacrifice 15 weeks out of their family life to go to a police academy and what are they going to do about a job?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is. This is ridiculous. All because some departments or chiefs wasn't doing their job and properly training and controlling their offices. Now they've made it to where you must get on the state retirement. It's mandated. You don't have a choice anymore, which I'm going to leave my personal feelings alone.
Speaker 3:I'll talk about it.
Speaker 2:I'll talk about it and now we've got to do a psych test for each one before we hire them. They went from 125 to 500. People just don't realize. In fact, I have been in this job for 30 years and never knew what the chief position entailed. You know, sometimes when they say, watch what you asked for because you might get it or might just get it. Yeah, it's like you said.
Speaker 2:it's all the nuts and bolts and everything else I mean an office is expected to come in. He falls sick right away. This is not like we can't just shut down the cash register and say okay well, we're going to close today Right.
Speaker 1:No, somebody's got to go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it has to go on.
Speaker 1:Mayor, I guess I'll give you an opportunity if you want to talk about this new retirement or retirement that and the officer gets to choose whether he stays in there or not.
Speaker 3:And first thing I did I mean Chief Dale asked for a rundown on what they get for this service the officer, that's 15%. The town does 33% of the check. So you do the math on that, that's 48%. Okay, and we have a system where if you put in 5%, we match 6.5% from the town and I guarantee you that 11.5% more money goes to the officer than the 48%, because they sent us a 50 page book. If I would show you the losses that they've done, I personally would never put my money in the government and I'm in government.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And let me say this there's millions being lost in this fund because the government's managing it and you all are forced to force the pay Forced.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the police officer could choose to be in it or not, but we cannot choose to not deny it. Okay, with that being said, that's I mean. Look, they might beat me up for it when you have to get new customers in to pay the old ones. If you watch American greed that's called the Ponzi scheme and it happens a lot in the government set you know. But I personally would never invest in a government run Uh program because, like I said, I know what those parentheses are. Those parentheses are losses.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And when I say it's in what was it? A hundred and something million dollars. Yep, that was lost. It's state of Louisiana, that's your retirement, and it lost over a hundred million dollars. Didn't need to get somebody. Let me have that job. I'll make a money Me.
Speaker 1:Now, so this in a lot of these new regulations that are coming down, it's across the board, correct? Yeah, so like um, this could be in a major city like, let's just say, baton Rouge. They have the same restrictions as church point. It's almost like the same across the board, no matter what your budget is, how much money you got, they're putting this down all over for everybody in the state of Louisiana.
Speaker 2:That's right. I'm going to tell you what they're trying to do and eventually it's probably going to come to that. They're trying to run all your little smaller the police departments. They're trying to run them out and you know you're just going to fall under a, a sheriff's office, which they have their issues too. You know they have their problems. They got to go through, but that's it. They said everybody under a Baton Rouge. We can't compete with Baton Rouge, we can't compete with Lafayette, you know, and all of this. Well, my main priority since I took over has been training. My officers can tell you we train and we train and we train. Does it cost a town of fortune? No, because I normally send somebody to get them certified as an instructor and then come back and train on our own. We just did. I just went and re certified for Taser instructor. So now I just updated the whole department, where that costs $500 an officer. Well, I went through the fraternal order of police and now I came back and I trained. You can train.
Speaker 2:I certified all my officers and it didn't cost a ton of time, nothing, in fact. We're doing training tomorrow at Church Point Elementary. I got with the principal and she was kind enough to loan us the elementary tomorrow and we're going to do training all day, like we do before each and every school year, to make sure we familiar with everything to do that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And for me. You know, maybe some people don't know and I'm really not that clear on it, but I know it's a big process what's the process of maybe hiring and having on a new officer? I know that's a big undertaking for you People, getting certified and all that stuff. You want to go through that process of bringing in an officer, right.
Speaker 2:When you bring in a new officer that has no experience at all. He's just coming into police work in a lot of small towns. That's what you're going to get.
Speaker 2:You bring them in. First of all you got to put them right in with another officer for at least a month or so, or six months, whatever it takes them to learn Some learn faster than others Then you must equip them. You know, ready to go. I have to. I am mandated by law that I have to send them to that 15 week academy before the end of the year. They have to be there before the end of the year. And then once they complete that academy, I'm going to tell you what happens. Most of them will come out of that academy and go find a job making more money. Right Now they're state certified. You see, just like police officers. If you hire one from another department that's already has the academy nine out of 10, he's just stopping off here till something else comes along Right.
Speaker 2:You know, around us we're the lowest paid all the way around and you can't blame that officer Right? He's got to provide for his family.
Speaker 3:Yep, well, and another thing too is there's a. It all goes back to what we started with that reserve officer. That was the biggest blow to small towns. And I don't care who knows it, because Lafayette reserves, banerjee had reserves, estherwood has reserves, church Point had reserves. But what happens is when Lafayette has all those reserves that don't come in, guess what? They got to go get more officers. So what they do? They go poach the small towns, they go poach other ones. It's a supply demand situation. There was enough because of all the volunteerism that they had. Now they took that source out, so now you got to pay those people. They have one town on the other side of Crowley that I know of. I'm not going to name it, you know, but they have one chief. All his officers are with reserves, all of them. So now they don't have any police officers.
Speaker 1:Because of this new reserve. Yeah, and the rules, exactly, that's the right way to put it.
Speaker 3:So this small town. You think they can go poach some from Lafayette or poach them from us. I mean like you know what. I'm saying Like they created something which they were probably slapping themselves in the bag. Who, raw hello, have a hug and you know, they don't know what they just did, and it's a serious problem. I mean, and that's what's happening, axedale, how many have jumped to us and then jumped away from us two months later?
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I started in 19,. When I took over in 19, we had a 25 person reserve. I made sure and built it up, and you know, 25 person reserve, it didn't matter what kind of function we had in town, I could provide free manpower at no problem. Ok, because I had enough reserves to do it slowly. As this one got out, as that one got out, as this one, you know, or this one jumped to a different reserve or whatever. Now we're down to maybe 10 reserves. Out of that 10 reserve I have four that work offshore and that's you know going a lot yeah.
Speaker 2:So now, when we have events or stuff like that, guess what? I don't have that.
Speaker 1:I try, but I don't have that free reserve unit to give you Call up somebody to come and lend a hand Right.
Speaker 2:And my full timers. I mean as much as they would like to come out and donate their time.
Speaker 3:I mean they're not leaving their families to come for free?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, I mean we're struggling.
Speaker 3:And, with that being said, there's another way of looking at it too, and Dale can tell you this We've had quite a bit of officers since we started in 19 that became reserves. I said you know what I like this, I like to do this, and we hire them all. Well, guess what? That's another source like minor leagues and baseball. Right, you know, you start them out at the volunteer port in turning and they like it, and then we hire somebody.
Speaker 1:So now you don't have that cramp of people to move up and promote them to an officer. That's what they want to do Exactly.
Speaker 3:So that's what I'm saying A whole bunch of layers. That may have been a kubayam moment over there.
Speaker 1:For somebody else? Yeah, but they didn't think about the smaller areas. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean it goes to the bigger ones too. Like I said, if they're poaching people from us, the bigger departments, then they're spending more money. Right, you know, it's all across the board.
Speaker 2:But the thing with this is okay, it shouldn't be the state to say, oh well, you got to do this. Okay, every chief of police, every sheriff, you're responsible for your people. Okay, if you don't get them trained, that's not their fault, that's your fault. Yeah, if you don't stay on top of things, that's your fault. You know it's ridiculous. And what makes it frustrating is you get a new person in. You invest all that time, Right, you send them to the academy. Or even before they go to the academy, they just start learning how to do the paperwork right, do their job right, this and that, and some department comes along and poaches them. Yeah, you know, for $2 more an hour or something like that. Yeah, you know it's ridiculous. Right now, I can tell you, if we didn't offer take home units, I'm going to tell you right now, we wouldn't have, we probably have three policemen, that's it.
Speaker 3:And, with that being said, the towns that are poaching back to what I said they have Taco Bells they have.
Speaker 1:Burger King's they have Whoppers.
Speaker 3:You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:They have the sales tax money rolling through and funding, so how can we compete with that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a ball.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's always rolling, and it's not always rolling in our favor. I can tell you that.
Speaker 1:I mean definitely. I think a lot more than just the normal resident of church point understands. You know there's so much more work in behind the scenes and Spanky and I talk about that a lot on the podcast. You know there's so much more going on behind the scenes and work behind the scenes than I think people realize. You know, and I like the fact that Spanky wants to do this podcast because it kind of brings people in the community together, spanky, to talk about a few things. You can talk about a few things and I think it gives residents a little better understanding about how things work. Yeah, and I mean that's a.
Speaker 3:it's a very compromising position that all of us are in as elected officials, because we're getting these demands from the state. They say you have to do it, but they don't pay you for it. You have to pay for it and then when you do what the state tells you, then the people get mad because you're doing what the state said. But then when they go talk to the state they say, oh, we didn't do it.
Speaker 1:Right, they got to push you back down on the all right but don't.
Speaker 3:You made us do this and that's why the people aren't happy. But when the people go to you, you know it's a constant back to the chief finger back to the chief finger back to the mayor, right and both sides. One doesn't understand because they're not being mandated to do it and we're in there like okay, how are we supposed to do this? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I tell people all the time come out, come, sit with me for a day, come around with me, come, come, come, get in the unit. Yeah, I promise you, when you're done you're gonna be like, no, you run for the heels. I've had some people fuss chief. I go by the police station and never there.
Speaker 3:Are you?
Speaker 2:never there. Isn't that a good thing? Of course I'm not there because I don't sit behind. If I'm, if I'm in the station, right, I'm catching up on paperwork, because I don't sit behind a desk. I'm out there on the streets also because I feel, hey, your tax dollars paid my salary also, so you want me sitting in an office just watching TV. You?
Speaker 1:know I'm gonna get out there and do something. So that'll wrap it up for this episode. Chief Dale, mayor Spanky, another edition of Town Talk podcast. Again, if you have any questions, towntalk questions at gmailcom or you can simply just message our town of church point Facebook page and we'll get to some answers there for you on the next episode. So thanks for tuning in, thank you, thank you.