Louis Shalako: Core Values, Chapter Sixteen. Louis Shalako.

Bruce Lipshitz.

Chapter Sixteen

Police budget shoots up nineteen percent…

by Bruce Lipshitz

Lennox ratepayers face a nineteen percent hike in policing costs after a $37.3 million budget was approved Friday by the Lennox Police Services Board. But that’s not all, a deficit of almost $2,450,000 from last year will also be tossed into council’s lap. Board member David Flushing renewed his call for further attempts by police to review the budget and cut spending.

“We should take another look so we can say it’s the best we can do.” Flushing was questioning a list of increases of over 10 percent. “This is insanity.”

Board member Ronald Polk said he took part in review sessions that resulted in well over $23,000 in cuts, from projected spending.

“It was carefully reviewed.”

According to Mayor and chairperson of the Board Hope Pedlar, “The spending increase and deficit will be offset by lower spending in other departments and shouldn’t be seen as a benchmark.”

Cuts made included $4,000 from officers’ $22.8 million budget, which includes salaries, car allowances, training and equipment. Chief Will O’Shaughnessey said 8.7 percent of the increase relates to salary increases contained in negotiated contracts. Salaries for Lennox’s 110 officers, including projected overtime, will be $25.7 million in 2008, a 10 percent increase from 2007. Salaries for the full-and-part-time civilian employees, including projected overtime, will increase about eight percent to $8.88 million. Overtime has been a contributing factor to the current year’s projected deficit. It’s $300,000 more than the 2008 estimate of about $650,000. Major crime investigations were one source of overtime.

“In the case of an unexplained death, officers were required to protect the scene for about a week.”

Deputy Chief Ralph Dingleberry noted that seven or eight front-line officers have also been sidelined by illness or injury, boosting the overtime figure.

An $180,000 study of staffing requirements survived the budget axe. New cruisers will be purchased in the coming year.

Board member Sean MacNulty asked, “Do we need a study to tell us we need to hire more officers when we already know that?”

Mayor Hope Pedlar said she would be stunned if the study didn’t recommend hiring more staff. The study will also examine the possibility of finding more efficient ways to use staff. The cost represents about the total yearly cost of a trainee officer.

Mayor Hope Pedlar.

“The study should proceed because the findings would have more credibility than an in-house report when presented to city council.” This according to Dingleberry.

Other departments and services’ in-house reports were dismissed as self-serving, he added. He also stated that hiring additional officers doesn’t necessarily bring a matching decrease in the number of overtime hours due to varying time and scheduling demands. The budget goes to city staff by the end of the month, and will be incorporated into the city’s draft budget which will be presented to council on Dec 4 and 5.

That was quite the fire last night…

“That was quite the fire last night.” Big Frank eyed his son as he sat at the kitchen table with the overhead chandelier turned up full blast.

There were no longer any decorative globes for the wagon-wheel chandelier, and Big Frank was using ordinary, frosted white bulbs in it. He’d recently had his eyes done by Doctor Burkhard. While he no longer needed glasses for long distance, or night driving, the better the light, the less fatiguing it was to read.

“Yeah, that was quite the thing, the third one this year. That Noble guy got some good pictures.”

Apparently he was working late when she blew, noted Brubaker.

“I’ll read it later. So anyway, I went out to Whale-Mart this morning. I bought forty pounds of weight, a bar and a ten-pound dumb-bell.”

“Uh, huh.” It’s not like his dad actually cared—

“I’ll work out with them over the winter. Nibbles and I can work out in the garage, although I doubt if poor old Mush-head will get involved.”

Mush-head lived with three steel pins in his hip. Last time he visited, Mush had met him at the door on crutches. Mush was real crazy on a motorcycle, although semi-retired now.

“Uh, huh.” Pops, intent on the paper, which quite frankly Brubaker had asked him to cancel numerous times.

But his old man had always said. “I don’t mind it.”

“How much did that cost?” So Frank was paying attention.

“About seventy-three bucks. What the hell. I’m worth it.”

“If Russia attacked Turkey from the rear, would Greece help?” His old man was absorbed.

“What the heck are you reading?”

Current events, while interesting, often seemed very far away and somehow irrelevant.

His problems were much closer to home. Brubaker had his own challenges. Let world leaders fuck the place up in their own inimitable way.

***

Dear Fred,

I have never heard of one innocent person, who got caught up in the courts and walked away unscathed, unhurt, or undamaged in some way. A lot of people just can’t defend themselves.

You guys find that hard to understand.

Maybe you never make a mistake.

For myself, three days in jail awaiting a bail hearing, was a very traumatic experience.

I will never look at them fucking cocksuckers the same way again. The truth is, they can do any damned thing they want to you. If you never have to acknowledge the truth of that assertion, consider yourselves blessed.

I never caused problems for my neighbor on Sigourney St. I think I was a problem, I think I symbolized something to the poor guy.

I symbolized everything that was wrong with the world—his world.

The gentleman had a wife and three kids. He was self-employed. He started off in high school, and when other kids had no money, he had cash. When he graduated, he kept on. When his friends weren’t working, he had money. He married his high school sweetheart. Popped out the kids. Bought a house. Some years later, when all his buddies were cops, firemen, or working at the plants for $90,000 a year, he was still cutting lawns. He had no benefits. He could never get pogy in the winter. I mean, it’s tough.

And then, that fucking Brubaker, moved in next door.

I am nothing if not visible.

He read my stories in the paper. He saw some potential. Maybe even some self-worth. And he was jealous. The poor guy never had a chance, did he? His cousin died young. His old man fought, a long and courageous battle against cancer…and he had to watch…that was in the obits, wasn’t it.

At some point they must have speculated about me.

It’s pretty easy to appear a deadbeat, in the eyes of a man like Mr. LaSally. But then he works very hard to make a living, doesn’t he? And he loves his wife and kids. No doubt about that, least of all in my mind. I had time to observe the gentleman, you understand.

Someday you will do me the honor of telling me why I did not, could not, retaliate in any meaningful way against that gentlemen, why I could not defend myself?

— Chuck

Barnes: how do I get this guy off my back...

“This guy’s developing a real Jesus complex now.” Barnes, groaning, crumpled up the rather depressing missive and gave it a toss in the general direction of the garbage bin, always heaped up over the rim.

“How the hell do I shake this guy off my back? What is his problem?” He fumed, which would surely be impotent.

***

Brubaker at that exact moment was on the phone to his Aunt Isabel.

“How do you keep it from getting too personal? Because I would very much like to change my attitude and that is the toughest thing.”

“It’s not always easy. But it’s worth doing.” They had always had a pretty good relationship, even when her and ma were feuding.

She had never tried to drag him into the middle of it.

“I’m afraid of going into the ODSP, losing it, and getting into a screaming match with someone. I hate it when the cops come around, you know?” Theoretically, Bru had needed glasses for a long time.

He didn’t want to have to ask for them.

“I’ve lost my temper once in a while. I’ve been a thorn in the side of certain agencies. They have a crappy job. Fight for others, if you can’t fight for yourself.”

He listened intently, this being better than talking. It was so hard to express how he felt sometimes. He just knew when he felt bad.

“Get some perspective.” His Aunt Isabel told him. “You have to blow off some steam once in a while. You can’t go in with a seventeen-item list, stick to two or three. Concentrate on what you need to happen.”

Don’t try to pick apart the system.

“If you want to incriminate the system, all you have to do is sit around for ten minutes. Something shitty will happen. Why not focus on the goal?”

“You can’t get political change at the front desk of the ODSP any more than you can get your cheque from someone like Mrs. Achmed-O’Malley.” She pointed all of this out, reasonably enough.

Lobby as a group.

“Governments count the numbers.”

“I’m just taking baby steps right now.”

She explained several ways to get information.

“I do a lot of fishing.”

When enlightenment comes, it hits with a bang.

“We are all incompetent. Make a list of questions before you go in, and don’t get sidetracked. We now have a new dual diagnosis nurse. What that means, a person has a developmental disability in the cognitive sense, and a medical problem, or a physical disability, injury, or mental illness. Seriously, how do you get a developmentally disabled person with a broken leg into the dentist’s office, or a quadriplegic suffering from depression to talk to a shrink? How do you get a paranoid person to go in for an MRI?”

She paused for breath.

“A quadriplegic suffering from depression. What do you say to the guy?” So wondered Bru. “Tomorrow’s going to be a better day?”

“Of course everyone needs more money to live.” She added with an air of finality.

She was shocked to learn Ontario Works had been slashed 35% in 1995 and when inflation was taken into account, they were living on less than half of what they were then.

“So the other day, that Deepak Chopra guy was on TV. He wrote like forty freakin’ books. All of them shitty. According to him, organized religion is about power, money, control and influence. He said, I think this was on CBC, righteousness is jealousy with a halo.” Brubaker was wondering if that precept might apply to him. “He said, I don’t exist, and where there is no anger, there is no fear. When you die, you return to the earth, and the spirit becomes like tiny electrons dissipating in the matter, or words to that effect.’”

“So it doesn’t hurt, or anything?” His aunt asked mischievously.

“My theory is that it’s all just a drop in the cosmic bucket. So I can see where he’s coming from, you know? I call it my, Cosmic Bucket Theory.”

“Was he the one that said, the crime is its own punishment?”

“No, that was on the Puke TV channel.”

“How many television sets do you have?” She chuckled.

Bru was simply channel-surfing.

“So how are Uncle Dave and Billy?” Bru remembered to ask.

He couldn’t be all business all the time. He was surprised to hear Uncle Dave was now retired. Holy.

“Oh, yes. I guess it’s been a while since we talked last. He shut the plant down a couple of times and they offered him early retirement. Still, he’s been thinking about it for some time, and they made him a pretty decent offer.”

“Oh, really.” That’s fucking smart, Uncle Dave, but he didn’t say it.

“He was the operator in charge and he didn’t want to be responsible for a spill or a fire.” Half the town might have gone up—

“Holy fuck.” His aunt was a nice lady after all.

“It’s just that they’re always cutting back on manpower and labour. They’re not spending a dime on maintenance, and that’s not good with all those valves and pressure fittings, eh?”

She continued with the tale, hair-raising in its stark simplicity. More especially so, as the Canadian energy industry had earned ten billion in profits the previous year, as Bru recalled.

That didn’t even include petrochemicals.

Aunt Isobel.

“He got sick of the overtime. Everyone’s going about like a zombie, half the time…”

Apparently it was cheaper to pay overtime than to hire new people. If they rocked the boat, they got no more overtime. It was a non-union plant.

Chuck was impressed, not for the first time, by his Aunt Isabel. Her network beat anything he had ever heard of, except for the real pros. Maybe all those years of fighting for his cousin Billy, who had Down’s, had made her something of a pro in her own right. They talked for about forty-five minutes, and in the end, Bru just couldn’t remember everything she said.

“I love you, Aunt Isabel. Say hello to the guys for me.”

They rang off.

He suddenly realized something else, too.

Governments are not that good at telling us how much they love us…right?

***

Yes, the interview with Deepak Chopra had been very interesting.

Bru didn’t get a whole hell of a lot of intellectual stimulation around here.

Mr. Chopra had said, “Hindus can be killing and burning Moslems, and yet, they are vegetarians.”