Re: Story, Sept. 23, “Not in it for $$$: Some area police make as little as $24K”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE ORIGINAL STORY

Interesting how Ms. DiNatale chose to write this article about eight days prior to the new budget year beginning. The Crestview Police Department’s starting salary is very competitive with other departments near the same size, and Chief Tony Taylor strives to continue to keep the salaries as compatible as possible.

If Ms. DiNatale would have just waited another two weeks to publish the article, the numbers would have been somewhat different. Further, Ms. DiNatale referred to Neighborhoodscout.com to obtain her data, which is not a true and accurate report. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the way they collect their data. What some may not understand is if an agency has no robberies that occur in 2016 and then only one in 2017, the robbery rate has now jumped 100 percent, even with only one robbery.

Crestview is a very safe city to live in, no matter what some may think. The most accurate way to see what the crime rate is in a community is by use of the (UCR) Uniform Crime Report which is filed with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement by each agency. In the first half of 2017 there was in fact a 9 percent decrease in crime in Crestview, compared to the first half of 2016. Overall, there were 61 fewer indexed crimes than the same period in 2016. Sounds like a pretty safe community to me.

The men and women of the Crestview Police Department are some of the finest I have ever met and they are all dedicated to their families and their jobs. If someone is going to print these kinds of numbers that were in the article, they need to be at least accurate as to not put people in fear who live in this community.

Ralph D. Garrett, Crestview