Council members Question Serpas’ Management

Two Metro Council members questioned several management decisions of Police Chief Ronal Serpas, at the department’s budget hearing last night.

Councilman Michael Craddock says people filling administrative positions in the department shouldn’t be getting take home vehicles in a tight budget year. And Councilman Jim Gotto says the police department should have its crime statistics audited by an outside agency.

“When you’re using that system and you’ve had problems other places, it just seems to me that just for the perception of the public–and even the officers–that it’s a good idea to have someone outside the department look at what we’re doing and make sure we’re doing it correctly.”

Several other cities like New York and Ft. Lauderdale have found issues with officers lying about incidents or under-reporting them to make the overall numbers go down. Chief Serpas accused Gotto of insinuating the police department isn’t doing its job correctly.

“Basically what that says is that someone thinks police officers are lying. And I don’t think they are.”

Serpas also defended his decisions on the take-home cars saying he needs his top administrators on-call 24 hours a day and the car helps them do that.