Law of Unintended Consequences

For many years, the Chattanooga Police Department has assigned police vehicles to patrol offices to drive do and from their homes, leaving the cars in their driveways. I’m sure many other cities do the same thing. It’s easy, traditional, and some say the presence of a police car parked in a neighborhood deters crime. And it allows officers to get quickly from their homes to a crime scene in a police vehicle, without having to go to a central location for a car.

OK. In a recent City Commission meeting, as an expense-cutting measure, police were told they were to leave the vehicles at the police station, or pay a mileage fee for having a take-home car. I think the commission was surprised when a large majority of the officers decided to leave the police cars at the station rather than pay the fee.

Now come the unintended consequences. There’s no secure place for all those extra police cars to be parked when they’re not being used. Or for the officers’ personal cars to be parked while they’re at work. And no place near the main police station to put one. Oops!

I think this was supposed to take effect a week ago, and it was just before that when somebody figured out this lack of parking spaces. Now they’ve been in a rush to complete two fenced, camera-monitored parking lots, which are going to cost the city at least $20,000. When asked why this hadn’t been done ahead of time, the answer was that they had had no idea that so many officers would decide to leave the cars. The officers, of course, are pissed about the whole thing.

We can’t wait to see what happens next.
===============================
This was the only time we saw an Icelandic horse. This breed is well known for being a very sturdy animal with a thick coat. This man was out getting some exercise for his horse and himself, while putting his horse through his paces.