Are CA Police Fear-Mongering?

​Even 388 miles away, Steven Greenhut can't help but piss off Orange County law enforcement. 
Greenhut–who used to work full time for the OC Register but now supplies guest editorials from his Sacramento perch–recently blasted cops in California for claiming that continual increases in police department budgets is the way to reduce crime.  

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Police, according to Greenhut, “are trying to scare the public into lobbying city councils and county boards to spare them” from budget cuts. 

“Yet it's best not to get too worried about all this fear-mongering,” wrote Greenhut in “Police budget cuts won't spike crime” on July 2. “I'm not arguing that policing issues have no effect on crime rates, but it's far from clear that hiring more police (or passing more tough-on-crime laws) reduces crime . . . It's OK to ignore the self-interested emotional arguments made by cops and politicians and debate each new anti-crime proposal and budget plan on its merits.”
I can imagine that Wayne Quint, head of the OC sheriff's deputy union, is once again cursing Greenhut, a major critic of taxpayer-funded deputy pensions that allow the officers to retire at the age of 50 with 90 percent of their top pay for the rest of their lives.
–R. Scott Moxley / OC Weekly

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