Bissember's Attack on TPD

Councilman Bissember,

Your attack on the Troy Police Department is unforgivable.  You owe each member within the Troy Police Department and their families, an apology for your blatant insinuation that that they are incapable of performing their sworn duties within the established guidelines and best practices that have already earned them the status of a FULLY ACCREDITED New York State Law Enforcement Agency.

Perhaps you haven’t taken the time to read their Motto:

We recognize that our community and local government have to be equal shareholders in the crime fighting business, but that we are ultimately answerable to the citizens, as they are the guardians of the constitution and all our freedoms. As shareholders we want our agency members dealing with our partners justly and committed to the following STP motto, as we venture into the next century.

Service is a pledge to render aid, contributing to the welfare of others. It is a call beyond duty to extend one’s self, occasionally outside our self-imposed boundaries, to be helpful.

Trust is the development of a sense of assurance, by the community, of our character, ability, strength and truth in our relationships with them. Our commitment to administer a steadfast, but compassionate response to calls for service, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, or sexual preference, without favor is the cornerstone of our trust building endeavor.

Professionalism is the skilled and proficient delivery of police service, conforming to the ethical and technical standards of our vocation.

In your one selfish action, you have managed to create an atmosphere of distrust, anxiety, and frustration in our city.  The Troy Police Department deserves your support by continuously providing adequate tools and resources to staff, train, equip, and SAFELY deploy consummate professionals.  Your undeserved innuendo and fatally flawed tactic of introducing theoretical, unproven, and symptomatically inefficient quasi-legislation accomplishes absolutely nothing other than to add to their burden, and perpetuate their ongoing struggle to deliver essential public safety services in a city that already places a high demand on said services.

As such, I personally call upon the balance of the Troy City Council to level an instrument of admonishment in your direction for your selfish, destructive, and ideologically driven actions that have squarely placed the Troy Police Department further and quite unnecessarily into harm’s way.  You have purposefully shaded these fine men and women as incapable of performing their duties objectively.

I further call upon you to immediately submit your resignation from the Troy City Council.  Your obvious inability to focus on fundamental governing while our city continually struggles to deliver core services has been proven out here by way of your personal self serving choices.  The residents of Troy deserve better.  In closing, you should be ashamed of yourself.  In a time when our Police Department needs full support, you choose to be a coward and hobble them rather than enable them.

Yours truly,

Michael Cusack
30 2nd Avenue
Troy, New York  12180