YOUR GOVERNMENT WORKING FOR YOU !

Have you ever won­dered how your tax dol­lars are spent in on your behalf in America? Are you some­one who do not depend on Government for hand-outs?

Here’s one way !

Last Friday evening my wife called me late in the evening I was close to going home from work , which I always do at 8.pm when pos­si­ble. She said ” Babe I just want you to know Bud dis­ap­peared and the police has him we won’t get him back until tomorrow”.

I was stunned, Bud is a black Lab we acquired, he is still young, not yet a year old, even though his size belies his age. This lit­tle pup­py had wormed his way into our hearts from day one. On the day we went to pick up a pup­py from the lit­ter, he latched onto me, tug­ging at my sneak­er laces, he did­n’t stop until the entire lit­ter joined in, they had me encir­cled while they all tugged at my laces and the legs of my sweat pants. My wife had her heart set on anoth­er pup­py with brown mark­ings but Bud’s tenac­i­ty forced her to change her mind, Bud decid­ed he was going to be a part of our fam­i­ly. My wife was duti­ful with every require­ment to own­ing a dog in the Town of Poughkeepsie, stuff I was­n’t even con­ver­sant with, she did and she made sure she dot­ted all the “I’ ”s and crossed all the “T“ ‘s .

On my arrival home she told me Bud went out­side with our sons and dis­ap­peared, she called but he did not respond, she drove around the neigh­bor­hood but there was no sign of him. So she decid­ed to call the Town of Poughkeepsie Police. They con­firmed that some­one had called that there was a strange dog in their back-yard, and an offi­cer had respond­ed and retrieved our dog, but we would not be able to pick him up until the next day which was Saturday April 27^th.

This is what res­i­dents pay for !

We were dis­traught we fig­ured he must be ter­ri­fied , he had nev­er been away from us in his short life, we were par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried for him espe­cial­ly in light of how he was removed by the cops. We set­tled into Friday night with res­ig­na­tion that it was out of our hands. They said we could pick up our dog on Saturday, pay what­ev­er fees we were required to pay and so we pre­pared for that.

We did not sleep much Friday night, per­son­al­ly I did not know that I could care so much about a dog. Lets face it we Jamaicans are not nec­es­sar­i­ly all love-dovey with dogs.

We were told by the Police that the ani­mal war­den would be in at sev­en on Saturday, so duti­ful­ly Saturday morn­ing my wife called to say we would be head­ing down to the precinct to col­lect our dog, or so we thought.

Well not so fast Sargent Wagner told her that was­n’t going to hap­pen, the war­den would not be com­ing in until Monday April 29^th, so Bud would have to stay in their cus­tody for the week­end. You thought that was hor­rif­ic for that young dog? Well it gets worse we would have to pay for the days that the dog was held by them, despite it is their war­den who decid­ed she would­n’t come in on the weekend.

That pret­ty much decid­ed the qual­i­ty of my week-end, Monday morn­ing we gath­ered up every­thing, leash and all of Bud’s paper­work and went to the Town of Poughkeepsie Police to col­lect our dog, of course Sargent Wagner was on duty again, yup ! a Sargent mans the front desk, I will have to research how much they receive from us the bilked tax­pay­ers. Wagner told us we would­n’t be get­ting our dog because the war­den had called in sick, so it was now Tuesday before we get our dog. Normally I am volatile and my wife is calm, I real­ized that my wife a nice sweet woman was on the verge, so I secret­ly begged her not to give them the sat­is­fac­tion. I decid­ed we were not going to be treat­ed the way Police in America treats black peo­ple, and nei­ther would we do what they expect us to do.

So Wagner brought out anoth­er Sargent to tell us pret­ty much what he had just told us, so now it’s two Sargents just to release our dog to us. This Jicha fel­low was pret­ty much the schmuck that Wagner was, just a lit­tle more rep­re­hen­si­ble. We had heard enough, I called a Lawyer friend of mine, but we decid­ed to make one more stop before head­ing to his office. We wait­ed at the offices of the Town Supervisor for a lit­tle until he arrived for work. Supervisor Tancredi invit­ed us into his office , he was very cor­dial, respon­sive and under­stand­ing, we wait­ed as he tried to call the Police Chief, no answer. He tried get­ting one of the Captains , none answered their phones. So he was left with Wagner at the front desk. Supervisor Tancredi seemed vis­i­bly embar­rassed that at min­utes to 9 :am there was no way of reach­ing the top tier of law enforce­ment in the Town, I whis­pered to my wife “what if there is a seri­ous emer­gency which requires their pres­ence and direc­tion”? Mister Tancredi took my wife’s num­ber and promised to get back to us, I went to work. Wagner called and told my wife that Bud could be picked up at an ani­mal Hospital, Todd Tancredi had done his job. Wagner told my wife we would be required to pay over $270.00 in fees in order to retrieve our dog. My wife went to the Town Clerk’s office to pay the fees, the clerk had no paper-work from nei­ther Wagner or Jicha, she cal­cu­lat­ed the fees which amount­ed to $254.oo.

Wagner and Jicha could­n’t even com­pute the fees correctly.

♦ Board $72.00.

♦ Shots $107.oo (dog has all it’s shots none was needed).

♦ Seizure $75.00 (despite the salary we pay the cops we have to pay again for them to actu­al­ly do what we already paid for).

♦ Total $254.00.

Our prop­er­ty and school tax­es for the Town of Poughkeepsie is a cou­ple hun­dred dol­lars less than $10’000 annu­al­ly, the only ser­vice the Police Department in our Town offers to res­i­dents oth­er than hid­ing in bush­es to write tick­ets is bad attitude.

So we took our dog home , thank God he seem ok , prob­lem solved right? Well not so fast, of course Tuesday morn­ing the war­den showed up for work and of course she called my wife , it is auto­mat­ic that despite being extort­ed and fleeced of $254 , the Town was not fin­ished, we would be issued with two tick­ets, I mean why not more Money right? She explained the tick­ets were manda­to­ry when a dog was impounded.

On her arrival at our home I asked her how much more we would be fleeced with these two tick­ets? She explained ‚at least anoth­er cou­ple of hun­dred dol­lars, and of course court costs. Welcome to Government gone amok. If you ever believed Government worked for you, if you ever believed any­thing was about your inter­est when politi­cians tell you they want to hire more cops and oth­er gov­ern­ment work­ers, get your head examined.

I had long held that Government did not work for peo­ple, peo­ple worked for gov­ern­ment, an unnat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non to begin with. As bad as these pub­lic ser­vice work­ers are the police in these lit­tle towns are the worse. The only bright spot in all of this was Town Supervisor Todd Tancredi who called Tuesday and spoke to my wife, he want­ed to know whether Bud was adjust­ing well to being back home where he belong. It’s not often that I have any­thing pos­i­tive to say about Government or those who work in Government, many could not func­tion in the pri­vate sec­tor or on their own. Todd Tancredi is not one of them. Our thanks to mis­ter Tancredi for serv­ing the inter­est of the peo­ple who put him in office.

Town of Poughkeepsie cops all dri­ve around in brand new cruis­ers, with full trap­pings, they are paid very well, crime in the town are rel­e­gat­ed to a few shop-lift­ing in the malls along the route 9 cor­ri­dor. You will get tick­et­ed for dri­ving 20 miles per hour on some roads, I kid you not, the speed lim­it is 15 miles per hour in places. No there are no schools in these zones, it is designed to tax you more.

As if that was­n’t overkill, the Sheriff’s depart­ment and State Police all over­lap in the tick­et writ­ing bonan­za. Just don’t expect much if you have a real prob­lem which requires their help.