Local governments love to hire consultants. At a staggering cost every year. Why? So when they want something they think the voters may not like they can blame it on the consultants. We're just doing what the experts recommend. Right!
Don't get me wrong, there are legitimate and needed consultants. We're talking about the ones who make a living recommending what the folks that hire them want. I worked with enough to know the difference.
The slick ones come to you and sniff around until they know what you're after. The blatant ones, don't waste time and, up front, ask what you want them to prove. It's a disgusting waste of tax dollars perpetrated by spineless politicians.
Once the City hired consultants to recommend changes in how we did things, intent on making the agency more efficient. Might have been a good idea if they hadn't hired dopes. For their 10K fee--a lot in the sixties--their final recommendation was to put men on the beach riding ATV's; a recommendation the City dropped in the trash can immediately.
And, some of their surveyors were suspect. Let Mike Grimm tell of his interview with one. The expert was using the Chief's office.
"When I got sent in there to be interviewed, he talked to me for a bit, enough that I could see he was in way over his head. Then he wanted to playact a hypothetical situation.
"He told me to go out in the hall and casually stroll through the door as if I were window shopping on the street. He would be a bad guy running out of the bank, with a bank money bag, right in front of me. He wanted me to react as if it were the real deal.
"So we did it, he bumped into me, I shoved him away, pretended to pull my piece and told him to freeze. He wasn't happy. I was supposed to be off duty, he said, and not carrying.
"He said we had to do it over and he was going to act like a real bad guy so I'd better act like I would if it were for real. I mumbled something about not wanting to hurt him and he took exception to it, saying I'd better worry first, about not getting hurt myself.
"So we did it again. I walked in through the door and he ran into me, hard. Kinda surprised me and I grabbed him, as much to keep my balance as anything. He started yelling and tried to twist away from me so I jacked his ass up and slammed him into a corner, immobilizing him. Then I stopped and he wanted to know what I would do next. I told him that in a real situation I'd put the cuffs on him. He told me to just try it and immediately started yelling again and thrashing around trying to get loose so I bent him over a two-drawer file cabinet and put the cuffs on him-- with just a little extra squeeze to try and get the point across.
"That was about the time you and someone else came busting into the room to see what was going on. Apparently he hadn't done this with any of the guys he had interviewed before me and it was a big surprise.
"As I recall, he didn't try it with anyone he interviewed after me either. He was one weird dude."
And an inept, stupid one. Mike was well over six-feet and 200 lbs. I remember when we rushed into the room, the expert was red-faced and gasping, his clothes disheveled, and his hair as mussed as a punk rocker's. Don't know what he was expecting but it sure wasn't Mike Grimm.
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