Detroit budget proposal would cut $52 million from police, fire

[Novine]

"Volunteers in Troy are not imbeciles because they are volunteers. Just the opposite. I'm sure a lot of those volunteers are highly qualified engineers and other relevant trades in their regular jobs and offer a lot of transferable skills and training that a professional DFD firefighter wouldn't have when they volunteer."

Who said they were imbeciles? I never criticized the skills of the volunteers in Troy. But the fact of the matter is that most Troy firefighters have never dealt with the kinds of fires that Detroit firefighters deal with every day of the week and I'm sure the Troy volunteers would be the first to admit it. There's a world of difference of having the knowledge of how to fight those fires and actually fighting those fires. It's like saying that the local police in Clawson or Clarkston could easily step alongside the officers in the Detroit Police Department. Good luck finding many officers from the suburbs who would be willing to do that.

[davewindsor]

"There's a world of difference of having the knowledge of how to fight those fires and actually fighting those fires. It's like saying that the local police in Clawson or Clarkston could easily step alongside the officers in the Detroit Police Department. Good luck finding many officers from the suburbs who would be willing to do that.

Again, you're making assumptions about the background of those volunteers. I get the impression you think they just sit around all day drinking coffee and eating donuts and for the most part that's all they expect to do, living the easy life, and that's why they do it.

I have two cousins in Virginia. One is an engineer and the other is a CPA. Neither of them could afford tuition so they had to sign off a couple years of their life to the marines so the military would pay for their tuition. I'm sure there are a lot of engineers and other professionals out there who didn't come from money and had to go through the military to get their tuition paid. Are you telling me that if someone's an engineer in Troy with a military background and volunteered once a week at the Troy fire department that they couldn't handle a shift in Detroit? It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those volunteers had some applied military training in addition to their skills they would bring over from their regular jobs.

I'm sure there would be a lot of people willing to volunteer at the DFD like the the Troy FD to serve their community if there was something in place to ensure they weren't treated like scabs by the professionals in the union.