Chapter 263

I rode back to the Island Airport with Joey to pick up my Suburban; then made my way back to the office. On my desk was a stack of paperwork I needed to work my way through today.

Jenny had been at her desk most of the morning; she came in and plopped in the extra chair beside my desk. She was holding a cup of hot chocolate and a partially eaten donut. "I am going to work out in the gym in a little while, can you join me?" she asked.

I handed her one of the FedEx packets, "You read this and I will the other, and then I will join you," I replied.

The one I opened was from Captain Peterson from the Rochester police department. It had been a month since we were there and I was beginning to think my initial thoughts on the problems there were correct, that the city would do nothing.

I was wrong - they were just slow. I read the two page cover letter. The first part addressed the response times that Kelly had been having and all the policies and procedures that had been put in place or changed to correct the problem.

There was a list of disciplinary actions that had been applied to certain individuals, including one termination and several days off without pay. Apparently we were not the only ones having problems; just the first one to keep real-time documentation.

The next part of the letter addressed our request to have some of our officers to become the Rochester Campus police. There was a page and a half of pros and cons that had been raised by senior police department officials.

There had been two meetings between the police department, the mayor, and the city council. There were mixed feelings within the department as to our ability to properly train and maintain personal to the level of integrity a police department needed.

I thought to myself, "What the hell do they think a private security company does, especially ours?" We have exceptional training along with complete background checks. Now that we were involved with the government agencies, they were even assisting with the background investigation to make sure that there were no leaks from within.

Adding to that we had we had two - Jenny and Jason - who had extensive law enforcement experience in-house. Also, we now had Curtis Warren's legal team as a legal advisor for my security division and Judge Slaughter had unofficially agreed to advise us if we needed it. Jason had made the remark that Judge Slaughter wanted to work part time for us when he retired to keep his feet wet - so to speak.

At the time that statement was made I thought that the Judge and his wife were looking for a way to spend more time with Jason and Lisa and see the country on our flights. The Judge had already been on several trips as Jason's guest. Everyone was happy, so what the heck - it added one more to the brain trust.

As I continued to read, I entered the meat of the letter. Captain Peters, along with the Police Chief and the Mayor, had made the final determination conditional on the evaluation of our training program by participation of 15 from their department.

To throw a wrench into the wheel, they wanted this to happen the week of November 15th. That was the same week that 15 of Eric's people were to be here training. The first fifteen who were starting the two week training on Monday were to go to Michigan and the last fifteen starting the 15th to go to Minnesota. Having 30 at one time was going to overload our training system terribly.

Jenny and I finished about the same time. I filled her in on the details of the packet that I had just read, and then she did the same for me.

Her packet was from the Mayor and the legal consul for the city of Rochester. It listed the laws they had modified to allow us to become a police force in the city of Rochester.

Then there was a list of demands that we needed to meet.

(1) The city fathers wanted JBG to have a 50 million liability insurance policy that included wrongful death coverage, along with annual copy of renewal.

(2) A copy of the annual recertification for each of the officers in weapons training, CPR, and their law enforcement certificate.

(3) Copies of the background check on those employees that would be on the police force.