FOP President Threatens Council Members Who Vote Against Raising Income Taxes

The president of the local Fraternal Order of Police for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, William Owensby, used public comment time on last night's proposal before the Indianapolis City-County Council to raise local income taxes by about 10%, or $30 million a year, supposedly for the purpose of hiring more police officers, to chastise council members for not doing their jobs. Although Owensby works full-time on police union business, his paycheck is paid with our city tax dollars. When Councilor William Oliver objected to his testimony threatening to work to defeat council members who didn't support the tax increase, he was advised there was nothing inappropriate with Owensby's comments. This is the same guy whose son, Corey Owensby, brought disgrace to the Indianapolis Police Department after he was criminally charged with false reporting and official misconduct. Where was Owensby and his union the past seven years when none of the 65% increase in the local income tax rate got used to hire additional police officers as promised? He traded more police officers for pay raises. That's the truth. He knows that more pay raises are the only thing certain that will come as a result of this tax increase, even as ordinary taxpayers have seen their wages drop about 25% on average since the Great Recession of 2008. His union, by the way, supports the downtown mafia's proposal to let a private developer build a more than half billion dollar new criminal justice center that will consume what little remains of this additional tax increase after pay raises are handed out.