Beef up the 24/7 GPS program

YOUR EDITORIAL of Sunday, Sept. 26, on the GPS monitoring situation in Bernalillo County was long overdue. It appears that monitoring was being conducted only during regular business hours, Monday through Friday. Many people involved in the program had to have been aware of this lapse in monitoring, but no one thought it significant enough to bring it to the public’s attention?

Now, it is proposed that three agencies share 24/7 monitoring. We all know that, when more than one organization is responsible for something, no one is ultimately responsible. There needs to be one organization responsible for monitoring.

It is reasonable to expect the cost of monitoring to go up significantly as it goes from 45 hours a week to 168 hours, with special pay likely for nights, weekends and holidays. Where is this money coming from? It certainly isn’t just sitting around not being used now.

Where will the new employees be found? People will need to be trained and background checked. The job itself is probably very tedious and boring, with no advancement; I expect a large turnover. Who will train and oversee the supervisors?

Finally, there was no mention of the effectiveness of the monitoring program. How will the 24/7 program be evaluated, who will draw up criteria, who will approve it, and who will be responsible for seeing it is carried out? The public needs to know that the program is effective in keeping watch on individuals, both for transparency and the public’s safety.

It seems like there are still a lot of holes in the 24/7 solution that need to be addressed. We can’t be the first city in the nation with this problem. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Find a successful program of roughly the same size and model ours after theirs. SCOTT PERL Albuquerque