“The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglae,” said the poet Robert Burns. Burns was talking to a mouse whose nest had been overturned by the bard’s plow.

Hardin’s best laid plans have ganged aglae with some frequency lately. After building a $27 million prison no one wanted to rent, the city is plotting the resurrection of its police department.

The Hardin PD vanished 33 years ago when the city closed its cop shop and contracted for law enforcement with the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Department.
Both city and county are unhappy with the partnership. City officials say Hardin pays too much and receives too little. County officials say the city demands too much and pays too little.

City and county have quarreled for years. Attempts to separate city and county law enforcement failed in county-wide votes in 1996 and 2006.

The City Study Commission is currently calling for “deconsolidation.” Bob Seder, chairman of that commission, complained at a recent meeting:

“All you have to do is just drive around town. There are RVs and livestock trailers being stored on city streets. Illegal U-turns, illegal parking, cars parked the wrong side of the street or in the opposite direction. None of the city ordinances are being enforced.”

These sound like problems to be handled by a civilian on a bicycle. Such an enforcement officer would need no police training, would not be exposed to gunfire or barroom brawls and would likely write enough tickets to pay his/her own wages.

Curfew is also an issue. “There are kids running around at 11 o’clock at night,” Seder said.

Maybe so. Back when the city had a police department there were kids running around at 2 in the morning. Curfew had little influence on nocturnal movements of minors then.

Racism may be one of the rocks in Hardin’s shoe. A walking poll of shopkeepers, bartenders and waitresses along Center Street found the chief complaint to be “drunken Indians.”

Al Peterson, Hardin school superintendent, said people in Hardin were eager to have their own department. “The sheriff’s the biggest drunk in the county,” he said. “I mean, who you gonna call?”

Peterson later apologized to Sheriff Pete Long Hair in a short letter to the Gazette.

Although Mayor Ron Adams has said repeatedly he wants a vote of the people on the “deconsolidation” issue, the City Council and County Commission seem bound to dodge a referendum. A judge recently ruled that the two governments could act without a public vote if they held a series of meetings in Big Horn County’s several communities.

Don’t believe it. One disgruntled citizen and one lawyer will twist the tail of that notion. Cost alone will rouse the masses in Hardin.

If the question goes to a vote, it will lose. Look for current deputies to lead the charge.

County officials say it takes $100,000 to hire, train, equip and pay a single lawman. City officials have quoted $350,000 as the cost of a fully stocked cop shop. Others contend that the Hardin PD will cost $1 million for openers.

Law enforcement on the cheap - with two or three cops and a chief of police to cover all shifts - will bury mayor and council in complaints of poor coverage.

The county will lose the $350,000 it receives from the city and three or four deputies. Hardin will lose the protection of the nine deputies no longer patrolling the city.

I can see it ganging already.