Does Lilly Really Need that much Help?

[eurache]

I found this in today's, Sunday paper, 10/22nd - it's in my paper, "The Record". The author does have a site northjersey.com/rohan - i checked but it's not posted yet. It had picture of Lilly, Vera, and Kat.

here's what it says:

Rohan's riffs - Does Lilly need that much help?

I hate to sound curmudgeonly, but in the real world, how many veteran homicide detectives would a big-city policy department dedicate to a single cold case?

Don't get me wrong, I still like the CBS drama "Cold Case," but when it began, it seemed to mainly foucus on Detective Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris), a beautiful but haunted homicide detective who was assigned to long-unsolved cases. Now, the whole department seems to be joining her, and it takes the entire team- which has expanded to include Tracie Thoms' Kat Miller - to solve those long-boxed-up cases, some of which have been collecting dust for decades.

Sixty-year old bones in a subway service tunnel? Heading right out, Boss. The supposedly accidental death of a Rosie the Riveter during World War II? We're on it. Every last one of us.

In a big city like Philadelphia, wouldn't there be more pressing problems for at least some members of the squad to tackle?

The other gripe I have is that the "Cold Case" detectives seem to believe whichever witness/suspect they last spoke to. Where are the skeptical, hardened detectives? Sometimes an episode feels more like the game of tag. Only five more minutes lfet in the episode - tag, you're the culprit.

Please, mix it up a little bit, folks. ;D

If this shows up online for Sunday, I'll post the site, but right now, I hope I typed everything right, I typed the article.

[Naj]

Yea. I remember our reaction to adding another detective. The answer is no there aren't as many although I have read in real life since this show began that some cities are adding more detectives to their cold case units. Now I don't know what the average number is.

Thanks for this post, Eurache!

[longislanditalian2]

Thanks for the article Eurache!!

[boxman]

That's an interesting observation Ms. Rohan makes, but I don't think she has an understanding of the way large, heirarchial organizations such as the Philly PD work.

Middle-level managers (in both large for-profit or large non-profit organizations), don't have the responsibility to do an extensive cost/benefit analysis in order to find the "sweet spot" between personnel number & efficiency. At the middle-level, managers are more concerned with making sure that their staff in the ranks below them succeeds in their task. It's not the priority of middle-level managers (such as John Stillman) to be worried about being over-staffed. That concern is a function of the accounting & h.r. departments to dictate and regulate. In fact, there's a lot of managers that *want* to bulk-up their staff for the sole reason that it adds more prestige and responsibility to their position, thus making it harder to replace that manager. Either consciously or sub-consciously, they do this as form of politics and job-security, I suppose. The larger an organization, the stronger the tendency for this to happen, whether it's non-profits such as universities or healthcare, or for-profits such as very large, "Fortune 500" businesses.

Now suppose that the Mayor of Philadelphia says that to reduce the city's budget, they need to let go of 10% of the city's workforce. Well, goodbye Kat. That's an immediate 20% reduction of Stillman's staff--yet he still has enough detectives to keep the Cold Case department functioning well, without over-working the remaining staff. It will reflect well on him that he was able to exceed the mayor's dictated staff reductions *and* keep the Cold Case unit still highly functional!! See how over-staffing was to his benefit??

By overstaffing, Stillman also reduces the workload on each individual detective. In this way, Lilly now has the time to sort out her love life, Scotty gets to talk more leisurely with his brother, Vera has time to go out with his nurses, Kat can spend more quality-time with her daughter, and so forth. He has a healthier, "happier" staff that isn't dragging in personal problems to work, because they have the time to resolve these problems.

The practical implication of all of this is that if you were presented with two job opportunities--one for a small company and one for a large company--the large company will generally be able to afford you more personal time and other benefits than the smaller one. On the other hand, the smaller one will provide you with more responsibility and a wider range of job roles than the larger company. This could possibly be more beneficial, depending on your long-term career goals. But if personal goals are more important than career goals, a larger organization may be more able to give you your time for that.

[Disasterfreak]

Hehe, thanks so much for this article, Eurache. Although what Boxman says is very true, I hardly think they'd have that many detectives on a Cold Case squad. Sure it's funner for us to have that many different guys lying around, but I'm sure I read once about a REAL cold case squad consisting only of TWO overworked detectives. And that's probably the case in most cities. I like Kat fine and I don't wanna see her go, but I wouldn't mind Lilly focusing more on her work and ditching that annoying personal life of hers. ;D

[longislanditalian2]

disasterfreak said:

I wouldn't mind Lilly focusing more on her work and ditching that annoying personal life of hers. ;D

I totally agree at this point Disasterfreak