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Somebody misoverestimated cost of policing Occupy Boston
By adamg on Fri, 10/14/2011 - 5:11pm
Just yesterday, City Council President Steve Murphy said BPD told him it was costing $2 million a month to watch over those scamps on Dewey Square. Channel 4, however, reports today that BPD has put the total cost of its supervision of Occupy Boston since Oct. 1 (the occupation began 9/30) at $146,189.55. Assuming that's current through yesterday, and assuming it includes another massive early morning crackdown, that comes out to roughly $350,000 a month.
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Comments
I'm shocked.
I'm shocked.
Asshat
Read: Fact Check: City Council President Stephen Murphy Conjures $2 Million Cost For Occupy Boston
September 31st???
September 31st???
How's that rhyme go again?
Oh, yeah. Fixed.
So basically Steven Murphy just fucking made it up?
He said Occupy Boston would bankrupt the city. What a meat head.
Doesn't he know people are tired of lies and fear-mongering from elected officials?
See you at $2 million
.
Murphy is supposed to be the budget expert on the council
A couple of years ago I looked at an expense and revenue report for the city. Seven months into the year one of the revenue line items said the plan was to collect $13 million for the year but read zero through the middle of the year (the city doesn't or at least until recently didn't report line items current year vs. prior YTD number or vs a monthly budget - I don't know how they can get the budget done this way). I asked Murphy what it was and after years on the council and claiming to be the "budget expert" he said he didn't know but he'd find out and get back to me. He never did.
(turns out it was the money from the parking meters - it goes into a trust fund separate from the city's main accounts and only gets pulled out as needed at the end of the year if they are short on balancing the budget - at least that's what a quick call to the budget office turned up)
Kind of frightening that apparently not a single city councilor has ever asked the question why this eight-figure budget item reads zero month after month - and as I recall it's on the first or second page of the monthly budget report they give to each council member.
So Occupy Boston won't bankrupt the city?
Some quick math reveals that 254 hours of overtime per day is;
Apart from why it's all booked at OT, I see 2 cops at time there, not 10.
What if we had the numbers from Monday's midnight raid and backed them out of the total. What would it look like then?
No matter, Boston City Council President Steve Murphy is a liar.
Rich COPS!
I walked through today and I saw 4 police officers there. All was quiet and peaceful.
Either they are the highest paid cops in history or someone is full of shit.
What a great use of $350,000
Is that just patrol officer overtime or does it include Sergeants, Lieutenants, Captains, Deputy Superintendents, Superintendents, Superintendent-in-Chief, civilians on the barricade trucks, in operations, DPW, BTD, State Police, Transit Police, Suffolk Sheriffs?
What a great use of $350,000. Much better than using it to feed 437,500 starving kids at $.80 a day. Brilliant.
You're right, we need to
You're right, we need to figure out where our priorities are. Why, with that amount of money we could also pay Lloyd Blankfein's (CEO of Goldman Sach's) salary for 9 days.
Lloyd Blankfein? If he visits Obama this much, he can't be bad
from michellemalkin.com
I think you're barking up the wrong tree, O-Fish-L.
I think you would find precious few Obama-worshippers among the Occupy Boston crowd, or on UHub, for that matter. Obama has been a tremendous disappointment to the Left. The question is whether anybody really believes a guy like Romney would be any less beholden to the financial industry and big business. He's the very portrait of the wage slashing, job-exporting, dishonest, callous and overpaid CEO. So, you say some Democrats seem to bend over backward for Corporate America? This is news to nobody. Of course they do- but the GOP is still the undisputed champion of kissing corporate ass. It's basically all they've done since Lincoln's assassination. Democrats are always at their worst when they act like Republicans, still the o-fish-l Party of the Rich.
With a couple of possible exceptions
It's interesting how far the GOP has come since the days of TR and Taft.
GOP has done plenty since Lincoln
@Dan Farnkoff "but the GOP is still the undisputed champion of kissing corporate ass. It's basically all they've done since Lincoln's assassination."
---
The GOP has done a bit more since Lincoln. Just in relatively recent times, Republicans carried and passed Eisenhower's '57 Civil Rights Act over strong Democrat objections and filibusters. In their combined five terms, neither Roosevelt nor Truman had proposed any civil rights legislation. Eisenhower also bravely integrated the public schools in Little Rock over the objections of the Dem governor and amid criticism from JFK and Johnson. Republican Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic struggles against the Southern Democrats and the wiretapping of King by RFK are engrained in US history. Jacqui Kennedy's recently released recordings denigrating the "terrible" Dr. King say it all.
The GOP sent the first African American to the U.S. Senate after Reconstruction, our very own Sen. Ed Brooke (R-MA). Democrats wouldn't do the same for decades. Nixon normalized relations with China in '72 after years of hostility and brinksmanship.
Ronald Reagan made America strong and respected again, perhaps the best example being the release of the 52 American humiliatingly held hostage by Iran for 444 days. They were released a mere minutes after Reagan was sworn in after a year and a half of Carter incompetence on this issue among others. Reagan's tax cuts ended the Carter-era malaise and ushered in 30 years of economic prosperity, not to mention Reagan's role in ending oppression in Eastern Europe and bringing Communism to its knees as the Dems and media ridiculed him. Gingrich's contract with America which grew the economy while keeping Clinton in check, G.H.W. Bush's liberation of Kuwait and his son G.W. Bush's keeping the U.S. terror-free after 9/11 while liberating 50,000,000 people who had lived under brutal tyranny in Iraq and Afghanistan. Passage of No Child Left Behind and passage of the Bush tax cuts which helped everyone who actualy pays taxes. Plus my personal favorite, Bush's ban on the horror that is partial-birth abortion while Obama wouldn't take a stand in Illinois on whether babies who survived the gruesome procedure and were born alive should be treated.
I'm quite content to side with the Republicans most of the time, although I'm unenrolled in any party.
and this young Dem
Wishes the party would wake up, and see why I am a Dem in 2012, but would be called a Reagan Republican in 1985.
Economic fascism and religious social fundamentalism isn't the way forward for the GOP. Moderate Dem's serve all the functions and policy positions needed from a true Conservative.
They really have turned into the counterpoint of the pinko / Hippie left of the 60's. Apparently, they just couldn't let it go.
Wow! I have to start watching Fox News more!
Seeing how most of what you're saying about Republicans comes directly from the Hannity/Beck/O'Reilly/Cavuto/Varney playbook. I don't want to argue the individual falsehoods in so much of your screed but let's just say in the case of Reagan and GWB, the movie "Dave" was ridiculously on the mark.
The RNC is its own worst enemy.
As I have said for the longest time, the Republicans would win 65-70% of popular vote in national elections if they had not allowed the national party to be hijacked by the southern/western religious fanatic constituencies of the party.
People can denounce the "Yankee" or "Rockefeller" constituency of the party as much as they want (such as by the familiar pejoratives "country club Republican" or "RINO" statements that are now common). All I'm saying is that if the national party put more people like Jim Jeffords, Bill Weld or Lincoln Chaffee (rather then Bachmann, Santorum, Palin, et al.) into the limelight, they would be thumping the Democrats, if for no other reason than it would bring the northeastern and west coast states back into play. There would not even have to be a takeover by the Yankees - even some representation that could moderate the fringers would do the trick. So long as the people who are currently running the RNC allow the fringers to dictate everything to the exclusion of any semblance of moderate policy, they allow the Democrats to remain competitive. This is also, in my opinion, the reason why Romney is not running away with the nomination, which boggles my mind because I think he is the only one in the pack who has a prayer of beating the President (where else will the fringers go? Even if they merely stayed home, the president is so unpopular that Romney could win).
hijacked?
It's one of the main pillars. You have the libertarians, the christianists, and the corporatists (which included the thinkers).
It's the Goldwater grand bargain, as it has been for 40 years. The only difference is that the Corprotists hit the monster one too many times, and now the christianist wing has pretty much taken over functional control. It's a pseudo religious political part now. It's why it's heading full steam toward herp-derp, rather then being serious about governance and, you know, reality.
As for a large constituency that it claims to represent, they never have. They've gotten by from lower turnout in voting (They vote, others don't), and they're now trying to suppress eligible voters to keep from losing in places where historically people just didn't go out and vote.
I pray for the day that a real Conservative party gets their act together and pushes these radicals out, and shows them for what they really are.
disappointment ?
Whats disappointing is the number of Indys and Dems that voted in 2010 and handed congress back to the teabaggers. You hand power back to a group that is 100% behind a destructive nihilist philosophy, and expect the president to be able to do anything? The have the audacity to complain about it? Dems really are self defeatist.
It's not surprising people don't understand how government works, but they should be whacked upside the head for thinking change happens overnight with on vote. You need to keep voting, which is fighting. winning a battle is not the same as winning a war (and fighting in politics is a war that will never, ever be won).
if it's never going to be won
if it's never going to be won then why bother?
Oh, hey, thanks for the info.
Oh, hey, thanks for the info. This shows why we SHOULD be supporting the Occupy Wall Street movement. The total the BPD is spending for one month is about 1/3 of what Blankfein/Goldman donated in an attempt to gain access to our politicians.
(this was intended for Fish)
your numbers feed them for
your numbers feed them for one day... I'm sure that actually solves the problem. Oh wait, that doesn't solve anything.
cops above the rank of
cops above the rank of captain do not get OT
I never thought I'd live to
I never thought I'd live to see the day when O-FISH-L would advocate that we take away overtime from hard-working police officers who put their lives on the line every day.
Maybe the rapture really is nigh.
BPD Favorite Tactic
Overestimating things that the BPD doesn't want to do is its favorite tactic.
BPD told HP residents that it would cost $l.5 million to expand Shotspotter in Cummins/River/Wood area, an area hit with gang gun violence. It had to backtrack. The cost would actually only have been $200,000. Nevertheless, BPD didn't want it, so BPD couldn't find the money for a system that would protect thousands of lives by pinpointing gunfire and dispatching police and ems simultaneously.
Yet, $350K in OT. Not a problem. Go figure.
it doesn't protect you it
it doesn't protect you it just lets you know where the shots came from, so it's after the fact.
Finding/apprehending gun-firing persons = increased safety
So does quickly coming to the aid of those bystanders inadvertently involved with a gunfire event. Here in Boston it's served both of these purposes many times since the initial deployment four years ago.
It's NOT after the fact, it's as the shots are fired . . .
It's not after the fact, it detects the shots as they are fired, and as I said, it simultaneously pinpoints for officers where the shots were fired, what type of weapon, and the direction of the gunfire, while also dispatching police and ems.
Why would the BPD not want to protect its own officers by providing them all that information enroute to a shots fired call???? It prevents cops from driving blindly into a shooting scene and in that sense is protective. As for residents, it ensures that police are aware that gun violence took place and the more info police have, the more apt they are to capture the shooters leaving the scene, as has happened on several occasions in the city.
Sadly, less than just 2 hours ago, shots were fired at the corner of Wood/Frazier. Fortunately, residents called and police responded. But having Shotspotter in my n'hood would alert police if no one had called. This time no was shot. Last year, there were 5 men shot on Wood Ave. One at the corner of Wood/Frazier.
and shotspotter would have
and shotspotter would have prevented those people from being shot?
I believe the idea is the
I believe the idea is the more shooters you can find efficiently and take off the streets, the fewer crimes in the future.
Call Consalvo about it
It seems really odd that the BPD, or the city bean counters, would block the expansion of a demonstrably helpful technology like that.
What a buffoon
Time for Steve Murphy to follow Mickey Roache into the Registry of Deeds or some other holding tank for worn-out council members.
Why Mark???
Why Mark???
It's time that City Council
It's time that City Council and Counselor Murphy launch an investiation as to who in the BPD mislead Counselor Murphy by telling him "on target to spend $2 million a month on patrolling the area".
Additionally, I'm sure Faux News crack investigative staff, calling Mike Baudet, will look into this apparent deception of Counselor Murphy.
Maybe Virgin Boy can pull himself away from his hard hitting Beacon Hill interviews and work his sources on the street? I'm sure that between Counselor Murphy and Faux 25, we'll get to the bottom of this.
Good news and Bad news PeterGriffith.
The Good news is that I am going to do this investigation for our UHUB viewers.
The Bad news is that the investigation is going to cost $425,000 in overtime and fuel costs.
Save money
So can they save money by using civilian flaggers?
You should really read the
You should really read the papers- you will see that Councilor (not counselor) Steve Murphy did come out in yesterday's Herald saying that the information he was originally given was incorrect and he was relieved to hear that it was lower and went on to say it was a number given to him that took into consideration of what might happen......
It's so easy to jump on the negative bandwagon when someone brings up a legitimate point that protests do cause money (maybe not as much as told) but it does take it from somewhere else. There is only so much in the city coffers and any additional funds come from city taxpayers.
There are more than 2 sides to every conversation and all sides should be heard.
Respect is lacking in this blog and it's too bad to see it. I thought we were beyond that type of politics.
i'm going to call bullshit
Murphy went on TV twice to talk about how expensive security at Dewey Sq was, and that it could bankrupt the city. HE said that.
The respect that is lacking is his respect for the intelligence of Boston residence.
Anyone who would fear-monger bankruptcy of the City of Boston and fear-monger professional agitators ON TELEVISION, twice, without first checking his facts, is a douchebag. It must be election season.
Saturday, Murphy said on twitter that he had read a Herald article that told him the 135G cost. Not $2 million 135G. But I haven't seen him back on TV correcting the record. Have you?