Members of SFPD on overtime detail at the Cuauhtemoc tall ship exhibition at Pier 27 today: zero.
PS. Check out what it looked like when they first sailed in! That’s excitebike.
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Public safety miraculously remains intact9 comments to Public safety miraculously remains intactLeave a Reply |
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Dude, Menino was right on this. It wasn’t a matter of police details on the boats, it was a matter of crowd control and public safety costs in general. Why should the state reap all the benefits of the economic activity (via the meals tax and the hotel tax) when the city gets stuck with the bill? The city got stuck with the bill (to the tune of $2 million in 2000 when the state failed to live up to the agreement). Its a cheap shot to blame Menino for taking the right stand. The city has no money. If anyone is going to suck it, it should be the state for leaving the city with the bill while its own tax coffers benefit.
Furthermore, Flaherty knows exactly what’s going on with city finances. This is an incredibly cheap shot at the mayor since the council is as concerned with the budget as anybody. But then again, Flaherty is a snake and I wouldn’t take seriously anything he said.
Plus, the crowds weren’t thin at all:
Sail Boston’s Tall Ships festivities came to a close Monday after the public got a chance to see the vessels for five days. Organizers said an estimated 3.1 million people visited the ships during the past five days to see the spectacular sailing vessels, more than three times original estimates.
http://www.boston.com/business/gallery/070709_tallships/
You didn’t like my succinct five word argument?! It’s hard to fit both logic and two insults in that space.
My longer form feelings on this are this: I think the concept of crowd control, as invoked in this situation, are a complete and utter sham. Requiring a large pot of money (with the size determined by the recipient of the cash!!) to change hands prior to a group of people coming together for something like this is extortion. In it’s essence, it’s a violation of the right to assemble. The framers of the constitution were concerned about this and so addressed it in the friggin first amendment.
Now I realize we’re talking about MA rather than the feds so there’s a counter-argument that state has jurisdiction. Fortunately the authors of the Massachusetts constitution more or less thought the same thing.
So the question comes down whether the event was expected to be orderly and peaceable. Was alcohol being served? No. Were there riots or a reasonable expectation of such? No. The $2 million the city spent is because they made the choice to kowtow to the police, who quite frankly are corrupt, soaking it to either a) the taxpayers or b) the event organizers. They don’t care who pays, as long as it’s to them, then off to make overtime on the party boat! In 2006, 124 of the 125 most highly compensated city workers were cops getting fat on detail checks. These numbers put the fire department’s early retirement scam to shame.
So yeah, I think that Menino is culpable for playing their game, even if specific blame should fall elsewhere in the city government. The cops themselves are the root cause. Nearly 1300 cops in Boston couldn’t possibly justify annual salaries of over $100,000 unless they are able to convince us that we should be scared of each other, that free assembly is not a universal right (Article 20). I disagree.
You’re being entirely too philosophical for the reality of municipal government. The Mayor had no choice but to provide core city services protection like having police (and fire) on hand to manage the crowds. Think about the impacts if he had made the decision NOT to have police protection with millions of people passing through the area – he would have been crucifed in the press for being irresponible.
Menino has plenty of disagrements with the cops and the fire departments. They are at odds ALL THE TIME. You can thank their respective unions and outdated state regulations for those inflated salaries. The city would like nothing more than to have more collective bargaining rights to keep salary and wages costs under control.
Having police on duty at the multi-day, multi-million person event was absolutely neccessary to ensure a positive viewing experience for all. It really wasn’t an option for them not to provide the service. If chaos had struck people would have been whining about it being a dangerous, unsafe, chaotic, etc event rather than the positive event that it was: show casing Boston as a world class city.
And also, yes there was a lot of alocohol being served in various outdoor capacities.
Maybe for the reality of municipal government in Boston, as it currently exists. But SF has definitely shown me that it’s possible to run a city of 800,000 with minimal police presence and a complete lack of law enforcement even when they happen to be around.
Anyway, I’m behind Yoon’s term limit proposal. Term them out, start over anew.
And the complete lack of law enforcement is a good thing? I thought you felt that the lack of police presence in San Francisco created an unsafe and unsavory environment? ie drug deals going down in broad daylight, people being attacked and murdered with seemingly no police recourse?
It’s not a straight good or bad thing. If & when you find yourself murdered here you can be pretty sure that whoever did it is going to sleep easy knowing they won’t be found or prosecuted. But crowd control issues don’t (I hope) overlap with crimes of that sort of severity. As for the drug issue – there’s a lot of that yes, but the war on drugs is failing anyway and needs to be solved with policy not townie cops busting heads.