This article comes to us courtesy of San Francisco magazine.By Bennett CohenIN THE MOVIE VERSION OF SFPD CHIEF Greg Suhr’s improbable career, the lead would go to Bruce Willis–a square-jawed, middle-aged white guy who makes up in swagger for what he lacks in hair. The city’s top cop looks like a throwback to the San Francisco that the ’60s forgot, but he sounds like a “closet social worker,” as his good friend, ex-supervisor Bevan Dufty, puts it–a combination that has made him that rarest of things in this ultra-left city: a police chief whom almost everyone seems to be rooting for.Read More…
How Tampa’s Surveillance State Profited from the Republican National Convention
A vast network of surveillance cameras, armored trucks with
weapons mounting capabilities, and state-of-the-art bulletproof
vests strong enough to withstand high-caliber rounds.
Those are just a few of the spoils enjoyed by the Tampa Police
Department during the highly anticipated Republican National
Convention, which occupied the city from Aug. 27-30 and hosted
close to 45,000 delegates, guests, and members of the media.
But while most of the convention-goers have long since left
Tampa Bay, the millions of dollars in security costs awarded to
local police departments have stayed put, engendering a new kind of
technological surveillance state never before seen by Florida
residents.
The money in question was allocated by Congress in early 2012,
designating $50 million each to the RNC in Tampa and the Democratic
National Convention in Charlotte ;in order to cover “security
costs” expected by host cities.
Initial documents released by the city showed that just over
half of the $50 million was spent on bringing in 3,000 police
officers for the event, paying for overtime, food, and equipment
costs.
“We released a semi-final report because there were still
invoices coming in,” said Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis,
noting that more than $2.7 million has yet to be reported. She told
Florida Watchdog ;that “several purchases” have yet to be
budgeted and they will be released to the public as soon as
possible.
After personnel costs, the next greatest expenditures were
“technology and cameras,” according to the Tampa Police Department,
totaling nearly $11.6 million as of the last review.
This includes $2 million for 60 or more surveillance cameras
dispatched throughout the city during the RNC.
But according to officials, they will now become a prime tool of
the department in deterring crime.
“ATMs take your picture. Buildings have cameras,” Tampa Mayor
Bob Buckhorn ;told the Tampa Bay Times ;while
trying to downplay privacy concerns. “Those cameras are vital for
us to keep this environment safe and to attract people to come
here.”
As recently as Nov. 2, Tampa Police hoped to generate public
support for the mass network of surveillance cameras by boasting in
a news release, “RNC closed circuit cameras help officers make fast
arrest in garage attack.”
After a woman was attacked in the parking garage, police were
able to locate footage of the suspect leaving the scene and
promptly arrested him.
“Without the closed circuit video, detectives would need DNA to
confirm the suspect’s identity which would take at least five
days,” reads the release.
Federal Grants
In 2011, the city of Tampa received $12.5 million in grants from
the ;U.S. Department of Homeland Security ;and $1.1 million
from the ;Department of Justice, allocated for “crime
reduction” and for “mitigating terrorism,” according to
the ;auditor’s report.
These grants have allowed the police department to maintain its
fleet of ;armored ;vehicles and fund special
“counter-terrorism ;training,” according to the police
department’s website.
According to the latest 2013 budget proposal, the city of Tampa
also is able to afford its own ;Homeland Security Grant
Coordinator ;at an annual salary of $47,765, whose sole duty is
to manage the millions of dollars that pour into the city’s police
department.
The press office of the city of Tampa did not return calls to
Florida Watchdog.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), introduced a bill banning the
public funding of political party conventions earlier this year,
and it was overwhelmingly agreed to in the House.
While it aims to strip funding for the actual conventions, it
makes no mention of the nearly $100 million in security funds
allocated each year a convention is held.
A similar version of the bill also passed in the Senate,
prompting both chambers to present a merged bill to be voted on in
the last remaining month of the legislative session on Capitol
Hill.
This article
originally appeared at Watchdog.org.
“The Central Park Five”: New York’s darkest hour
If you lived in New York in 1989 – hell, if you lived in America in 1989 and were over 12 years old – then you remember the story of the Central Park jogger. It was a terrible case that seemed to epitomize everything that had gone wrong in America’s greatest city under the reigns of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the toxic combination of exploding Wall Street wealth, skyrocketing crime, the crack epidemic and worsening racial tension. This was the “Bonfire of the Vanities” New York, the “American Psycho” New York, in which newly created or reinforced classes, the super-rich and the alienated poor, faced off in nearly open warfare. The legendary power of that failing city is such that many contemporary visitors to New York still expect the Bronx to be on fire and Central Park to be an uninhabited zone of “muggers and trash,” in the words of my mother-in-law, and are startled by the affluent chain-store bustle of 21st-century Manhattan.Continue Reading… … Read More
Aleppo in ruins
Air strikes carried out by Bashar al-Assad’s government forces have transformed Aleppo into a city of ruins. Reuters captured footage showing the city’s buildings, included mosques and churches, reduced to rubble:In order to maintain their precarious control of the city, rebels this week virtually cut off roads to Aleppo from neighboring Raqa province, severing regime supply lines, the AFP reported.Watch Reuters’ footage below:Continue Reading… … Read More
Self-Reliance and Tight Budgeting Got Colorado Springs Through the Recession
Sometimes it takes an
outsider’s perspective to point out to people the reality that’s
around them. So it is with Canada’s National Post, which
surveyed the troubled behemoth to its south, and found an example
of Americans responding to recession-shriveled tax revenues and
government services by boldly doing stuff for themselves.
As Post scribe Kathryn Blaze Carlson
writes, the recession sort of left Colorado Springs in the
crapper:
More than a third of the city’s 24,512 streetlights went dark.
Some 393 trash cans were removed from 128 neighbourhood parks.
Public drinking fountains ran dry and park bathrooms were locked.
Buses stopped running at 6:15 p.m. and pools shuttered. Irrigation
at city parks was ramped down, yielding thirsty, yellowing, brittle
grass. Roads deteriorated into a Swiss cheese of potholes and
crumbling curbs.
This was Colorado Springs circa spring 2010. The mountain town
was still reeling from the recession, its coffers hit by a steep
decline in the sales tax revenues it depends on so heavily. The
government was spending more than it was bringing in, it had too
many employees, and it was being drained by an unsustainable
pension scheme.
And by virtue of how it has handled its fiscal crisis, the city
lived up to its reputation as a tax-wary, libertarian outpost in
the American frontier.
This is a mainstream media piece using the word “libertarian,”
so we should assume that Colorado Springs residents responded to
hard times by resorting to cannibalism and emulating the plot of
Road Warrior, right? Not so much. Actually, residents
voted down onerous tax hikes that would have been spent on
politician-preferred priorities in favor of paying for or providing
their own services.
When the lamps illuminating Ralph Kelly’s street were switched
off, he and his neighbours together paid the city about $100 to
“adopt” a streetlight and reignite a shared bulb. There was also an
“adopt a trash can” program, where the city supplied the bin but
residents hauled the garbage to privately run participating
dumpsters.
The phenomenon extended beyond people’s immediate neighborhoods,
too.
[W]hen the government shut off the landmark fountain in America
the Beautiful Park three years ago, non-profits and residents
banded together to raise $25,000 to keep it flowing. When the city
considered closing the innercity’s Westside Community Center, the
Woodland Valley Chapel offered to manage it with only limited
municipal support. That partnership, and others like it, continues
to this day.
When the police force was slashed and Chief Pete Carey “needed
to get innovative,” as he put it in an interview, volunteers became
community service officers. They cost 60% less than police officers
and can respond to non-injury traffic accidents or even burglaries
so long as the thief has left the scene.
A local businessman also formed the City Committee to pore over
the municipal books. Not surprisingly, committee members found that
spending was nonsensical and wasteful and had Colorado Springs on
the road to near-term insolvency.
Carlson does point out that not every neighborhood so
effectively filled in the gaps. Residents in poorer areas weren’t
able to so readily step-in. This certainly, to some extent,
represents fewer resources on which to draw to replace tax-funded
services. You don’t pay $100 to light a street lamp if you don’t
have it. I have to wonder, though, whether it might not also
represent some of the differences in priorities and habits that
help to keep people in poverty. It doesn’t cost much to haul your
own trash — that’s actually a popular money-saver in my neck of the
woods — or to clean and patrol your own streets. But the article
doesn’t give enough information to draw firm conclusions on the
matter.
Colorado Springs, now recovering, has apparently maintained many
of the cost-saving practices it adopted from necessity. The city
has also tightened its budgeting practices, including adopting
zero-based budgeting, under which budgets have to be freshly
justified every year instead of being based on the previous year’s
numbers.
To judge by the very interesting piece in the National
Post, our friends in D.C. might want to spend some of their
seemingly endless junket time on a fact-finding mission to Colorado
Springs. Oh, yeah. And then actually implement what they learn.
Krasnodar fast becoming Russia’s sporting capital
A pedestrian bridge across the Kuban river in Krasnodar. (RIA Novosti/Mikhail Mokrushin)(27.5Mb)embed videoOver the past few years the Black Sea region of Krasnodar has emerged as one of Russia’s top sporting destinations. RT tried to find out why.It may look like a lot of concrete and wiring now, however, Krasnodar will soon be able to boast one of the biggest sporting complex’s in Europe. This will, of course, be a massive boost for Russia’s Olympic athletes.The design looks fantastic, and it will include training facilities for 20 different sports – a new 50 thousand seat football stadium, an Olympic sized swimming pool, and a new rowing club amongst other things.“When Sochi won the right to host the 2014 Olympics, a decision was made to construct two different sports complex’s in the Krasnodar region. Those concerning winter sports will obviously be built in Sochi, while those competing at the summer games will train in Krasnodar. I think this can only be good for the development of sport, not only in our city, but also in Russia,” says the region’s Sports Minister Lyudmila Chernova. While Krasnodar has big plans for the future, the current sports facilities the city has to offer aren’t shabby either. A rowing stadium was opened just last year even though a new club is to be opened at the city’s sports complex in a couple of years. Rowing has been popular in the city for decades, but other sports are beginning to gain a foot-hold as well. New arenas are popping up around the city. The new basketball team, Lokomotiv Krasnodar is already becoming competitive in the VTB League, which unites the best teams from Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Kazakhstan and a number of Eastern European countries, while recently an ice-hockey stadium opened up. However, it is football that has always been top dog in Krasnodar being the only city in Russia, except for Moscow, to have two teams in the Premier League.Fans from the city can watch any sporting event, something that’s really impressed Lokomotiv Krasnodar’s basketball coach, Evgeny Pashutin. Krasnodar enjoys the status of one of the warmest cities in Russia. While much of the country is under a blanket of snow during the winter this city in the South of Russia has a relatively mild climate, which makes it ideal for hosting sports events and training camps.“A lot of the Olympic federations within Russia come here regularly. The main advantage is that they can train outdoors all year round, and breathe fresh air, without having to retreat into gyms or indoor complexes as is the case in other Russian cities, where the temperature is much colder,” notes Lyudmila Chernova.Building stadiums and sports complexes doesn’t come cheap, however, the City of Krasnodar and the region are lucky that they are receiving a lot of state funding.The sums may be large, but these training facilities will
10f
be used by hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, and this legacy will ensure that the future of sport in both Krasnodar and Russia remains bright. … Read More
LA Restaurants: November’s Best Of Food Highlighted By Tasting Table (PHOTOS)
This article comes to us courtesy of Tasting Table Los Angeles.Each month, HuffPost LA joins our friends at Tasting Table Los Angeles to highlight our five favorite finds from the city’s sprawling culinary scene. After eating around the city, here’s what caught editor Willy Blackmore’s eye in November. Read More…
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