DENVER- Night has just fallen and a helicopter searchlight has moved from North of the Capitol, to Civic Center Park, to the downtown center. Police in riot gear are rounding corners off to the North East. Police troops riding SUVs are coming from the southern parts. I’m riding on the 16th Street Mall shuttle. As I get out, I see the bus has been followed by two white vans full of policemen. Across my path toward where Marie is waiting are a dozen bicycle cops.
Of course here we are live-blogging about DPD troop movements. Suddenly the server seems to be acting buggy.
If you think I’m suffering delusions of grandeur when I imagine that every cop I pass seems to be reporting the event into his headpiece, consider the budget they’re spending on all of us.
Denver spent fifty million on DNC security, including a Super Fusion Center. They expected fifty thousand protesters. That makes for some easy math. $50M divided by 50k means a thousand dollars of equipment and manpower had been allocated for each protester. Since fewer than expected showed up, that’s a lot of intelligence firepower to spread over quite a bit fewer than 50 thousand protesters.
If we figure the demonstrations thus far have drawn five thousand persons of interest. Would that mean $10,000 is being spent on each? Probably the figure’s more like 1,000 people who could be considered to pose an imagined risk. That would mean $50,000 per. Over the course of five days, that’s $10,000 each person, each day. Figuring 90% of the security budget might have been spent on equipment, $1,000 per day would remain to pay, what, seven law enforcement personnel working overtime for each citizen suspect?
If you consider yourself unpredictably active enough to be among those thousand, tomorrow, when you are facing a line of armor clad riot cops, pick out seven and have them call you Sir.
It’d be a symbolic gesture. Probably the actual DPD staff allocated to you personally is comprised of three riot cops, one plain-clothed informer, and two surveillance analysts. Does that leave one unaccounted for? One full time person working on who knows what about you? Very likely.
It’s hard not to feel special.
You forgot to mention the ‘ICE’ cop I saw on break at Tattered Books. The SWAT team crew was also out in force, and I believe I also saw cops on a satellite orbiting the Earth way high above the police planes and police helicopters overhead. I also saw plenty of pigs riding horses! Real pigs, too!
And they spotted YOU on the 16th Street Mall:
