The police have a monopoly on regulating roads, sidewalks, and everything that should traverse them. When anyone wants to do any type of construction/work/repairs to a piece of public sidewalk … count on a requirement that a police officer stand there and do nothing. Like this:
The taxpayers are bilked continuously at tens of thousands of these needless police details daily. On average it costs them, I’d say, $50/hr.
The graft isn’t even particularly efficient – I bet most of those cops ripping off the public would prefer $25/hr to sit at home over $50/hr to stand on asphalt.
While armed revolution is near and dear to my heart, perhaps it would be more efficient to just try to negotiate some sort of better bribe with the police union – you give up details, and we’ll give each of you $4k/yr (or whatever $25/hr x average number of detail hours per year) to sit on your asses.
Here in MA the details are justified with “having police eyes and ears on the street”. Even if you don’t find that prospect more disturbing than pleasing, the one time it MIGHT have helped me played out like this:
* I got into an auto accident directly in front of a copy
* I yelled out the window “please stay there; I’m going to circle the block, come back, and park”
* 5 minutes later the cop was gone. The maintenance workers said that he claimed it was lunch time. At 10:45 in the morning.
Pure scam.
If anything, shouldn’t we have EMS details to construction sites so someone can be there in case of an accident. The cop clearly is just pacing around. In the event of a terrorist attack (and I hear those are happening more and more) perhaps the cop might provide some defense. But we’re not really concerned about that are we? Maybe the paramedics would just pace around, as well, but at least their presence in case of an emergency would actually be useful.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but if some investigation was done, I would bet that the cop was working for the construction company as an off-duty job. I can not speak for NH, but in Tx that would be the case. In Houston, many commuters will gripe, rightfully so, about cops hired for an hour or two every weekday who stand outside the office building and stop oncoming traffic to allow the office workers to pull out onto the street, many times without having to wait.
Working for a construction company… on a public sidewalk… to which the construction company is paid for by the taxpayers… to whom pay for the police officer to be there.
Nice video. Love the use of music.
When you factor in benefits and pension plans, it’s likely closer to $100/hr if the officer has been around for a while.
And if you think that’s bad, check out this photo I took at the Boston Marathon in April (a state holiday in MA): http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/i0AiizNwxH1M5d3skH16Lg?feat=directlink
The last mile or so of the race had an officer standing every 10 feet or so, on each side of the street. The officers were so busy, some even had time to play games on their phones: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/INYSjCeUUwZ9cPw3jCWIOQ?feat=directlink.