Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll
October 12th, 2011Via: CounterPunch:
If you’re a Wall Street behemoth, there are endless opportunities to privatize profits and socialize losses beyond collecting trillions of dollars in bailouts from taxpayers. One of the ingenious methods that has remained below the public’s radar was started by the Rudy Giuliani administration in New York City in 1998. It’s called the Paid Detail Unit and it allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye.
The corporations pay an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.
New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.
The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master. Lawsuits have already sprung up from the program.
Research Credit: noncompliant
Historically, what pretty much always happens when mercenaries were/are used by leadership to pursue direct and indirect conflict outside what their standing army or constabulary can achieve?
Typically, when the mandate and the paychecks run out, these “privatized” guns-for-hire tend to turn around and prey on the very land/people who hired them in the first place.
Ignoring the blatantly obvious lessons of the past? Doomed to repeat it, yet again?
Someone gave the NYPD Foundation over $3 million (I think. That’s NI-ICE for arming up the loyal troops). Those cops that go out and prey on folks on the behalf of the “mafia” will get theirs back. Yep, and yawn, another lifetime on the wheel of karma.
I’m on the wheel too, but at least I’m not a gun for hire.
Careful people, and hang in there. This too shall pass. Be kind to others in these times. You do what you want. There all always consequences even if we don’t see them at the time. That’s just me thinking.