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Overtime payments — triple the amount they were in 2004 — cushioned the financial blow for Buffalo police officers whose wages have been frozen for the past three years, a Buffalo News analysis found.

Some 179 officers and higher ranking supervisors were paid more than $80,000 in 2006, compared with 93 who made that much in 2004, the year Buffalo’s control board froze the wages of all city and school district workers.

“I make no apologies for police overtime. The public is deserving of a safe city,” Brown said.

Is Byron Brown suggesting there is a correlation between police overtime and lower crime?  Statistics would suggest otherwise.  Of course, it is not his money being spent.

• Total overtime for narcotics officers skyrocketed 260 percent since 2004, reaching $217,757.

• Overtime for the homicide squad also nearly tripled, to $421,216, as it investigated 73 murders, believed to be the fourth-highest number in the city’s history and a 30 percent jump from 2005.  Homicide detectives were given the latitude to work around the clock on breaking cases.

Much of the overtime appears to be a management problem.  The war on drugs is a failure, spending $217,757 on OT for a failed program is quite irresponsible.

Who is running the Police Department?  Why should homicide detectives have the “latitude” to work around the clock?  Schedule them during time periods, evenings and overnights, where they can be productive without overtime.  I would think only a minimal number of homicide detectives need to be scheduled to work a “9 to 5″ shift.

Byron Brown cites his “zero tolerance” policy and “quality of life” crimes to justify the overtime.  Perhaps if the City cut spending and taxation there would be more jobs created by the growth in the private sector economy.  More jobs means less crime.  That would be a real “quality of life” improvement!

Source: Buffalo police overtime swells

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The Confession Backfired
By Paul Craig Roberts
03/17/07 “ICH“ — The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals–that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed–has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.

That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.

That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentence based on confession extracted by torture.
Mohammed’s confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed’s confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed’s tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed’s hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.

Continue Reading “Keeping Americans in a State of Supine Fearfulness” »