Godfrey's crime blimp: A mainstream law enforcement concept?
Thanks to a morning submission from one of our sharp-eyed and alert Weber County Forum readers, we'll again bring one of our favorite Emerald City topics to the community discussion forefront. We've had plenty of merriment and mirth over the past few months talking about Boss Godfrey's crime blimp, so we're delighted to place the most recent urban aerial surveillance news story back on the WCF front page again.
This go-round however, the story has a significantly different twist. Whereas we'd earlier believed that Godfrey's crime-fighting blimp had been merely another bizarre expression of our lame-duck Mayor's sometimes crackpot mind-set, similar to Godfrey's Giant Refrigerated Climbing Tower, for instance, we learn this morning from Josh Marshall's Talking Point Memo website that Godfrey's Crime Blimp is actually a fairly mainstream concept, if we take what's happening in other American communities into account:
Whether the proliferation of American-based Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) is part of the larger "militarization" phenomenon which is being increasingly discussed across the World Wide Web we simply don't know. But it's interesting to consider Ogden's aerial drone project in a wider context, isn't it?
So who'll be the first to throw in their own 2¢?
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7 comments:
Our new mayor-elect, at one of the candidate debates, said he thinks the blimp shows promise for special-purpose uses but not for routine patrolling over residential neighborhoods. We'll see if he sticks to that position...
The usual result of getting a new high tech is to use it as much as possible. Soon enough almost everything or event will be considered a special-purpose event.
the pictured drone in the artickle didn't seem to have a single accoutrement which would signal a lighter-than-air flotation device -- it's like apples and tasmanian-devil's beards. Th only similarity is they can operate aerially ....
js
BB
Off thread but I was shocked, yes shocked to read over 122 Ogden city employees make over $90,000 a year.
I think a city of Ogden size is way over compensated for what they have accomplished.
http://utahsright.com/salaries.php?city=charter_ogden&query
You're referring to total compensation (including benefits, overtime, etc.), not base salary. I see that a master police officer can receive over $90,000 in total compensation even with a base salary of less than half that. It's also interesting to see how much "leave pay" and "allowance pay" the top executives get.
Thanks, does that include the retired in place payments for Chief Griener and few other city employees? They sshould have an asterick by those double dippers.
For non-retired employees who are eligible, I would assume that the "benefits" line item includes payments made by Ogden City into the state retirement fund. For "retired-in-place" employees like Greiner, the retirement income comes from the state retirement fund rather than from Ogden (directly), so it's presumably not included in the numbers you see. However, according to news reports, such employees still receive additional retirement benefits from Ogden, payed into an IRA of some sort rather than into the state retirement fund.
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