Arizona police department used federal Covid funds to buy high tech surveillance equipment

[frauenfelder]

Originally published at: Arizona police department used federal Covid funds to buy high tech surveillance equipment | Boing Boing

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[Papasan]

Jeez, what a shocker, you say this happened in Arizona the Mississippi of the SouthWest?

[Acris]

Mesa is a boomer paradise/wasteland of suburbs with artificial lakes. The entire job of the cops is to make sure the service workers stay in line so that semi-retired white people can drive their SUV from brunch to golf to the entertainment mall, care free and intoxicated.

So yeah this checks out.

[prooftheory]

To be clear the American Rescue Plan Act is an economic stimulus program and the money isn’t specifically allocated to combat Covid. It’s unfortunate that it couldn’t have been spent in ways that would actually benefit people and improve the economic conditions of people who have been negatively impacted economically by Covid. Once they determined the money was going to go to the police, there wasn’t really anything productive that could have been done with it. They should have spent the money on environmental mitigation.

[Spidermac]

You mean this Arizona?
Arkansas ed department used COVID funds to buy books from a company founded by Mike Huckabee

[prooftheory]

[gracchus]

@Acris

Mesa is a boomer paradise/wasteland of suburbs with artificial lakes. The entire job of the cops is to make sure the service workers stay in line so that semi-retired white people can drive their SUV from brunch to golf to the entertainment mall, care free and intoxicated.

So yeah this checks out.

When the response to COVID is looked at as a dress rehearsal for how the authorities will handle the outcomes of the climate emergency in unsustainable places like Arizona it certainly does.

[Bonivus_elderheart]

@Acris

Mesa is a boomer paradise/wasteland of suburbs with artificial lakes

FTFY.
(disclaimer: I live in that area, although one of the older 'burbs with no lakes in it at all.)

The annoying thing is that the city also keeps whining about not having money to keep up on things like infrastructure, yet consistently keeps shooting down proposals that would fix that.

[ethicalcannibal]

The misuse of these funds isn’t just Arizona. I’m a financial auditor that focuses on government and federal funding. Across the board there are issues with how the different Covid funding was used. The Feds tossed it out, put up errata after errata in the compliance manual for compliance, so at best.

It’s created a situation where some folks figured it out and complied. Some folks tried to comply but had issues figuring out how. However, we also have folks that just didn’t even bother to try to comply with the federal requirements, and acted like looters in an Apple store.

My wife is also an auditor, and between us and our coworkers, there are so many people that jumped on the band wagon to get this funding that had no idea what to do with it, or decided to go nuts.

[vernonbird]

@frauenfelder

“Police departments have seen [the grant money] as a way to pay for all of the fancy technology and equipment they’ve always wanted, but never had a reason or the funding to get,”

Emphasis mine.

@frauenfelder

“All of a sudden, you have cops saying, ‘You know what we need to fight Covid? We need drones.’”

Yeah, but cops don’t ‘fight Covid’, especially since they won’t get vaccinated or wear masks.
They are part of the problem…