DHS Spares No Expense On Conventions
The Democratic Party received a $50 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security to defray security costs at their national convention being held in Charlotte, NC, this year. This year’s convention is a three-day affair (recently downsized from four days due to lack of, uh, funding), and the Men in Black (and Blue) will certainly have the Center City on lock down.
So, how tight can you lock down a world-class city such as Charlotte for a cool $50 mil? A little math will help.
$50,000,000 / 3, 8-hour shifts = $16,666,667 per shift
$16,666,667 / 3, 24-hour days = $5,555,556 per shift per day
$5,555,556 / $300 average per shift wage per DHS agent = 18,519 agents
18,519 DHS and Secret Service agents in Uptown Charlotte? There’s only 12,000 people living in Uptown Charlotte, which itself is roughly only 2 square miles. There are 1,700 regular CMPD officers throughout ALL of Charlotte, or roughly one cop per 882 people.
Now, obviously not all $50 million will go to wages, and obviously (hopefully?) there won’t be 18,519 DHS agents standing around. IF there were that would put one agent every 50 feet in all four directions over the entire area of Uptown Charlotte – if it were an empty field devoid of buildings, cars, roads, people, and the like.
Some of the money will understandably be spent on housing, food, and fuel for the Men in Black. But the convention only lasts three days, so let’s assume $1,000 in per diem, $1,000 in wages, and $1,000 in burden, per agent over the three days. Or a total of $3,000 per agent.
Using Charlotte’s own cop-to-citizen ratio of 1:882, and assuming 70,000 people attend the convention (as they did in 2008), you’d only need 80 security agents or roughly for $240,000 for wages, burden and per diem.
That leaves $49.7 million. If we increase the number of agents by a factor of ten (to 800), we still only need $2.4 million, leaving over $47.5 million out of the original $50 million. And, if we go absolutely hog-wild and increase the number of agents times one hundred (to 8,000), we’d still have $26 million left over lying around in loose change.
For what? Fuel? Bullets? Tear Gas? Zip-tie Handcuffs? Hookers and Blow?
Sounds to me like somebody is getting a lot of new toys. Especially when you consider the Republican Party got a matching $50 million for their convention in Tampa and half or more of their participants will be bringing their own (concealed and highly personal) security. Doh!
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