The WayBackMachine and the Detail Mafia's Self-Image

by Vannevar Bush

The Post Gazette reports on a website used to coordinate jobs for off-duty police officers:

One website that investigators suspected of being part of the "detail mafia" has been taken down. A second website, believed by some to still be in use, touts "real time monitoring" and "automated text notifications."

When the reporter gives you text in quotes like that it's just an invitation, a hint, to google "real time monitoring" "automated text notifications" Pittsburgh Police.

And when you do Google that, you end up at: DetailMafia.net.

If you go to that URL, detailmafia.net, you'll see that the URL now points to a YouTube video. But what's kind of geek-cool is what the archives have at the WebWaybackMachine:

Kind of interesting if that's representative of their self-image. Sam Spade n'at.

Also, you could look up who registered the URL, DetailMafia.net, and it looks like a private registration that was created on March 17, 2011 and expires on March 17, 2013.

Just saying.

Bad Apples: The Deadly Power of Bad Examples

by Helen Gerhardt.

This is a Valentine's Day post dedicated to the memory of my friend and co worker Ka'Sandra Wade, who was murdered on New Year's Eve. She called 911 for help and the call was interrupted by “a commotion” according to the dispatcher. Neighbors report that gun shots were heard only after two police officers left her apartment, after they spoke to Anthony Brown and he reassured them that everything was okay. They did not speak to the woman who had called for help. Brown later wrote a note that claimed that the police could have saved her. 

In light of the recent spate of news and commentary regarding the professional performance, ethical consistency and supervisory duties of our Chief of Police, Nathaniel Harper and the continued "confidence" of our Mayor in "his" chief, I present a hypothetical scenario sent to me from an anonymous commenter by email under cover of a pseudonym - this person directly echoed my own thoughts:

"Imagine if the police were in a rush to leave Ka'Sandra Wade's place because they needed to get off-duty on schedule, without getting hung up -- so they could get to their second job, working security at a SouthSide bar."

No, as the commenter was careful to make clear, that suggestion was not a tip-off from a whistleblower within the Pittsburgh police force.  It's a rational extrapolation based on well documented, prevailing patterns of institutionally supported moonlighting. It's a bitter guess based on the evident exploitation of the powers vested in our public police force to satisfy private profit motives. I'm willing to bet that email is only one example of many such darkly cynical speculations that express common erosions of public confidence when bad examples are rewarded within power structures that have been entrusted with deadly force to "protect and serve."
 

Caption Contest

by Vannevar Bush
Please feel free to submit your photo-captions as comments, keeping in mind that the Comet is a family-friendly blog.

Federal Agents: Pittsburgh is a Cool Place to Be.

Times Union / AP: Paul Sakuma

More:

Deputy Chief Paul Donaldson said between four and six FBI agents visited the Special Events and Personnel and Finance offices. He said they took records involving secondary employment, training and travel. The personnel office oversees payroll and other expenditures, and special events oversees officers working in uniform while off duty. (Trib, Harding & Bauder)

It doesn't seem directly related to the knapsacks contract in the news. For archival material on issues which can and have arisen involving police officer secondary employment and the assignment of special event details, see the Admiral: Part I, The Problem; Part II, The Solution; Part III, The Capitulation.

I am given to understand that some years after what is covered in "Capitulation" that aspects of the City's cost recovery and of the assignment of details were reformed -- but there could always be work-arounds or related issues.

UPDATE: Indeed, here is what I meant by "work-arounds": the Detail Mafia.

See also P-G, Silver, Navratil & Smydo; WTAE, AP.

ALSO: Officer selling swag with City logos. Why not? WTAE.

Fitz-Fracking the Aerotropolis

B-list post by Vannevar Bush while Bram is on special assignment.

In this Age of Google sometimes new stories boil down to keywords, and this week brought a story with keywords eerily reminiscent of headlines from back in the day: "Allegheny County", "Airport", "500 million", "20 years".

Twenty years ago, Allegheny County spent 500 million on the Midfield Terminal, which was an "investment in the future". As another blogger has recently pointed out, not everybody liked it at first but the Commisioners worked it until they got the politics and the numbers aligned and the County went ahead and built it.

At the time it was considered brilliant, a down payment on a future so bright you'd have to wear shades. How did that Midfield investment work out, and - with the benefit of hindsight - was it an investment or a gamble? If we knew then what we know now, if we knew of the risk of the County's Authority being saddled with hundreds of millions in debt, if we knew that a corporation could fill out some forms and walk away from an obligation, would we still gamble that half-billion dollars of the public treasury?

That's a key distinction: are our elected officials investing or gambling with the public treasury?

Turning from that somber bit of reflection, let's consider this week's bold pronouncements. The Allegheny County Executive (ACE) announces a 500-million deal for fracking at the PIT airport. Wow, this is great, let's go!

He has certainly opened the discussion by reframing it. But let's look at the details. What is really assured is $50M up front, and possibly up to $22.5M per year for twenty years - if everything works as advertised, best-case scenario.

Let's set the Fitz-Frack issue aside, for just a moment, and talk about the Airport and what it means. Right now it's a white elephant, a dead horse that we're still paying for, and yet it's also in spite of all that a key economic asset for the region. (key word: region).

The economic model for future development of "the region" is Allegheny County developing along the Aerotropolis model. (See the CMU report, story about the Robt. Morris Conference, official County 2011 ACED report.)

To do the Aerotropolis thing, you've got to have: (1) an Airport, (2) a City, (3)a Corridor with highway and transit connections between them. The government entity that contains all of those components is Allegheny County, and the person nominally in charge/responsible for that is the ACE. Wow.

The City is an essential node, it has functions it must perform that the suburbs and the Corridor cannot, but the city is an essential and insufficient player; the City cannot drive the Aerotropolis, only the County can. That recognition makes the recent moves in the transit and airport authorities more significant, and the Fitz-Frack announcement much more compelling.

Half-Billion Bets on the 20-Year Come: Gambling vs Investments with the Public's Fortune

In framing the Fitz-Frack decision (now a foregone conclusion, if the citizenry sticks to the ACE's script) as a financial no-brainer rather than a risky option that puts the airport (the key to the Aerotropolis and regional economic development) at risk, the ACE is betting on the come.

Just as we've seen (now) with the Midfield Terminal, the win/lose on the Fitz-Frack bet won't be known for twenty years, long after these players have moved on to their ignominy. And as we learned with Midfield, giving a corporation what it wants now and taking a long-term payoff doesn't make sense in the context of bankruptcy law. (Remember USAir?)

Here's the two alpha-questions I'd like to ask, in response to the ACE's gotta-play-to-win big money no-brainer reframing job:

• Has any aviation official (not a board member or political appointee) said that fracking at the airport is a good idea that won't put the airport operation at risk?
• The County can't touch the airport frack money; federal law requires that any airport frack money be used for airport improvements. Has any federal budget official concurred with the Fitz-Frack plan to divert Frack-Funds into airport real estate development, as the ACE suggests?

If we had political discourse, or public discussion about public decisions rather than half-billion announcements from the ACE, it would be interesting to see these questions addressed:

• Is it worth risking the crown-jewel airport, which cost $500M in 1992, for $50M upfront and the promise of up to $22.5M a year, varying with market activity?
• Was it necessary to remove the Airport CEO, who had a distinct focus on the whole airplane and runway thing, before announcing the Fitz-Frack plan? Why?
• Given the County's experience with USAir, bankruptcy, and long-term finance, isn't the Fitz-Frack plan essentially "trusting an oil company"?

A photo of a recent fracking event in WV:

Let me re-present the Fitz-Frack plan from a less sanguine perspective.

• Let's go out to the airport, which is a key economic driver which we can't afford to damage or lose, and drill for flammable and explosive materials.
• Even though the airport's main asset is long pieces of straight, level, smooth concrete, let's pulverize the earth underneath the runways.
• Even though there's an active underground mine fire in the south-western portion of the airport property, let's punch a lot of holes through the rocks and move flammable gas through them, cause they're at different depths and that can't possibly go wrong because they line the holes with concrete, just like in the Gulf of Mexico. (See BC Times, story, link )
• Let's do a lot of industrial activity at the airport where there won't be any NIMBY neighbors, even though the prevailing wind puts most of Allegheny County's population downstream.
• Let's give the ACE a future-money stream that he can monetize now, so he can pursue his agenda and let others pay the bills in twenty years.
• Let the politicians and not the aviation-operational types make the decision about what to do at the airport.
• Nothing can go wrong. (See Centralia, PA)

Personally, I liked it most when gambling was illegal.
I liked it less when gambling was restricted to casinos.
I don't like at all when gambling is used as public policy.

Washington Blvd. Flood Follies

Seattle Must Have

It's a fluid world out there. While the Comet works out technical and scheduling difficulties, consider this:

The irony of this road-raising plan, though, is that while it would effectively lift the road out of the basin, it would make the flooding worse in the valley beside it. By essentially sliding the roadway over to the east, high against the hillside, the sloping western shoulder would make this unnatural bathtub smaller. So water would go higher. Not good. (P-G, Brian O'Neill)

Strange how it sounds like MS Consultants, whose selection Dowd criticized recently, came back with what the Councilman / Board Member considered the wrong kind of work -- yet is going back to the drawing board to research his concerns anyway. Either they and the Mayor's office are showing a surfeit of expensive good will, or else Dowd's critique of the long-awaited plan was enormously valid.

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