If a report today at Time magazine's blog is right, the Denver Police Department has made it official city policy to treat as suspicious of all sorts of ordinary items, like bricks delivered to construction projects, bicycles and maps, in the run up to the Democratic National Convention.
It is time for Mayor Hickenlooper to get on the phone with the Manager of Public Safety and explain to him how stupid he is making our city's finest look. This kind of security theater does not enhance public confidence in the security measures being taken. Instead, it suggests that police are utterly incapable of distinguishing between harmless people going about their daily business, and people who are about to commit violent violations of the law. This kind of stupidity emboldens and provokes anyone who would want to carry out the kinds of violent protests the city is allegedly trying to forestall.
2 comments:
absurd.
and scary.
You would have to work pretty hard to look even half as stupid as Boston. In Boston, the police treated Lite Brites as a hoax bomb, with the full support of the mayor and governor. (Not to be outdone, suburban plolice blew up a city-installed traffic meter in the paranoid aftermath.) The transit authority sued to prevent MIT students from releasing the details on how pathetically insecure the new multimillion-dollar fare collection equipment is, then published the very vulnerabilities in a court filing.
No, until you're half that stupid, you're not even in our league.
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