The $18,000 Camera
Today the Council voted - as noted by KNBC - without discussion - to approve nearly $6 million to place a camera in 300 LAPD vehicles. If you can't do the math quickly that amounts to about $18,000 per camera.
That's about the cost of a professional, news gathering camera used by a TV station like KNBC. I guess the City is planning to put all the video they take from LAPD stops on COPS so they need broadcast quality.
A good, very high end HD consumer camera is only around $3000.
So the question is - $18,000 per camera? I thought we didn't have any money?
Are we guessing someone got paid?
That's about the cost of a professional, news gathering camera used by a TV station like KNBC. I guess the City is planning to put all the video they take from LAPD stops on COPS so they need broadcast quality.
A good, very high end HD consumer camera is only around $3000.
So the question is - $18,000 per camera? I thought we didn't have any money?
Are we guessing someone got paid?
Labels: lapd, security cameras, wasteful spending
Posted by Mayor Sam @ 4/02/2008 02:07:00 PM
27 Comments:
you sir, are an idiot. your simplistic accounting skills show why you dont understand how government, let alone a business, works.
there are a lot more costs then simply buying the camera. there are installation costs, training costs, and perhaps the most expensive, you need a system to store the video and another system to review the video.
dont you think that makes things a bit more expensive.
rather then jumping on every little thing you see as a waste, why dont you try and spend some time trying to figure out what the process is and how things get done.
why dont yoo go and intern in a government office for one month, I guarantee it will teach you how things work.
also, do you even bother to look at the potential savings for the city in lawsuits? with cameras in cars everything is recorded and can be used in court, which will save taxpayers lots of money in lawsuits.
you also fail to recognize that the cameras are a condition of lifting the consent decree imposed by the feds.
but no, none of this matters, you just want to shit on the council and mayor no matter what. you clearly are not in this for "the people". you are in it to increase traffic to your site. good job asshole.
Yeah, well it's better than spending the whole cool $6 million for ONE park called Juntos, for the cholos including Maria Leon and her 13 kids by 5 gangbanger men, in 2002. In a lame, P C attempt to "reform" the drug dealing, cop-hating, each other- shooting cholos from the most violent village in Mexico, transported here lock, stock and barrel. (That's after we build them hundreds of spanking new apt. units, which they promptly turned into a barricade agains the cops and anyone else.)
Oh, and what happened with that park? Well, right after it was built, "neighbors say it became just another place to deal drugs," per Sam Quinones in the Times 3/30.
So on top of the $6 million for the park, the city put in brand-new surveillance cameras, "which were shot out the first night by gangs."
Now, says Garcetti, "we need to put in surveillance cameras to watch the surveillance cameras," too.
How much do all these extra sets of cameras cost? What's to prevent the cholos from shooting them out?
More of these expensive parks-cum- drug and shooting havens are all over Raving Lunatic Reyes' district. With more cameras that gangbangers shoot out.
And you're bitching about some cameras for cop cars, that can help deter crime and back them up in cases of endless lawsuits? From these cholos backed up by the ACLU and greedy lawyers playing the race card?
This is like those Anti military-industrial complex yahoos from the 1980s who used to hold up the simple Home Depot-style painted wooden donut toilet seats that bought for $20, and scream "YOUR GOVERNMENT PAID $1,000 FOR THIS TOILET SEAT."
When in reality, the 3-feet high, 4-foot wide, "seat cover" used in the military aircraft in question had to be some custommade, triple-locking, airtight, water-sealed, you-name-it hyper featured techie products in order to work at all.
Yet even when the government contactor wheeled out the product (which took two people to lift and 3 hours to install), the boneheaded critics ignored reality and kept holding up their 10-oz. store brands.
The owners of your local daily newspaper say, "we only have to be 'right' for one day."
The idiot bloggers who read 3 sentences from an agenda and do a 30-second Google search say, "we don't ever have to be 'right' - just indignant and loud."
I have another good idea. Lets save even more money by ripping out those expensive, ruggedized computers with communications hookups in their police cars. Let's just get each of them a used Dell laptop with a dial-up modem?
Or a "See-and-spell" with two tin cans and a string that stretches back to Parker Center.
And hell, do they really need Crown Vics with big sirens and lights? Why not Prius's with roof-mounted kazoos and some study flashlights taped outside the doors.
(F-ing moron!)
I mean, like with the cameras ... it's not like the image quality would even be CHALLENGED legally. No lawyers ever going to question this stuff, IN COURT, are they?
Good plan, Surelock. Praise the cops and beg them to risk their lives and reputations, but give them shit for equipment. You must have been Don Rumsfeld's advisor on the Body Armor for Iraq War operation.
Well, I think that high praise for cops and then shit for equipment is exaggerated.
Are you suggesting that if they had gotten the mid-priced cameras, that would have been "shit"? Don't be a dolt.
I can't stop laughing. Someone to work the camera, someone to train someone to work the camera, someone to teach the cops how to work the camera, someone to keep notes on the workings of the camera...what a hilarious post. Now we know why we're so poor.
you sir, are an idiot. your simplistic accounting skills show why you dont understand how government, let alone a business, works.
there are a lot more costs then simply buying the camera. there are installation costs, training costs, and perhaps the most expensive, you need a system to store the video and another system to review the video.
At least they're not talking about surveillance cameras to watch the surveillance cameras that watch the gangbangers that use the park to sell drugs and kills each other. Like on Drew Street in Glassell Park. (ALL came illegally starting in the 80's, by the way...Benefits of immigration.) I'd much rather have the cops watch them. Look, I don't know about the details but someone clearly has to transcribe and store the videos for Consent Decree and lawsuit prevention purposes, so the cost is sensible.
One other difference from M Sam's cheapies: they can be triggered by remote as well, in case the cops are out of the car at the time.
These cameras were recommended back in 1991 by the Christopher Commission.
you people are insane
you think you just buy some cameras and mount them to the windshield?
ya, the city should just go to bestbuy and pick up some nifty little handhelds and rig them to the windshield.
fucking idiots!
3:44, you are braindead, you may as well be put down, you fucking vegetable.
eat me
Those IBM cameras with training and video gathering DO NOT cost $18,000!!
Like everything else LAPD buys they are getting ripped off.
Find out what other PD's paid for those system and then asked if they worked properly OR NOT!
Police Car Mobile Video System
• 450 Lines of Resolution 128X Zoom Camera
• Industrial Grade 8 Hour 4 Head Mobile VCR
• 4” Hi-Resolution Color TFT LCD Monitor
• 300’ Rechargeable Audio Transmitter
• Fail Safe Record Over Protection & T/D Stamp
• Radar/Laser Gun Interface Overhead Controls $3,099.00
So I guess installation and training costs $15,000.
I don't know how government works. I do know how business works and if I had spent more than five times what something should cost I would be fired.
Car Camera Recorder Pro
Record everything which happens in front you in the Rear View Mirror Car Camera Recorder w/ Video and Audio. Easily attaches to your existing rear view mirror and auto records when you start your car. The Car Camera Mobile DVR recorder gives you the hard evidence when you need it most. $50 Off Today Only
Our Sale Price: $399.95
In Minneapolis it's less than half what it costs in LA
"Equipping the cars would cost $6,000 each and cameras are $1,000. Whether the City's budget can handle the costs is under debate."
In Boston, a little more than what it costs to install a camera in a police car in Minneapolis to equip a train or bus:
"Transportation authorities in many major metropolitan areas have installed cameras on buses and trains, paying the $10,000 cost per vehicle with grants from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)."
Still cheaper than LA.
Bushkill, PA:
The department researched in-vehicle video recorders and applied for grants to use toward purchasing the equipment. The department wanted a system that would be compact, dependable, secure and affordable. Using a state grant and a contract negotiated by the South Hills Area Council of Governments, the department purchased two $6,000 cameras from Lenexa, Kan.-based Kustom Signals in June 2002.
you cant take the total cost and divide it by the number of cars and presto you have the total cost for each unit. yes, you get the theoretical cost for each, but thats not how it works.
IBM is probably charging a flat fee for the installation and training and another fee for the video storage and retrieval.
add that to the cost of the cameras along with maintenance and repair and warranty and you have your number.
you think by taking consumer products and prices that its the same as this? you are dead wrong.
just admit that you jumped the gun on this and made a mistake. the city is required to take these actions (consent decree) and put it out to bid and take the lowest bidder! if someone bid lower for the same service's the city is required to take that bid.
Donations from IBM executives:
Rocky - $1,550
Cardenas - $250
Bernie - $150
Reyes - $100
Villar - $100
Man they got off cheap.
WOW
you are Mr. Conspiracy theory now!
ya, if thats all it took to buy off the council and mayor there would be a lot corruption going on.
FOURTH FLOOR SPIN CHAMBER...
OPERATION MUTE MAYOR SAM
That number does seem staggering, but I'm curious as to the full breakdown.
Is there any way to find out the full breakdown?
In addition to cost of camera, install, basic training, and maintainence, how much is being spent to monitor and archive the footage, and how long is this initial contract for? If its for five or more years, it still seems pricey, but depending on the services not unrealistic. Can these cameras broadcast a live feed to a central location?
Worth digging into, especially as the LAPD keeps calling for more funds and additional taxes.
This link will take to the various reports on the matter. One of them is 226 pages. Good luck.
Here's the link to the reports:
http://cityclerk.lacity.org/CFI/DisplayOnlineDocument.cfm?SRT=D1&cfnum=06-0600-S38
Maybe Laura Chick could audit the contract.
Oh ya, I should be put down (like the vegetable I am? huh?) because I don't like the cost of the camera that includes a little too much training and paperwork to run a camera and no - dildo - I'm not suggesting you go to Best Buy and mount one on the outside of your Crown Victoria.
Asshole. You a cop or something? Are you one of those insecure little pussies who everyone made fun of in high school? Grew up to be a cop--pack a piece--nail those assholes who made fun of you in high school for speeding.. feeling mighty fine about your tough ass self. But you're a loser and everyone knows it. We make fun of you when you're not looking.
So stop calling people idiots and assholes. Stop saying we just want to "shit on the council" (you really are a redneck, aren't you?).
Go someplace else and try to push our "expensive" system plus a system to restore the video plus the other system to review the video.. and on.. an on.
You sir, are a dildo no matter how nicely you to name call by staring out the sentence with the word, 'sir'.
Mayor Sam, thanks for doing homework.
8:28, you must have been one the ones to approve the system. If you did, were you promised a job working for the company after you retire?
Well, not in the public relations division. He doesn't capitalize or use proper grammar.
Maybe he's just an installer. Or more than likely, a cop.
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