Here’s a front page SAN DIEGO U-T “feel good” story about El Cajon police giving out $20 bills rather than citations for Christmas. WONDERFUL publicity for the cops. Allow me to play the Grinch in this activity.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/dec/27/tp-cops-give-cash-instead-of-citations/
Here’s the shorter AP story that went out on the national wire.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/dec/27/police-in-san-diego-suburb-give-cash-at-traffic/
Was this some altruistic outburst by cops on the beat? Nope. It was a calculated (and amazingly chintzy, when you look into it) ploy by their labor union. It garnered the desired effect — terrific publicity by our gullible press. Unmentioned was the fact that we taxpayers paid for most of the total cost of the publicity stunt — as the cops were on the clock while giving out the money.
This was a carefully staged event. The proof is that the El Cajon police union had a (presumably paid) photographer accompanying the officers who handed out the $20 bills, and then posted the photos up on their Facebook page and notified the press.
https://www.facebook.com/ElCajonPOA
It appears from the photos that the TOTAL given out was as little as $100. $100 bought them thousands and thousands of dollars in super-positive publicity. Smart!
The officers giving away this pittance likely were reimbursed by their police union — or perhaps by the suspect charity that the union runs (such union-run, in-house charities should be the subject of a future story).
http://elcajonpoa.org/giving-back/#.VKA2kl4AAA
Frankly I doubt the union would be that dumb to use the charity to illegally reimburse such chump change. The tiny outlay likely came out of the union’s budget — or even perhaps out of the cops’ personal $90,000+ average annual paychecks.
http://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?page=1&a=el-cajon&q=police&y=2013
Sadly, the press never looks askance at such a heartwarming “happening.” The healthy storied (and mythical) media skepticism melts away in such instances. To the U-T’s credit, at least they listed the published photo of a $20 recipient as being provided by the police labor union. But that was the only hint that this was a staged publicity performance.
Such publicity events by government labor unions are common — and well received by the press. And I don’t fault the unions so much as the press — who act as their unpaid publicity agents.
San Diego city firefighters have a innovative collection process where they stand at busy intersections holding firefighter boots to collect money for their charity — and get plenty of positive feedback and publicity for their efforts. But they do that on their off hours.
The El Cajon police officers who were giving away money were working for the police union, but were being well paid by the hapless taxpayer for their efforts — it was part of their shift. It’s just not right. But then hey, life isn’t fair.