Parking meter thieves
December 20, 2007 at 12:48 pm by Scott Freeman in NewsThe AJC has an Associated Press story on its home page that says someone is sawing the heads off of parking meters downtown to steal the coins inside.
There are two places in the story that rouse one of my pet peeves about the state of modern-day journalism: swallowing what a public official tells you with no critical thought.
First, the story says police aren’t investigating the thefts because the city doesn’t report them stolen. Which begs the basic question: Why isn’t the city reporting the thefts? Isn’t that Journalism 101? Who? What? When? Where? And why?
But then there’s this: The story quotes a city official as saying the city is replacing the meters, and that the parking meter program “pays for itself.”
Well, gee, if they weren’t spending all that money to REPLACE 500 stolen meters, would that money not instead go into the city coffers?
There’s a phrase for that: bureaucratic doublespeak, and journalists let public officials get away with that far too often.
What they’re really telling us is this: Someone is stealing parking meters downtown and the city isn’t doing a damned thing about it, other than spending our money to purchase new ones. And on top of that, the city isn’t collecting all the money it should be collecting for parking meters because … the meters aren’t there.
Your government, and watchdog press, at work. Or not.
Sigh.
Send to a friend:
December 20th, 2007 at 1:13 pm
500 stolen meters x $500 replacement cost = $250,000. A quarter of a million dollars could have gone a long way toward building a park, fire station or school building. Too bad the folks at the transportation office are just too lazy to file a police report. The general sense of apathy and lack of accountability conveyed in this story is heartbreaking.
December 20th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
your web designer needs to work on the background. the text is impossible to read with this new wallpaper.
December 20th, 2007 at 1:21 pm
That’s because this story originally aired yesterday on CBS 46. If you go to the website you can watch the video and read the story that answers those questions for you. If you just take what the AJC shovels you, you might miss out on the details they thought were not important, but were included in the original report where they got their story.
http://www.cbs46.com/news/14892362/detail.html
December 20th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
ahhh, much better!
December 20th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
fyi, yes we’re glad that new wallpaper disappeared as well.
Michael, thanks for the link to CBS 46 story. And I think Matt H. hits the nail on the head. Lost inventory? That’s $250,000 — of our tax money — the city just pissed away as “lost inventory.” Amazing.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:33 am
Perhaps LoJackâ„¢ a few of the newly replaced meters and bust the fools where they live and pop the stolen meters open.
Or, check local boroughs for a home that has several hundred broken meters overflowing from the curbside trash bin.