From the Associated Press:
During the first two months of the nationwide Occupy protests, the movement that is demanding more out of the wealthiest Americans cost local taxpayers at least $13 million in police overtime and other municipal services, according to a survey by The Associated Press.
The heaviest financial burden has fallen upon law enforcement agencies tasked with monitoring marches and evicting protesters from outdoor camps. And the steepest costs by far piled up in New York City and Oakland, Calif., where police clashed with protesters on several occasions.
The AP gathered figures from government agencies in 18 cities with active protests and focused on costs through Nov. 15, the day protesters were evicted from New York City’s Zuccotti Park, where the protests began Sept. 17 before spreading nationwide. The survey did not attempt to tally the price of all protests but provides a glimpse into costs to cities large and small.
Broken down city by city, the numbers are more or less in line with the cost of policing major public events and emergencies. In Los Angeles, for example, the Michael Jackson memorial concert cost the city $1.4 million. And Atlanta spent several million dollars after a major snow and ice storm this year.
But the price of the protests is rising by the day–along with taxpayer ire in some places.
Read more here. Keep in mind, the true economic cost of the Occupy protests in probably many factors greater than this. This “cocktail napkin” report only looked at 18 cities, and only at direct costs that are easily documented. A more complete fixture would need to tally sanitation costs, economic losses suffered by local businesses, lost tax revenue from the lower economic activity and the lost productivity from workers who have suffered longer commutes to and from work, to name just a few.
Still, the report goes a long way in showing that the #Occupy crowd really is the new Entitlement Generation. They can have their drum circles, and we are left to pick up the tab.
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