Free Republic

The city and its police have spent more than $500,000 so far keeping an eye on the Occupy Vancouver movement, but the mayor says the daily cost has drastically decreased. Since the sit-in began at the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturday, the Vancouver Police Department has spent an extra $390,000, plus $50,000 to put an RCMP tactical unit on standby Saturday. The city says the protest has cost it $87,000 so far, but as Occupy continues to be peaceful, the price tag has been reduced to less than $1,000 per day.

Scarce resources, isn’t that always the problem? Since the protests began, shootings in other areas of the city have spiked: The number of people shot surged 154 percent two weeks ago — to 56 from 22 over the same week last year — and spiked 28 percent in the last month…Four high-ranking cops point the finger at Occupy Wall Street protesters, saying their rallies pull special crime-fighting units away from the hot zones where they’re needed.Since Occupy Wall Street took over Zuccotti Park on Sept. 17, the NYPD has relied heavily on its borough task forces, the department’s go-to teams...

We just got the updated numbers from city Budget Director Rebecca Rhynhart on the price tag for the Occupy Philadelphia protest. For the first week, the city shelled out $230,000, mostly in police overtime to man the tent city that sprung up next to City Hall on Oct. 6. The other costs include setting up a police command center, as well as public property and sanitaiton expenses. Rhynhart said that some of those expenses were one-time deals and that the overtime costs have been dropping, so the projected weekly expense going forward is $112,000. These numbers do not include the...