Ramsey talks overtime costs for increased police presence

Reporter Lizz Fiedler heard from Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey this afternoon about his role in the efforts to reduce teen mob attacks. You can hear more later from Lizz, but she’s sharing this snippet of the conversation with us about how much the city will spend to keep the heavier police presence in parts of Center City:

“Last weekend that [overtime] was about $56,000 for both days – for Friday and Saturday – for the overtime…Some that were working their regular shifts, I’m not counting that because obviously that’s part of your regular budget but $56,000 is about what it cost us last weekend and approximately what it will cost this weekend, and every weekend that we put this deployment out.  It’s costing us roughly $50,000 to $56,000…But you can’t put a price on public safety so if it makes people feel better, if it brings safety and security to folks, if we can stop these assaults, it’s well worth the investment.” Ramsey says if there are mob outbreaks in other parts of the city he’ll consider including more parts of the city in the special curfew.  And Ramsey says the Mayor’s made it clear that if the city needs to impose the tightened curfew to seven days a week, that will happen.