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Siliminagic69

Are you all crazy or something?  This is a false flag operation if I ever saw one.

For one thing, there are city workers who do clean up duties in
Berkeley.  Secondly, this is a privatized police force masquerading as a
"clean-up crew."

Did any of you read last week's article in the East Bay Express?

If not, it is page 8, and it's entitled, "Private Cops on the Public's
Dime," and I highly suggest you read it.  Also, this is Fascism working
here, because the Downtown Business Association is applying pressure to
the city council and mayor's office, and then there's the almost
million-dollar price tag to fund this "janitorial service"... for that
price you could put all the homeless and mentally handicapped indoors!

Oh, and why did they (Block By Block) not hire homeless people?

I got a quote, from someone who works on the inside, and that quote was,
"We're going to 'get rid' of 'them.'"  When I asked this person what
they meant by that, this person said, "The 'mentally ill' and
'homeless.'  Block By Block wants to 'get rid' of all of them."

So I started digging a little bit.  I'm a writer and a student at
Berkeley City College... and I am also "homeless."  Although, I am
homeless by choice, because this is how I have to get stuff done.  Don't
ask me why, it's just the way I get stuff done.  However, that is not a
crime... but these Fascists would like to make it a crime.  Anyway,
back to the researching: what I found out bothered me.  What I found out
was, this "janitorial service" has ties to the "Department of Homeland
Security," and ties to top Republican Law Makers, like Dan Lundgren.
Block By Block also has ties to a union-busting corporation known as:
SMS Holdings.

This is a large corporation with seven subsidiary corporations beneath
it.  They are claiming to be "'Christian,' 'Faith-Based' Organizations,"
but their actions say otherwise.

This is an insidious corporation doing insidious things to American
Citizens, and nobody has done anything about it... until now.

Read this article:

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/...

Then read his blog (by the same author of above link/column):

http://darwinbondgraham.blogsp...

And you can read some of my side (Berkeley) of things here:

http://smirkingchimp.com/threa...

Of course my blog is not as extensive as the other one, but it goes to
show you the level of concern people need to have, because both of us
started writing about this independently.  About my third post (or blog)
I found the blog, "Sung a Lot of Songs."  And his blog is very
extensive.  The links match up and the information is damning.  They are
claiming to be "Christians," but they are acting anything like that.

Whatever your take on homeless people sits, you can't condone American
Citizens being spied upon by Secret Police masquerading as street
janitors.  Because, they aren't only spying on the homeless and mentally
disabled.  What is even more absurd about all of this is, it's being
funded by tax dollars.  "Property Owners" voted "71% to "clean up the
streets of Berkeley."  Now, number one, they didn't need to be "cleaned
up" to that extreme.  The people who clean these streets downtown do a
very good job, and there was never any big trash concerns before, so
this is obviously a rouge.  And, if you see what I see on a daily basis,
and what and how they are "cleaning" out here, you'd laugh.  It's
farcical!  And I'm not the only one who sees this.  I know a scientist
who works at the UC, and he sees all this crap, too.

We are watching the watchers.

And, you all should be concerned, because it is your tax dollars funding
a private corporation, to spy on all of you... this it ridiculous!

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Dorian Gray said:

They ride chariots?  Like a shitty segway or something?

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Private Cops on the Public Dime
Oakland taxpayers' money is being funneled to an anti-union company that employs private cops to patrol the downtown and uptown areas and influences OPD policies.
By Darwin BondGraham


Even as Oakland prepares to lay off more than one hundred city employees, the city will continue paying several hundred thousand dollars each year in taxpayer funds to two privately controlled — and politically influential — organizations that manage the downtown and Uptown areas, records show. Much of this public money, in turn, will be funneled to a powerful, private, Christian-based corporation that has a record of opposing unions. This company, Block by Block, a subsidiary of the Nashville-headquartered SMS Holdings, employs low-paid, private cops, known as "security ambassadors," and has been influencing Oakland law enforcement policies and procedures in the downtown area.

The City of Oakland's contributions of taxpayer dollars to the Downtown Oakland Association and Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association — both known as business improvement districts — represent significant financial commitments for the cash-strapped city. This year, Oakland taxpayers must provide the Downtown Association with $109,904 because of assessments the association has levied on five city-owned properties in its boundaries, including City Hall. That's right: Oakland taxpayers must pay taxes on their primary municipal building to a private entity. Unlike other taxes, public properties are not exempt from business district assessments.

As Full Disclosure previously reported, the Downtown and Uptown business districts are controlled by representatives from big banks and corporations and large property owners that wield considerable influence over City Hall. The associations also applied intense pressure on Mayor Jean Quan last fall to order two major police raids on Occupy Oakland (see "The One Percent Solution," 11/16/2011).

Adding further costs to the city is the elimination of the Oakland Redevelopment Agency. It means that the city is now on the hook to pay assessments for four former Redevelopment Agency-owned properties in the downtown association's boundaries — costing the city more than $30,000 a year. According to the Downtown Association's own records, the largest single contributor to the district's budget is not a private landlord but rather the City of Oakland, which pays about 14 percent of the total.

The city is paying the Lake Merritt/Uptown District Association another $52,068 in public funds this year, and is the sixth largest funder of the district. When the city council green-lighted the creation of the Downtown and Uptown associations four years ago, staff members of the city's Community Economic Development Agency pegged the city's fiscal commitments over the ten-year lifespan of each district at $1.58 million and $566,000, respectively.

Staff characterized these obligations of public dollars as a "strategic and productive investment of public funds." But what are these funds helping to pay for?

According to the Downtown and Uptown association's own documents, Block by Block's contract is one of the largest single expenditures for the business districts. According to the associations' joint 2009-2010 Annual Report to the city council, "Block by Block receives approximately $60,000 per month from both organizations." That's roughly $720,000 per year.

So what is Block by Block? SMS Holdings, the parent company of Block by Block, began in 1988 as a janitorial services company in Nashville, Tennessee. In the late 2000s, SMS went on a growth spurt, buying up security companies. Among these was Block by Block, a Louisville, Kentucky firm that controls a large share of the national market for "security ambassadors" and cleaning services provided to business improvement districts. By 2008, SMS posted revenues topping $300 million, and its vice president predicted then that it would surpass a half-billion by 2011.

A document entitled "The SMS Holdings Way," available on the company's website, reveals the Christian beliefs of its owners and executives: "From our company's beginning, our business philosophy has been God-centered and faith-based. While we will always show tolerance and acceptance of the personal beliefs of others, we recognize that there is a higher order that provides a basis for all of our core values."

It's unclear just how deeply the Christian core values of SMS Holdings' owners and executives shape company policy, but in another area, the results are much clearer. Subsidiaries of SMS Holdings, like Block by Block, maintain relatively low-wage, anti-union workplaces. SMS has been very aggressive over the past decade in lobbying federal legislators to privatize thousands of government jobs. Paying minimum wage-levels (and, in some workplaces, even less), SMS Holdings has been able to skim enormous profit margins off of outsourced local and federal government jobs.

An example of the company's anti-union policies took place in Pittsburgh when Block by Block's security ambassadors attempted to unionize through the SEIU in 2009. Block by Block managers opposed the simpler card check process, pressing instead for a secret ballot election, a procedure that gives employers more tools to scuttle pro-union outcomes. Block by Block management barred employees from wearing union buttons or talking to the media, and, according to reports in the Pittsburgh Gazette, even conducted surveillance and called the police on some of their own ambassadors who passed out pro-union literature in front of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership's offices.

Block by Block appears to be a relatively small, if growing, segment of SMS Holdings. The company's bigger and more profitable ventures in recent years are private security and aviation service workers whose ranks were greatly expanded with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and then privatized en masse by the Bush administration.

The SMS Holdings subsidiary PrimeFlight specializes in providing service workers to airports and airlines. At the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, where PrimeFlight workers drive passengers through terminals, company managers have pressured their less-than-minimum-wage employees to over-report tips in order to qualify SMS Holdings for lucrative state subsidies, and to justify extremely low wages. The Houston Chronicle reported on November 1, 2011 that PrimeFlight's participation in a state subsidization program had been suspended, and that the company is being investigated for violating labor laws.

The most profitable anti-union activities of SMS Holdings have been directed at workers employed by its FirstLine Transportation Security subsidiary. FirstLine contracts with the Department of Homeland Security to provide airport security screeners at eight locations nationwide.

SMS Holdings' ability to combat the unionization of its workforce has been greatly enhanced by the political ties the company's executives have cultivated since the early 2000s. According to Federal Elections Commission data, executives of SMS Holdings contributed more than $100,000 to the campaigns of congressional representatives since 2003. Much of this money was funneled through the FirstLine Transportation Security PAC to select members of Congress whose powerful committee appointments gave them control over lucrative TSA contracts. Among those who benefitted from SMS Holdings contributions were Republican House members John Mica of Florida and Dan Lungren of California. Mica is the current Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, while Lungren holds a seat on the House Subcommittee on Transportation Security. In the Senate, Republicans John Thune and Jim DeMint, members of the Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security Subcommittee, have been recipients of FirstLine PAC money and contributions directly from SMS Holdings' executives. These political connections continue to work for FirstLine and SMS Holdings. As recently as November of 2011, Mica was arguing for privatizing all TSA screening jobs.

But it's not just SMS Holdings' labor policies that raise concerns. In Oakland, business improvement district staffers, with much assistance from Block by Block's local operations manager Ted Tarver, have been influencing OPD policies. From the start, both the Downtown and Uptown associations have organized meetings with OPD and City Hall leaders in an attempt to integrate the districts' private security guards with OPD. Many OPD officers, however, have been resistant to working with Block by Block's ambassadors.

Even so, some OPD commanders have shown much deference to the associations and their agenda. Oakland Police Captain Anthony Toribio told the Downtown Association board in December 2009 that the department supports joint patrols of OPD officers and Block by Block security, and that these private cops could act as a "force multiplier," according to minutes of the meeting. In another meeting, Captain Toribio told the Uptown Association board that he wanted the district's private security to "share intelligence" with OPD.

In the same board meeting, Ted Tarver of Block By Block and Captain Toribio discussed ways to discipline OPD officers who continued to resist integration with Block by Block's security force: "Officers that do not like them and are resistant to work with them will be held accountable," read the minutes from the board meeting. Captain Toribio recommended that Block by Block security staff "record the car or badge number" of cops who refuse to cooperate with them, and "he will follow up with [the officers]."

Early on, Block by Block private cops also were allowed to attend OPD daily lineups. According to notes from a December 2009 Uptown Association board meeting, OPD officers also have been receiving "weekly security updates" drafted by Block By Block's Tarver.

Another means by which the Downtown and Uptown associations are "force multiplying" police and private security is through technology. Block by Block initially sought permission for its security ambassadors to carry OPD radios, but due to resistance from police rank and file, and because this could be a violation of the law, it was decided instead that OPD officers would carry Nextel phones used by Block by Block employees.

The next stage of this kind of "intelligence sharing" apparently will involve hand-held PDA devices developed by the Eponic Corporation. Former Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts is listed on the company's website as a supporter because while heading up the Long Beach Police Department his officers shared real-time information with Block by Block security guards there to track "quality of life issues such as panhandling" and enforce curfew laws against the homeless.

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DeathSpider said:

yea, dorky mofos in red and black. their outfits sort of look like rentacop uniforms. They are supposedly to help out tourists and whatnot. but they get kind of weaselly.

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The Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association’s ambassador program does not discriminate against the homeless, a human rights tribunal has ruled.

The DVBIA’s program — in which a security company provides downtown ambassadors who roam Vancouver streets helping tourists and keeping an eye out for crime — was the subject of a complaint by Pivot Legal Society in 2008.

The Society and its co-complainant, the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU), alleged that the service was systematically discriminating against the homeless, aboriginals and drug users, claiming ambassadors’ main goal was to “clean the city” of “undesirables.”

The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal heard the case in June 2010, taking testimony from 17 people over more than three weeks.

The DVBIA maintains its service is mandated to assist the homeless, rather than target them, and help with food and clothing handouts, referrals to shelters, and social services.

“This ruling reaffirms the full confidence we’ve always had in our program and our Downtown Ambassadors,” DVBIA executive director Charles Gauthier said in a statement. “They are the ‘eyes and ears’ on our streets, they provide access to resources for people living on the streets, they liaise with our member businesses and they help visitors to our downtown.”

Scott Bernstein, a staff lawyer with Pivot, said the group was disappointed with the ruling.

He said the organization’s inability to get homeless, mentally ill and other vulnerable street people to the tribunal to testify about what they experienced was a key factor in the case, and it raised questions about how well the tribunal could provide justice for those populations.

“It really puts a huge barrier on people who are more likely to be discriminated against. Talking about issues of marginalized populations ... the question is how high of a hurdle do we set for them?

“Will they ever be able to go in and represent their case to the human rights tribunal? This case makes me really question that, whether they have access to justice and whether the process is accessible to the people who need it most.”

Bernstein pointed out that while the tribunal deemed the ambassadors’ actions weren’t “systematic discrimination,” some of their activities were troubling.

“In the course of the complaint, it became clear that ambassador actions known as ‘removals’ were at the heart of the complainants’ concerns, and in particular ‘removals’ from areas that are, or appear to be, public property,” the decision stated.

“Being asked to relocate has an adverse impact on the dignity of the targets and causes humiliation,” tribunal member Tonie Beharrell wrote of the ambassadors’ practice of waking the homeless sleeping in parks or in front of businesses and asking them to move on.

The 11-year-old community patrol program covers 8,000 businesses in a 90-block area.

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