{"id":100,"date":"2018-12-23T18:07:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justtalk.blog\/?p=100"},"modified":"2018-12-24T13:05:51","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T13:05:51","slug":"fiscal-crisis-what-crisis-ever-expanding-policing-for-binghamton-suny-binghamton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/2018\/12\/23\/fiscal-crisis-what-crisis-ever-expanding-policing-for-binghamton-suny-binghamton\/","title":{"rendered":"Fiscal Crisis, What Crisis? Ever-expanding Policing for Binghamton & SUNY-Binghamton"},"content":{"rendered":"

The City of Binghamton and SUNY-Binghamton fully agree on at least one principle:\u00a0 there is seemingly no limit to funding mass incarceration and mass policing, even in times of fiscal crisis.<\/p>\n

\"\"Binghamton\u2019s City Council, which prides itself on cutting budgets and trimming social services while adding more police officers every year, announced last month the purchase of the city\u2019s own $275,000 armored personnel carrier.\u00a0 The Sheriff already has one in his fleet of large military vehicles scattered around the county; one would think one is enough to repel any military invasions or dark threats to the local state. Not to be outdone, announced this month was yet another holiday gift:\u00a0 a $1.2 million updating of police headquarters.<\/p>\n

SUNY-Binghamton, which already funds part of the City police budget, hasn\u2019t quite matched the City\u2019s moves this month\u2014after all the University just announced a major fiscal crisis.\u00a0 The President and Provost quickly blamed 2% raises for faculty and staff. Yet the raises have long been anticipated, and are smaller than the rampant rise in University spending in other, less transparent, areas.<\/p>\n

Millions of dollars are likely to be recouped by not filling vacancies arising from over 90 retirements alone this year. \u00a0Harpur College, which does most of the teaching on campus, is likely to suffer particularly. Some programs have already announced<\/a> they will no longer be able enroll new students.\u00a0 In my own department six faculty are leaving or retiring, with no replacements likely at any time in the near future–gutting course listings, new programming, and recruitment of students.<\/p>\n

As the campus newspaper Pipedream reported<\/a>, among other cutbacks \u201cUniversity libraries face a 4 percent budget cut for next year, and the University is implementing a hiring freeze, which includes all leadership searches. The only exception to the freeze will be teaching assistants and adjunct professors.\u201d<\/p>\n

This however has been proven to be inaccurate.\u00a0 For shortly after the freeze was announced, the University proceeded with hiring a new police chief, rather than appoint an interim replacement as is now the case for other senior positions across the campus.\u00a0 And police chiefs aren\u2019t cheap:\u00a0 the outgoing Chief\u2019s rate of pay was $163,000 last year.\u00a0 Nor was this all:\u00a0 more expensive is the creation of a wholly new Associate Vice President position and office for the outgoing Chief.\u00a0 Associate Vice Presidents earn upward of $200,000.\u00a0 \u00a0And this is before the approximately 40% more for fringe benefits.<\/p>\n

For those on campus, these moves continue a long steady growth in the armed and militarized presence of police.\u00a0 Binghamton University\u2019s police is already larger than that of Johnson City, Vestal, and Endicott.<\/p>\n

Fiscal crisis and fiscal constraint?\u00a0 It seems not, when it comes to growing the machinery of mass incarceration, notwithstanding low and receding crime rates.<\/p>\n

December 23, 2018<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The City of Binghamton and SUNY-Binghamton fully agree on at least one principle:\u00a0 there is seemingly no limit to funding mass incarceration and mass policing, even in times of fiscal crisis. Binghamton\u2019s City Council, which prides itself on cutting budgets and trimming social services while adding more police officers every year, announced last month the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justtalk.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}