It didn't matter what cop show you were watching in the 50s and 60s, the punishment threatened by the superior officer to the beat cops was that if they didn't shape up they would be pounding a beat out in Staten Island, or in some other similarly unpopulated terrain in Los Angeles county.
It always worked. Officers Toody and Muldoon shaped up for the Captain rather than risk banishment to the boonies. Nowadays, Staten Island would not be considered so bad, since so many of the force lives on Staten Island.
The retired NYC detective who hung out in the family flower shop confirmed the real-life punishment that awaited problem officers: Staten Island, or a punishing commute from their Bronx homestead to an outlier precinct in Brooklyn, guaranteeing hours of daily round trip commuting. Every workplace has their version of purgatory. Or even Hell.
Consider the recently deceased A. Ernest Fitzgerald who just left us at 92. Mr. Fitzgerald was a civilian Air Force employee who was an expert at identifying Pentagon waste involving planes and weapons costs. So much so that Senator Grassley of Iowa said, "Ernie was a sleuth for the truth."
Being a thorn in the side of those who were spending the money did not earn Mr. Fitzgerald many friends on the inside amongst the higher ups. He earned the enmity of President Nixon.
At one point he was relieved of his job identifying the costs of major weapons systems and was shifted to audit Air Force mess halls and bowling alleys in Thailand.
Considering this was the early 70s when Thai food was only popular with people from Thailand, and the Southeastern Asian country was hardly a tourist destination, the banishment might have even outrivaled pounding a beat in Staten Island.
It is imagined missing bowling pins from alleys might be a problem (imagine a 7-10 split with no 10 pin) and Thai food with only one chopstick per person could slow down consumption, there is no indication in the obituary that Mr. Fitzgerld had to personally relocate to Thailand to investigate missing inventory. Although he might have, and that indeed would have made the punishment cruel and unusual.
He did eventually make his way back into a job identifying waste and abuse with government military procurements. He admitted, "cost control is essentially an antisocial activity. Nobody likes an efficiency expert."
In all fairness to the Pentagon and to Mr. Fitzgerald's efforts at pointing out cost overruns, it is hard to imagine what the fair price of a project should be when the example given for excessive charges is said to be the $916.55 paid for stool legs that really cost 34¢ each.
Well, how many stool legs did they bill for? And if they were to bill the correct 34¢ each, how much less would the project come in at? It would take A LOT of stool legs to lower the cost of a multi-million dollar project even 1%.
The problem might be that unlike supermarkets and retail manufacturers, there are no coupons that the government can use to lower its costs. Boeing, Lockheed, et al do not issue coupons.
Imagine what the family tab from the supermarket might be if coupons couldn't be used? The savings from their use is palpable. My wife has gotten so good at shopping with them I tease her they are going to post her photo on the closed circuit feeds and consider her a pariah, not unlike a casino card counter.
She's taken to wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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