Taxpayers shelled out nearly $107,000 in just four days of overtime to cops assigned to police their fellow union members protesting in front of the FleetCenter.
``Had the patrolmen gone to arbitration as Mayor Thomas Menino and the city had repeatedly urged, none of that spending would have been necessary,'' said Seth Gitell, Menino's spokesman.
Barbara Anderson, executive director for Citizens for Limited Taxation found the figure appalling.
She laughed, saying, ``$107,000 for the police to police the police who are picketing because they don't have a contract. What a zoo. It's insane.''
While it's unclear how many officers worked extra details, picket line overtime ranged from more than 400 hours on June 8, which cost $14,738.51, to roughly 1,200 hours during the last day of protest, June 11, when the city paid out $44,860.86.
On June 9, the city shelled out $17,321 and another $30,029.45 on June 10 for a total cost of $106,950.57, according to figures released to the Herald yesterday.
Scores of cops lined up in front of the FleetCenter to delay preparations for the Democratic National Convention.
The police union, which claims it has gone without a raise for years, railed against Menino for refusing to negotiate a better contract. The city had offered an 11.9 percent raise over four years.
The union eventually was ordered by a federal judge to disband the picket line but Boston Police Patrolmen's Association president Thomas Nee said the number of cops assigned to police the protest was excessive.
Nee said at times the number of uniformed officers on protest duty equalled the off-duty officers picketing.
``There's no reasonable explanation why so many officers were deployed,'' Nee said. ``We were just exercising our First Amendment rights and it was all without incident.''
Menino had sought the federal court ruling so that construction could begin for the four-day DNC extravaganza planned for later this month.
``The whole thing was his idea,'' Anderson said, noting that he must be embarrassed. ``Everything that goes wrong just falls in his lap.''
Beverly Ford, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, said Commissioner Kathleen O'Toole did not find the overtime cost excessive.
``We apply the same strategy to policing that we would with any demonstration,'' she said. ``They were considered demonstrators and they have their rights.''