Toronto is hosting six matches of the upcoming FIFA World Cup in North America and it seems that a few lucky Toronto Police officers have been able to get Apple AirPods out of the budget.
The police have already spent $1.5 million preparing for the tournament, but details of the full budget haven’t yet been made public. The city estimated the cost of hosting at $380 million, $90 million of which it expects to spend on safety and security. As reports come out around the spending, it appears that the police are using this money to supplement their existing budgets with new items some are calling “want to haves,” not “need to haves.”
This story is also rubbing Toronto residents the wrong way after Torontonians watched the Toronto Police battle city hall as the city refused to agree to raise the $1.2 billion police budget by another $12 million. During that fight, the police argued that it needed every single cent of the expended budget, but then when you see them turn around and spend money on AirPods, which are, at the lowest, twice as expensive as other Bluetooth headsets, and 3x wired options, it seems like they don’t have as tight a handle on their cash flow as they want us to believe.
Generally, AirPods range from $125 (first or second gen refurbished) to $329 (new AirPods Pros). The Toronto Star report calls it an unspecified amount of AirPods, but since eight people work on the FIFA security committee, it does seem that most ended up with AirPods, or one wild person decided to get AirPods Max which retail for $779.
Beyond the earbuds, the budget also includes $50,000 on computers and related hardware, which is likely monitors, chargers, dongles and other common accessories. That said, these are stated to go into regular police duty after the FIFA tournament.
While I started this story with the AirPods and computers because it’s the tech angle, in the Toronto Star report that breaks down the budget, it shows that $1.2 million has already been spent on bonuses and salaries for the Toronto Police Services (TPS) FIFA planning committee. The Star reports that eight people currently sit on that committee and they spent another $130,000 on cars to get to and from meetings, according to the report.
Source: Toronto Star
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