On Sunday morning, the day after Flag Day festivities here in Hudson, I took a ride around to do my best to count the number of street vehicle barriers that were used for the two-hour parade (or does it last just one hour?). I found 16 of the black barriers scattered around, though there certainly could have been more of them. I came across a DPW crew of two, including the DPW foreman (second in command), loading a few barriers onto the special barrier trailer at 4th & Warren. That trailer, it turns out, is sold by the same company that sells the barriers.
This is a picture of the license plate on the trailer.
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The trailer and barriers likely spend most of their time stored somewhere in Albany. |
I wouldn't be surprised if someone, or a few people in separate vehicles, didn't drive those barriers down from Albany for our little parade in our little city. Did Hudson employees do that work, or did Homeland Security drop them off and take them back to Albany for us?
My little bit of online research revealed a few interesting things about the Archer 1200 Vehicle Barrier. And a bit frightening, too.
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I could be mistaken, but I believe this was the first Flag Day parade to have heavy-duty vehicle barriers deployed. |
The all-metal barriers are sold by a company named the Meridian Rapid Deployment Group out of California. Apparently, all they sell are the barriers and the trailers meant to transport them. I don't know about you, but the name of the company sounds like a mercenary organization to me!
The barriers weigh close to 700 pounds each. (That's one third of a ton, not a half ton as I surmised in the previous article.)
They cost around $6,500 each.
Meridian claims their barriers are "engineered for high security environments" and "easy to deploy in ten minutes." Ten minutes starting when?
The Archer 1200 barrier comes in a variety of colors, including red and orange, but Homeland Security in Albany chose black.
On the company's website, one of the features of the Archer 1200 is this: "Full ballistic protection for any armor piercing 50 caliber rounds."
The barriers offer protection in the form of Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM). Who knew that HVM was a thing, even here in Hudson? Be scared everyone, be very scared! But don't worry, we have the Deployment Group to protect us!
Meridian sells a "trailer kit," complete with a mechanical lift trailer, 8 Archer 1200 vehicle barriers, and all the hardware needed to load and unload them. That sells for about $85,000, perhaps without tax. According to Meridian's website, the trailer is "designed for one person loading" and "one person setup" of the eight 700-pound barriers it can hold, which is a frightening thought. (Let's see if our Police Chief could handle that by herself.) When fully loaded with 8 barriers, the trailer would probably weigh close to 4 tons, and that is what our DPW vehicles were pulling around up and down Warren Street this past weekend, perhaps all the way to Albany and back as well. Do you know the amount of wear and tear that much weight inflicts on a pickup truck? No, I don't either, and Rob Perry probably doesn't give a crap how damaging it is. One wonders if he was on board with this high security parade nonsense that was likely forced on him by HPD.
On the same day when our moronic president king was hosting his birthday tank parade on the streets of D.C. that was fit for North Korea or Russia (that hardly anyone showed up to); millions of people were out in the streets all over the country protesting our clown king; a Florida sheriff warned NO KINGS protesters the night before to behave or "we will kill you graveyard dead"; a politician and her husband were assassinated, and two more shot and injured, by a right-wing MAGA lunatic in Minnesota who had plans to kill many more politicians; and Isreal had begun bombing yet another neighbor the day before, it was startling to see such militarization in the form of the Homeland Security vehicle barriers on our side streets in little ol' Hudson. But maybe not surprising. It all seemed so unnecessary, ugly, militarized and wasteful, like the moron-in-chief's vain parade in Washington and the never-ending wars and violence that seem to be engulfing the world. One wonders if our Police Chief ordered the barriers to be sent here. Or did HPD or DPW go pick them up from wherever? How much gasoline was consumed to get those two (or more) trailer loads of barriers to and from Hudson? How much CO2 was spewed into the atmosphere so that Hudson's one or two-hour parade could be HVM prepared? I guess the days of wooden street barriers for our one-hour parade are done. It's a scary world out there, bring in the heavy duty (and heavy!) hardware! And lots of it!
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Sorry, buddy, we have a hostile vehicle problem around here and you just ain't cuttin' it anymore! |
Sure, that's just what we need DPW and HPD employees doing as we pay them tons of overtime: carting around 700-pound HVM vehicle barriers for our one or two-hour parade. Is this really a priority? Were DPW and HPD employees trained on how to properly handle the barriers? I wouldn't be one bit surprised if HPD is considering purchasing its own HVM barriers.
Do you know how much it hurts to have the edge or corner of a 700-pound piece of metal drop on your foot? Do you know that if a 700-pound hunk of metal drops on your foot, even just from an inch above your big toe, that you will probably never walk the same again or be able to work performing manual labor ever again? You might just need to have your foot amputated. And for the rest of your hobbled life you'd probably wonder why the fuck you were told to handle several 700-pound vehicle barriers for a one hour parade and who decided you should be doing it.
On Saturday at about 1:00, I noticed three men bicycle past the farmers market heading north on 6th Street, all in matching blue and yellow uniforms, with matching helmets and matching black mountain bikes. They were not HPD cops or county cops and, honestly, I have no idea who they worked for. But each one of them had a firearm in a holster on their right hip they displayed proudly. They were not smiling, nor did they look like they wanted to. Were they invited to provide security? Or were they a crew of vigilantes, possibly led by our Police Commissioner and DOOMSTRIKER Law Enforcement Motorcycle "Club" leader, Shane Bower?
More importantly, what about those god damn disposable plastic zip ties that allow our parades and street events to happen?
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2 zip ties, with one end hoping to poke a parade attendee in the eyeball. |
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3 plastic zip ties, used for 24 hours and discarded. Think that piece of paper gets recycled? HA! |
On Friday evening before dark, on two wheels, I did my best to count the number of orange NO PARKING signs DPW put out for the parade. I saw 264 of them, each with a piece of paper attached, and those were just the ones zip tied to trees and utility and streetlight poles. (There must have been at least an additional 40 free-standing signs.) Last I checked, the 16-inch zip ties made in China cost the city 18 cents each. I'm thinking that DPW averaged over two ties for each sign (a tree on State Street had 5 ties wrapped around it, and poles typically require 2 or 3, occasionally 4). The cost for the disposable zip ties alone had to be at least one hundred dollars, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were a lot more than that (I may have missed some signs, of course). And all that plastic (at least 700 feet long when put end to end) got thrown away the day after our short parade.
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1 sign, 1 sheet of paper, 1 tree, 1 one hour parade, 5 disposable zip ties. |
Actually, as HUDseen readers may know, DPW often thinks it is appropriate just to clip the ties and leave them on the street or the sidewalk, which is another way of disposing of them, I suppose. And that they did.
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Sunday morning, 4 zip ties. About 75 cents. The driver of the DPW vehicle got out and picked it up when I pointed it out to him. |
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DPW's 75 cent gift to the city and, potentially, to the Hudson River. |
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A disposable half dollar, hoping to be washed into our sewer system after having served its purpose for our parade. |
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