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Phil Matier: Occupy Oakland Still Costing City Plenty

OAKLAND (CBS SF) - The police costs for Occupy Oakland continue to rise.

"They're talking about $3 million and counting," said KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier. "Now, there was the original Occupy cost for the big demonstration, the camps and the police actions down in the downtown. But since then, there's been sporadic demonstrations that have required the cops to come in on the weekends and a couple of weeks back demonstrators started saying, 'ok, every Saturday night we're going to demonstrate against the police' and so every Saturday night in Oakland there's this demonstration and march against the police and sometimes it's violent. Sometimes it's been ok.

It's wound up costing about $50,000 a week in overtime for the cops because they've got to bring between 75 to 100, sometimes over 100 cops in to keep an eye on things...and these costs just keep going on and on."

KCBS and Chronicle Insider Phil Matier:

The City of Oakland doesn't have much money to spare for these costs - which weren't a part of the budget.

"The only place they can turn is into their pockets," said Matier, who noted that the costs come at a time when the city payrolls are about to shrink due to cuts to the redevelopment agency.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

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