LEFT OF THE RIGHT: Balloon Boy Saga Reveals Law Enforcement Exaggerations

It’s hard to imagine anyone hasn’t heard about the boy that “WASN’T” in a helium balloon when it supposedly launched without it’s tether. After a frantic 911 call from the boy‘s parents claiming their son Falcon was inside the balloon that looked like a flying saucer from a 1950‘s SciFi movie, authorities launched an all out effort to try and rescue the boy. Live coverage of the story streamed out from CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News to televisions all over the world. But before the balloon even landed suspicions were already raised. Personally, as I watched I couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t see some kind of bulge indicating the boy’s body was inside. I mean as flimsy as the thing was, you’d have thought the boys body would have caused it to sag significantly. Another thing I thought of but was never pointed out on any of the news channels was that the balloon was filled with helium leaving nothing for the boy to breathe. Therefore if he had been inside the balloon all they would have found when it landed would have been a corps.

But as it turned out the boy was never in the balloon and authorities have determined that the whole thing was a publicity stunt that had been in the planning for the last 2 weeks. In fact documents found at the home of the family in question indicate they had already signed an agreement with an unidentified media company.

However the point of my article is not about the hoax perpetrated by this family. It’s about how law enforcement tends to exaggerate how much it cost to respond. Or how law enforcement officials seem to exaggerate numbers in all kinds of cases.

Estimates about how much the rescue effort to save the boy that wasn’t in the balloon are all over the place. I heard one source say it was as much as 2 million dollars. The sheriff said he didn’t have an estimate but said the 2 military helicopters cost over $14,000.00. Really, fourteen grand to have 2 helicopters fly circles around a balloon for 2 hours? This seems pretty dubious to me. Just a few years ago I rented a 5 passenger Jet Ranger with pilot for 2 hours and the total cost was less than a thousand dollars. And 2 million for the whole effort? Do they realize that 2 million bucks could cover the annual salaries of more than 50 people earning the median wage in America? A quick calculation reveals that even if every person dispatched to rescue the boy earned $50 an hour, and every vehicle used cost $100 an hour, they would have to have used 20,000 people and 10,000 vehicles to add up to 2 million dollars. For some reason I doubt the 2 million dollar guess.

Unfortunately this kind of fudging of numbers is not limited to this story. Reports about law enforcement folks fudging numbers is not new. We’ve all heard stories about “police seize marijuana plants with a street value of half a million, a million, what ever…” But how do they calculate these numbers. I have had numerous candid conversations with cops and what they tell me is astonishing. Street value means what the drugs will sell for on the street. What they don’t tell you is that only the buds from the plant are saleable. But when the police weigh the plants, they weigh the whole thing buds, leaves, stalks, roots, and even the soil clinging to the roots. This gives a weight 10 times what the saleable portion of the plant actually weighs. So, when the cops say they seized an amount of marijuana with a street value of say a hundred thousand dollars, it’s more likely the real street value is around ten thousand. Another example was a bank that got robbed in my home town a couple years ago. The police reported the robbers got away with over 200 thousand dollars. But I knew one of the tellers there who said it was more like just 2 thousand dollars.

So, either law enforcement folks can’t do simple arithmetic or they are simply lying. And it’s not hard to figure out why they lie. One of the biggest concerns for police chiefs and law enforcement advocates is image. Who could argue that reporting a drug bust worth a million dollars is a lot more impressive than reporting one worth only a couple thousand.

The problem is that media consumers don’t get an accurate picture of what is really happening. Truth is truth and anyone disseminating information to the public needs to be made accountable for what they say. Yes we have problems, but solving them is only made more difficult when exaggerations such as these are thrown into the mix.

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Devin Barber, Politics Correspondent

Devin’s column, “Left Of The Right” published weekly or more to Gather Essentials: Politics is a Blue Collar Democrats take on current political news.

Devin was raised by proud Roosevelt Democrats. Being the son of parents counted among the throng of Americans displaced by the Great Depression has given Devin a deep rooted passion for causes dealing with the poor and the working class.

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