Mardi Gras cost less than in previous years

The San Luis Obispo Police Department released the final cost for this year’s Mardi Gras law enforcement efforts.

Police Captain Dan Blanke said the cost to the city of San Luis Obispo for officers and anti-Mardi Gras publicity was $49,446, which is nearly half than last year’s total.

The total does not include the help of California Highway Patrol and other allied law-enforcement agencies. Blanke said that these organizations’ efforts are still covered by taxpayers’ money, but are not billed to the city.

The cost was reduced because the number of deployed officers was scaled down to meet the nightly needs of Mardi Gras weekend. Friday night required 100 deployed officers, Saturday required 70, and Fat Tuesday required 13.

Blanke said police get a “good idea what the rest of the night will be like” from a quick tour of the city at around 11 p.m., then decide whether or not to send officers home.

Since 2004, the police department’s increased Mardi Gras enforcement has cost taxpayers $2 million.

Blanke said police don’t want to see the riotous Mardi Gras behavior start all over again.

“We don’t want to spend all that money and go through all that grief,” he said, adding that the stepped-up enforcement was only supposed to last for three years. But in November, police became aware of a group on the popular social-networking Web site Facebook.com that called for a return of Mardi Gras. The group had 9,000 members at various universities.

He added that San Luis Obispo police monitored the website with the help of the University Police Department.

“People put stuff up on the Internet all the time; hopefully it won’t grow legs,” Blanke said, adding that Police Chief Deborah Linden, along with Cal Poly administrators, met with the students who created the Facebook group and showed them video of 2004’s riots.

“They were legitimately like wow, we had no idea,” he said, adding that the students were then cooperative in encouraging the group to abandon their Mardi Gras plans. However cooperative the students were, Blanke said that the police department still had to beef up enforcement because “you can’t unring a bell.”

Asked what the police department’s plans are for next year, Blanke said, “Hopefully people won’t rise up again. We’ll just have to spend more of the taxpayer’s money to keep it safe.”