How Are The Little People Faring, Mayor Parker?

Tilman Fertitta is a local "restaurateur".  He throws a yearly bash that employs dozens of HPD officers and specialists to simulate SWAT scenarios for the amusement of the City's political class.  This year's To-Do included demonstrations of SWAT assaults in his palatial back yard, complete with explosions and police choppers thundering overhead.

Is there any way that this exhibition is not inappropriate?  Let's start with the use of SWAT officers, police cruisers and weapons for the amusement of a privileged few, not to mention that not one but two HPD helicopters hovered over the house, illuminating not just the party but the neighborhood, and no doubt upsetting any number of house pets in the process.

The particular irony of the use of police choppers for entertainment purposes is that in 2010, Mayor Parker herself ordered their hours and staffing restricted so as to free up funds for other priorities within the cash-strapped HPD.  Who’d of thought this is what she had in mind?  And while we’re totaling up the bill for Houston taxpayers, let us not forget the expenses for the HPD officer that was injured two weeks ago when they did a "dry run" of the phony assault, or the astronomical cost of the liability policy they no doubt took out to compensate victims in case one of the helicopters crashed.

Unless, of course, there was no such policy.

I was curious as to how clueless they all were until guest of honor Mayor Annise Parker gushed to the society columns about how glad she was that this annual event was being returned to the luxurious Fertitta mansion in River Oaks instead of using his dusty old hangar at Hobby airport.  And as I read further, I remembered thinking that the only thing missing to make this story completely surreal was if somebody was to award Mayor Parker, say, a crystal replica of an HPD hand gun - and then they went ahead and did it.

Somehow, you just know that all of the Swells got a parting gift.

The whole deal reminded me of the movie “The Hunger Games”: A pampered Elite sipping champagne and eating lobster whilst being amused by staged combat, clueless or uncaring of the fact that the city was crumbling beneath their feet, much less that an oppressed citizenry might take a notion to rise up against them.

Katniss Everdeen, where are you when we need you?

Pete Smith
Cypress, TX