Security for Trump's border wall prototypes cost $1,175,840

The San Diego County Sheriff's Department incurred nearly $900,000 of added costs to provide patrols and security during the month-long construction of eight border wall prototypes by the federal government on Otay Mesa, records show.

Those costs pushed the total local law enforcement extra expenses — primarily overtime and supplies — to more than $1 million for the project.

Most of the expense for the sheriff’s department came in overtime pay for deputies. The county paid out $764,278 in overtime during the month — more than it paid deputies in the regular wages, which amounted to $715,170.

The overtime costs were not the only expenses for the county, which patrolled the area between Sept. 26 and Oct. 26 near where the prototype walls were constructed. Other costs were:

$118,092.66 for miles of chain link fencing, “k-rail” barriers and signs installed before the prototype building began. The fencing wrapped around large parcels of private property on Otay Mesa. The county said it was needed to protect environmentally sensitive habitats in the event that large-scale protests against the project materialized.

Plus:
$11,101 for services and supplies.
$4,470 for an environmental consultant and permits.

Adding it all up, the county paid out $897,942.22 in overtime, supplies, consultant and permit costs for the project. With the $715,000 in regular wages that would have been paid anyway, the total comes to $1.6 million.

The costs to the county, provided under a California Public Records Act request by The San Diego Union-Tribune, far exceed the costs to the City of San Diego, which also had police patrolling the streets near the building site off Enrico Fermi Drive.

The city paid out $277,898 in overtime, services and supplies. It paid out another $548,446 in regular salaries and fringe benefits to officers scheduled to be on duty anyway and re-assigned to the border project. That brought the city’s total expenses to $826,345.

Adding the overtime, supplies and other non-salary costs for the two agencies together shows that the city and county spent $1,175,840 in security costs for the border wall project.

The city said it is unlikely it will be reimbursed for those costs, though it is exploring options. A spokeswoman for the county could not say whether the county would be reimbursed.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sd-me-sheriff-wall-20180113-story.html