For drivers who don't want to commit to a new car purchase, leasing has become a popular option. But for a police department in a city with a struggling economy, running up a $65,000 bill for what amounts to renting an nine-year-old car seems like a bit of an oversight. That's just what the Detroit Police Department has been doing since 2003 when it leased a 2004 model Dodge Intrepid at the lofty price of $608 per month. The problem? They've been paying that price ever since.
The original terms of the lease stated that the car would be returned in 2005, at which point the department could choose to buy it outright to take delivery of a newer model. That trade-in never happened, and so far the city has handed out a total of over $56,000 in monthly payments. But that's not all: Because the department has gone well over the original mileage agreement, they owe nearly $10,000 in additional fees, bringing their total bill to well over $65,000. That's $65,000 for a car that could be bought new in 2003 for less than $25,000.
But that's just one vehicle, and the city is currently paying for over a hundred leased cars currently in use, and all of them are operating on expired leases. The seemingly careless spending could total several millions of dollars in the end, and the city apparently has no plans to reverse the practice.
The ridiculous waste of taxpayer money was discovered by local news station WXYZ, after they obtained the sales records through a Freedom of Information Act request. The station spoke with the president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, Joseph Duncan, who seemed just as outraged at the mismanagement as the taxpayers will be, stating "This is malfeasance. It makes no sense to me."
The Twittersphere was a-buzz about the polarizing, digital resurrection of rapper Tupac Shakur during Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre's headlining set at the Coachella Music Festival Sunday night. According to MTV News, the stunningly detailed hologram of the rapper (who died in 1996) could have cost from $100,000 to over $400,000 to create!
[Related: Coachella 2012 Sunday: Hologram Tupac, Flesh & Blood Rihanna]
While the actual specifics of how the hologram works are under wraps until after the festival closes, in an interview with Dr. Dre last week on Los Angeles radio station Power 106 revealed that Coachella organizers had given the rapper a "blank check" to do whatever he wanted for his weekend sets. Before the festival, there were initial rumors of a hologram homage to rapper, and frequent Dre and Snoop collaborator, Nate Dogg, who passed away last May due to complications from multiple strokes. With a second set coming up the second weekend of Coachella, chances are a hologram Nate Dogg may be the surprise guest joining the set, perhaps even along with hologram Tupac!
San Diego company AV Concepts, whose work includes Brad Pitt's reverse aging in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," the youthful Jeff Bridges in "TRON: Legacy," and the holographic Gorillaz performance for the 2005 Grammys, was hired on to create the Tupac hologram. AV Concepts president Nick Smith said of the technology, "You can take their likenesses and voice and ... take people that haven't done concerts before or perform music they haven't sung and digitally recreate it."
With this technology in existence, there is a massive catalog of deceased or audience-fearing artists that have the possibility of performing live. Thus with the under-million price tag, Smith described the process as being "affordable" since it does away with the cost of transporting artists and the ability to "put [artists] in every venue in the country." While this may seem strange and almost disrespectful to some to bring back the dead in such a way, Shakur's mother Afeni Shakur was "positively thrilled" with hologram Tupac's performance, according to TMZ