2010 Police State and Militarism

Vancouver, Richmond police departments to move into Games related digs
by Dawn Paley, February 4, 2010, Vancouver Media Coop

As soon as the 2010 Olympic Games are over, the Vancouver Police Department will be moving in to a the facility now occupied by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games (VANOC). The Richmond Police Department will be taking over the headquarters of the Integrated Security Unit, a 2010 Olympics specific police unit which comprises the RCMP, the VPD and RPD, and the Canadian Forces.

“This move has been long anticipated and we are very pleased that the timing was such that our new building will be a valuable and cost efficient legacy of the 2010 Winter Games,” said VPD Chief Constable Jim Chu in a January 18 press release.

The move to reward police with new office space doesn't surprise critics of the Games.

"It's very appropriate that the police would move into the VANOC headquarters, since that's their little puppet masters for the duration of this Olympic regime that they've imposed on the city," said Gord Hill, the editor of no2010.com and member of the Olympics Resistance Network.

"They also got other facilities that they have now, including the Force Options Training Center near Clark Drive and First Avenue, so you see a real expansion of the police forces here in the city, as a result of the Olympic security budget that they put in place," said Hill. The Force Options Training Center is almost complete and will be ready for 2010.

Chris Shaw from 2010 Watch told the Vancouver Media Co-op that rewarding police with new equipment and new offices paid for by taxpayers was typical of the Olympics.

"[International Olympic Committee President] Jaques Rogge was very clear about this, he said you get a 'Security Legacy' and he's exactly right, that what you get," said Shaw. "Unfortunately most of us don't want that."

Both the federal government and the City of Vancouver have prioritized the upgrading of police facilities over the provision of other services in these difficult financial times. The feds will contribute $5 million to the move, and the City will contribute $10 million.

The idea that the 2010 Olympics would leave a positive legacy for Vancouverites, specifically for poor people in this city, has long been forgotten.

In addition to the boost for local police, tangible Olympic legacies for Vancouver will go to real estate developers like Bob Rennie, who developed and is marketing the 2010 athletes village through his company Rennie Marketing Systems, and to the corporations that got in on the flurry of Olympic spending while the getting was good.

Defence Industry has its Sights on the Olympics
A look at some of the companies cashing in on 2010 security spending

by Dawn Paley, February 3, 2010, Vancouver Media Coop
http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/2592
The security budget for the 2010 Olympics is upwards of $900 million, an amount that has generated criticism and backlash from Games opponents and cash-strapped Canadians alike. But while activists lament what could have been done with such a massive sum, local and international security and defense companies aren't complaining: they've hit paydirt.

So which companies are cashing in on the security bonanza during the 2010 Olympics? There's no master list, and many contracts have been granted with little fanfare, but the details of some of the recipients of Olympic security spoils are known.

Part of the security services will be donated by Olympic sponsors and suppliers, like Panasonic, responsible for providing cameras for video surveillance of Olympic venues, and Garrett, which will provide 1650 metal detectors for the games. Other security tasks will be contracted out by various government departments.

The largest single security contract awarded to one company went to Contemporary Security Canada (CSC). They won a $97.419 million contract awarded by Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to provide 5000 private security guards at the games.

CSC is a consortium of private security companies including US Based Contemporary Group, Alberta based United Protection Security Group Inc., and Aeroguard Security Ltd. Contemporary Group has netted security contracts for every Olympics since 2000. United Protection is a public company based in Edmonton, that has hired personnel under the Temporary Foreign Worker program, and has a special program to hire Indigenous people to provide protection for energy projects in areas with a high percentage of Native people.

In 2007, the company signed letter of intent with the Lil'wat Nation for policing the 2010 Games. United Protection personnel guard the Devon Energy Corporation's Jackfish tar sands extraction, pipelines in Central and Northern Alberta and the Keephills 3 coal fired power plant, located 70km from Edmonton, which is jointly owned by EPCOR and TransAlta.

Carnival Corporation may be one of the less expected beneficiaries of the Olympic security budget. The cruise ship company will receive $76 million in return for providing floating accomodation for police arriving during the Games.

Other security contractors have locked down smaller but still significant rewards for their goods and services. Among these are Honeywell Canada, granted $30.5 million by the federal government to supply and maintain "intrusion detection equipment" for use at Olympic venues.

Weapons manufacturers Thales Canada and Lockheed Martin were awarded a contract for an undisclosed amount in order to develop two "passive coherent location radar" systems for the Games.

Iavor Georgeff, the person responsible for Software Integration & Quality Assurance at VANOC, was a software engineer for Thales Australia for over two years. Thales Canada is heavily involved in Canada's role in the war in Afghanistan, and Lockheed Martin is the biggest recipient of defense contracts in the US.

Richmond's MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. received a $4.8 million contract to set-up and manage “perimeter intrusion detection solutions” for the 2010 Olympics. The company is a partner with Israel Aerospace Industries in a $100 million federal contract to build an unknown number of Heron surveillance drones, used over Afghanistan.

And while they might not get a direct piece of the security budget pie, Rheinmetall Canada will demo their overhauled Air Defence Anti Tank System (missile launchers with command post) in Vancouver during the Games. Once the five rings have left town, the system will be brought to Afghanistan.

After the Games have left Vancouver, it will be on to new places, and perhaps more importantly, on to new sources of funding for yet another epic security mobilization. The 2012 Olympics in London have been called the country's largest security operation since WWII, and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani has already taken a consulting contract to ready Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics.