Bizarre, Criminal law, Politics, Society, Torts

Detroit’s $18.5 Million Solitaire Game

180px-KPatienceDetroit has long held the reputation as one of the worst run cities in the nation, particularly with its top politicians continually the subject of corruption scandals and criminal indictments, here. Now, an internal report has revealed that the city spent more than $18.5 million on an in-car computer system that is so poorly designed and used that investigators found that “its most common use today is a platform to play solitaire.”

The recommendation is now to tear out the entire system and start over but there is no apparent recommendation that anyone be fired for selecting or maintaining this system.

The actual cost is expected to be higher because the department failed to save receipts and records on many costs associated with the system, which works less than 17 percent of the time.

This system was an important component in reforms addressing cases of police abuse. The department, however, proceeded to pick a substandard system and then use it primarily as a table for card games.

In the meantime, the city has lost $116 million in settlements and court judgments for abuses in the last few years.

For the full story, click here.

4 thoughts on “Detroit’s $18.5 Million Solitaire Game”

  1. Is Detroit no more corrupt than any other major American City, but lacks the cover-up skills to keep it quiet? I saw the corruption in NYC. I’ve read of the history of corruption in LA, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Atlanta. New Orleans was never a bastion of civic ethics. Boston has had its’ peccadillo’s. Florida also has some contenders in the game. I believe that the more local you go in our country, the greater the corruption. This is a reverse of Republican cant, but the Feds, with all their problems and with our Congressional clowns are probably less corrupt. We as a nation are actually in many ways less corrupt than three quarters of the planet. It is the use of our power and the push for economic empire that makes us a threat to the world, as for corruption in many ways we’re amateurs.

  3. Does this really surprise anyone who mayor was convicted of perjury, lost his law licenses and now sell computer equipment for somebody in Plano, Texas and whose mother was a congresswoman that lost her election because of her son’s screw up?

    Certainly not me.

    I will say that Window’s Vista makes a nice platform to play games as well. But it was less that 1500 dollars.

  4. I hope the individuals responsible for spending all that money on such a poorly designed computer system are sentenced to solitaire-y confinement.

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