- 5:05:00 PM by mark
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- Well then we must find a way to determine when they are speeding with a legitimate need, (getting to a scene of violence or trouble without alerting the ne'er-do-wells, for instance) and when they are merely taking liberties with a false privilege. We must either give up on a useful method of approaching a scene, find a way to discriminate the cases clearly and publicly so that the common citizen can cry foul, or trust them to restrain themselves (which, arguably, isn't working for shit).
- 3:53:00 PM by Dodd
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- Regarding certain police behaviour, I'm afraid I must file a separate opinion, concurring in part and dissenting in part....
"[C]ertain police officers get the use of patrol cruisers as personal vehicles. Generally this is a perk for doing a good job or because they are an on-call detective. Only the best of the police force get to drive home in their patrol vehicles. The trade off for getting that vehicle is they are half-way on duty all the time.... Your tax dollars aren't buying him a free car, they are buying you twice the police presence for pennies on the dollar to their usual rate....
[T]he cops are supposed to be speeding without their lights on. We paid good money to hire people who have been trained to drive like that. They are patrolling folks, they need to catch up to the reckless speeders or it doesn't fucking work. Duh."
I wholeheartedly agree with the former, because I know that allowing police officers to take their patrol cars home does in fact serve the purpose of increasing police presence. That's a good thing, and pretty cheap, too. And besides, it's not like we pay cops well or anything. A small cost perk like that isn't a big deal, espcially since we get direct benefits from it.
As to the latter, I must vociferously disagree. Cops don't do 90 with no sirens on the 264 because they're trying to catch up to someone. They do it because they can - no-one will pull them over and give them a ticket. The most effective means of enforcing speed limits is for a cop to drive down the freeway at the posted limit. Not a soul will pass him. Less effective, but far too remunerative for them to ever give it up, is setting up a speed trap. Blazing down the freeway at 90, which they would give me a 6 point ticket for, is not a means to a legitimate end for an on-duty cop.
Patrol cars have sirens to alert people when they're on a call or to pull over a malefactor. They drive 90 with no lights or sirens for no other reason than that they can get away with it. And that is not a perk we should be allowing. The rule technically is that they should be abiding by the same laws we have to except when it is necessary, in a specific case, not to. I aver that our men in blue should be strictly required to abide by that rule.
- 3:20:00 PM by mark
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- Urethane tires move closer to reality for cars. Once upon a time, in Denver, if you mentioned the very thought of this the people who worked or had family at Gates Rubber would have beat you to death. =)
- 3:00:00 PM by mark
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- Ah, animal cracker distribution research continues. I still am not sure that that is a penguin. Maybe he should research other flightless fowl that could be in a zoo. Sure, penguins are popular with the ladies but that may not be related.
Read up on zoo animal crackers with help of Google. Check out the ranting, the selling, the name dropping, the gibbering, the prefix matching, the decorating, the fetishing, and composing.
BTW, at the age of 32 I still ritually behead them with the first bite. Sad but true.
- 12:48:00 PM by mark
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- Quoting from a paper I read, (since I seem to be police and law obsessed this week):
Oh and let's not forget about the regular activities: Taking the wife and kids out on a family outing in the police cruiser that taxpayers are paying for, and the ever-popular doing 90 miles per hour on the highway with no lights or siren on! They're doing the very things they arrest civilians for every day!
First off, we need to stick to one exclaimation point per paragraph please. =) Thanks
Secondly, certain police officers get the use of patrol cruisers as personal vehicles. Generally this is a perk for doing a good job or because they are an on-call detective. Only the best of the police force get to drive home in their patrol vehicles. The trade off for getting that vehicle is they are half-way on duty all the time. If someone flags them down while they are on the way to the daughter's soccer practice then they get to stop and make her late. Your tax dollars aren't buying him a free car, they are buying you twice the police presence for pennies on the dollar to their usual rate. And why complain about the cop with kids and a wife. The cops with family and ties to the neighborhoods are the ones who don't get into other trouble. If any of my tax money isn't laser-focussed on a direct benefit, please spend it like this rather than giving it to crack addicts and lottery officials. Thanks.
Third, the cops are supposed to be speeding without their lights on. We paid good money to hire people who have been trained to drive like that. They are patrolling folks, they need to catch up to the reckless speeders or it doesn't fucking work. Duh. Plus, if they flip on the lights they warn people they are coming which really doesn't help them do their job. Lights and sirens are for announcing their presense in an emergency and making sure people know they are coming, they are really useless for sneaking up on people and catching them.
- 12:10:00 PM by mark
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- Have you flown on an airplane? In bad weather? If so you have no doubt encountered the wonderful experience of turbulence. The shaking and shuddering are fun. The sound of the plane (which honestly is way louder than you thought even a craft tearing itself apart could get) is nightmareish. The huge *whomp-whomp* and thudding as you cut through different air streams is unreal. Your teeth are rattling and your guts are jumping around and all the sudden you can feel the belt around your waist as your shoulders lift away from the seat just a hair. Basically it is everything you pay for when riding a rollercoaster only you can't get off and there is no height requirement.
The worst of it was the sudden silent drop. You are slamming left and right and bouncing and all the sudden it is like you popped over a rise at high speed. All at once it is quiet, smooth and you are plummeting to your doom with your heart and stomach competing for space in your now crowded neck. And then you hit the bottom of the low pressure zone and *wham* you smack seat like a rocket when off. Those express elevator escapades always get the screaming to stop for a second. It isn't that easy to scream when your small intestine is taking holiday in your ribcage, I suppose.
The reason that all this comes up is that I was telling a friend of mine (who complained to me about how air-headed some of her family is) about a friend of mine from years ago. Conversing with that girl (a blonde who knew more blonde jokes than me) was occasionally just like the worst turbulence described above. She wasn't air-headed, she was in fact pretty darn smart. She just had this way of conversing where, once in a while, she could rip the whole universe out from under you, leaving you gasping for air and wondering how bad hitting bottom was going to be. Which is why, rather than calling her "Air-head" we called her "Air-Pockets". *whoomp*
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