Holiday DWI focus

Every year in December, the Lincoln Police Department puts a special focus on drunk driving enforcement. Since the vast majority of drunk driving arrests occur on the late shift, Capt. Marty Fehringer, one of the overnight Duty Commanders, was this year's coordinator, and sent me the results: 213 DWI arrests by LPD during the month of December.  This is the all-time single month record for drunk driving arrests in Lincoln. As I have often said, there is nothing that a police officer does that has a greater impact on public safety than arresting a drunk driver.  The officers who contributed to this project should be complimented for their efforts.

We weren't alone in focusing on DWI during the month, and the local news has reported on the results from the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office, and the statewide arrests by the Nebraska State Patrol.

Here's an interesting way of looking at LPD's drunk driving arrests: a temporal grid of the past few years, cases.  I've blogged before about using this method for visualizing data sets that have strong time-and-day patterns, which is clearly evident in the DWI arrests. You can click on the image to enlarge the view.

This grid, by the way, is a screen capture from our latest version of CrimeView Dashboard.  It took me less than five minutes to prepare this for my blog this morning. Performing this analysis and producing a graphic like this a few years ago would have made a decent project for the week.  It also would have required a few thousand dollars worth of software on a fat honking PC, and a GIS analyst with extensive training and experience.  Now it's a few minutes on my wife's low-end Dell with an iffy WiFi connection in our little home office, while sipping my first cup of joe. Pretty incredible, when you think about it.

First roundabout?

Saturday's Lincoln Journal Star always contains an insert, the Neighborhood Extra.  There is a small feature in the insert every week called "Hometown Quiz."  The quiz posits three questions about Lincoln's history, the answers to which are published in the following week's edition.  Last week, Tonja read one of the questions to me: "Where was the first roundabout in Lincoln?"  I took a stab, although I was a little doubtful: "9th and M Street."

When the paper arrived this past weekend, I was a little surprised to see the printed answer: "31st Street near Pine Lake Road."  I think not.  Never mind that there is no 31st Street near Pine Lake Road; I imagine the author was thinking about the little roundabout at the intersection of S. 32nd Street and a private roadway named Zermatt Drive that feeds the SouthPointe Pavilions shopping center.

I guessed 9th and M Streets because I recall seeing a late19th or early 20th century photo depicting a horse fountain in the middle of M street, looking west, with the Lincoln Paint and Color Company (now known as  Color Court) building in the background.  It caught my eye because at the time I first saw the image, the police station was located at that corner.  If that fountain was in the intersection at S. 9th Street, it would have caused the intersection to function exactly like a modern roundabout.

Lacking any confirmation that the fountain was in the intersection, rather than midblock, I still think it is quite likely that there have been circulators in Lincoln's distant past that are long since forgotten.  I know for sure, however, that the S. 32nd and Zermatt Drive example is nowhere close to the first.  The huge rotary at S. 16th and Centerpark Road has been there for at least 40 years, and still ranks as the largest roundabout in Lincoln.  It has been carrying traffic all day long, including the largest tractor-trailer rigs some pretty busy shift changes (Square D, Weaver's, and the Miller & Paine warehouse, come to mind). Funny, this roundabout has served well for several decades without any of the consternation that seems to accompany current iterations of this rather ancient intersection form.

Holiday shopping

During December, 148 shoplifting reports were filed in Lincoln.  Here's a partial list of some of the more interesting articles appearing on those police Incident Reports, proving that thieves will steal anything:

Chapstick
Kitty Litter
Pillowcases
Thermometer
Picnic Basket
Shopping bags
Panties
AirWick refills
Red Alert security kit
Navel jewelry (not to be confused with Naval jewelry)
Superglue
Hot dog buns
Chili cheese dogs
Footies
Pla-do
Fingernails
2 green limes (do they come in other colors?)
Shot glasses
Tequila
Vodka
Cognac
Beer (lots of)
Cologne

Wake up call

If you didn't catch this tragic story on the national news this week, it is difficult to read, but should serve as a wake up call for everyone to check and test your smoke detectors, formulate and test the family fire drill.  While your at it, give up smoking--one of the leading sources of ignition for house fires in Lincoln and nationwide

A Christmas prayer

This was the first Christmas since 1981, as I recall, that I wasn't at work. I only remember two Christmas days in the past 38 that I was off duty.  It was strange being at home, and I have a new appreciation for the feeling Tonja has had these many years.  All day long, I thought about the officers, firefighters, and dispatchers working on Christmas.

I also found myself wondering what normal people do on Christmas, until I discovered my own answer: they go to the movies.  My own desire to see the latest Mission Impossible flick proved to be, indeed, a mission impossible.  That will have to wait for a later date.  Late in the afternoon, though, we slipped out on a mission of our own, to find a recipient of a random act of kindness, an annual tradition for Tonja and her coworkers.  We tapped on the window of a young mom with two toddlers at a convenience store, and handed an envelope of cash through the car door, with a simple "Merry Christmas". 

It wasn't an easy day for the emergency services personnel.  A tragic gunshot suicide on Christmas day occurred.  I pray that the victim's family and friends are able to cope with the loss. Although this was the most major case, there was plenty of other work to do.  The police department responded to 169 incidents on Christmas.  That's a little less than half a normal Saturday, but it included a dozen assaults, three child abuse cases, two death investigations, four burglaries, and the usual flotsam and jetsam of human behavior.  You've got to wonder about the motivation for shoplifting a six pack of Earthquake beer on Chirstmas.  Is that a microbrew?

Lincoln Fire & Rescue responded to 52 incidents.  During the early morning hours on the 26th, we responded to a house fire where a young father was critically injured. Fortunately, is wife and two children escaped unharmed.  I thank God that he is still alive, and pray for his recovery.

Had me stumped

Every couple of months I do a call-in to a morning radio talk show on KLIN Radio, Jack & John in the Morning.  Jack Mitchell and John Bishop have quite a shtick, and we enjoy bantering back and forth--with a little genuine content mixed in.

This morning, at about 7:45 they asked me how many phone calls the 911 Center in Lincoln handles per day.  I was stumped, and admitted that I couldn't answer.  This caused quite a bit of guffawing on their part, as I apparently have a reputation for being able to spew obscure data on demand.   When they regained their compsure, they closed out the segment by telling me that they'd be looking forward to a post on my blog with the information.

Here it is.  In 2010, we handled 373,056 incoming phone calls.  That is an average of 1,022 per day.  Hope that was quick enough for you!

Police iPad advice

Apparently if you Google the terms "iPad" and "Police", a couple of my past blog posts are near the top, concerning my own experiences using an iPad as a tool in my job.  As a result, I get an occasional contact from other police & fire types on this subject.

Friday, a captain at a small department emailed me.  I'm not sure if he is comfortable with me naming the agency, so for the moment, I won't.  He had attended my presentation at a conference earlier this year, and had gone home determined to look into equipping his staff with tablets.  It appears he found a funding source, and now has 14 Apple iPads on order. He was looking for any advice or tips.  Here's my reply:

That is awesome! Congratulations. Here are my top three applications: 

1. Google Maps.  A good, current street map that follows you around, aerial photos if you need them, and street-level images.  You have good StreetView coverage in your town, and this works great on an iPad.  With 14 units, you could actually set up Google Latitude and create what amounts to an AVL system for your department--you'll all be able to see where one another are on the map.  This is how my family keeps track of me.  

2. The Apple web browser is Safari, and the iPad version is preinstalled.  Think of any website that you and your colleagues find useful on your desktop computers. If you have an Internet connection, you'll be able to access almost all of those same sites on the iPads. There are a few web components that do not work on iPads--sites that use Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, for example, but this is pretty minor.  One of the cool things you can do with an iPad is to take any bookmark you've set in the browser, and create it as an icon on the desktop. Stuff that you use often, like the sex offender registry, state statutes, state inmate locator, and any other websites can be set up as a one-click icon on the screen.  

3.  Any documents that you want to deploy--procedure manuals, handbooks, telephone contact lists, etc.--can be loaded up in iBooks, as .pdf files.  I've got a ton of these, and it works really, really well for arranging all those printed documents we're used to carrying in a three-ring binder!  If you get yourself a free Dropbox account, you can store the master documents in a shared folder, install the iPad Dropbox app on each iPad, and this would be a great way of distributing new or updated .pdfs.

I take it from your email that you are getting the WiFi only iPads, rather than the 3G model.  If you have a wireless network at the office, schools, home, etc., you can connect to those whenever you are close enough, but to really get the maximum value out of your iPads, you're going to need that Internet connection when you are on the move. A mobile hotspot like a MiFi or Overdrive wireless hotspot would be the solution, as you note.  One problem with that is that you then have another battery to go dead. Be careful when you go shopping for your mobile hotspot, and try to find one that will continue to transmit and receive while connected to the charge cord--some do, some don't--and make sure you've the cell provider you select has good coverage.

You'll have some work ahead getting fourteen iPads set up and activated, and some ongoing administrative work keeping application updates current. This isn't difficult, it's just going to require a little time now and then.  You can lock those iPads down in lots of different ways, to prevent users from accidentally deleting applications, or buying applications, or installing stuff, or using certain features like youtube, videos, iTunes, in app purchases, and so forth. 

I've got a post on my personal blog about some of my favorite apps:
http://lpd304.blogspot.com/2011/01/police-ipad-update.html 

Best,  

  Tom Casady  

'tis the season

I counted 22 cases reported to the police theft or vandalism involving Christmas lawn displays since Thanksgiving. Fortunately, no babies have been reported stolen from mangers (yet), but we are missing a small flock of geese, and a damaged donkey. A reindeer named Rudolph has been smashed, and another unnamed reindeer is missing in action; possibly Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Cupid, Comet, Donner, or Blitzen.

A polar bear has been stolen, along with two penguins, one snowman, and a pair of Santas.  One of those Santas has a serial number, so if you encounter a shady character trying to sell you a Santa out of the trunk of his car at a too-good-to-be-true price, be sure to check the base for the number 8500, lest you purchase stolen goods.

In a twist of irony documented under case number B1-116522, someone stole the Grinch that stole Christmas from a home on North 15th Street.  What goes around, comes around.