Fired up

Wednesday night, I attended a City informational meeting about the N. 14th and Superior construction project.  It was a lively crowd--one of the more fired up groups I have seen in a while.  Nonetheless, I was happy to be there, and pleased to talk to a lot of people one on one.  It seemed to me that the great majority of those that attended were opposed to the construction design, which calls for a roundabout and for two pedestrian underpasses. I don't know whether the dialog changed many minds.

Obviously, this isn't my project to defend or explain, but I was asked to step forward and tell people what I thought about the public safety aspects.  Some guy in the back kept yelling at me and interrupting, but eventually was called out by the crowd. I told the audience what we had experienced at Lincoln's first significant arterial roundabout, which was a huge reduction in traffic crashes, and an even larger reduction in injury crashes.  As previously noted here on my blog, in the eight years since the roundabout at 33rd and Sheridan was installed the overall number of crashes fell by 80%,  and the number of injury crashes fell by 92%.  There have been two crashes at 33rd and Sheridan so far this year--neither with injury. Back in 1998, there were 24--thirteen of which were injury accidents.  

These are the facts, and however you feel about roundabouts, you can't ignore these results. My own data and  experience inclines me to believe that professional traffic engineers don't make this stuff up, and I tend to accept the research evidence on roundabouts they present in part because it is confirmed by my own observation. I told people that from a safety standpoint, I was more concerned with the impact of the year-long construction project than the intersection design.  Construction zones pose hazards for both motorists and workers, and inevitably result in traffic on local residential streets from those motorists who ignore the posted detour routes.

A lot of concern was voiced about pedestrian underpasses planned on the south and west legs of the intersection, where the lay of the land supports this method of crossing.  Apparently the grade on the east and north legs is such that an underpass is not practical.  Some people are worried that these underpasses will be a place for ne'er-do-wells to lurk, close to the nearby middle school.  I reminded folks that there are many pedestrian underpasses in Lincoln. I'm in a few of them virtually every day, and I've never seen a problem like this in Lincoln's underpasses, with the exception of the bridges along the Salt Creek levy where we sometimes have vagrants hanging out.  This probably is due to the proximity of these bridges to the railyards and the People's City Mission, which does not admit drunks or allow drinking on the grounds.  About the worse thing I've seen elsewhere is graffiti in a few locations. I just don't think 14th and Superior is going to be an attractive place for transients to crash.

It will be up to us to do what we can to ensure that any such mischief in the pedestrian underpasses is suppressed, and I think we can do so effectively.  The alternative, at-grade pedestrian crossings of a seven lane conventional intersection, is worse, in my opinion, than the risk of trolls in the underpass.  Several people I spoke with preferred the idea of an overhead pedestrian bridge.  While I like the better visibility in a bridge, in order to comply with accessibility requirements, such structures built at a site like this would need to incorporate an exceptionally long approach or a long ramp with switchbacks in order to to keep the grade sufficiently low.  Lincoln doesn't have any of this kind, but I've seen this type of overpass built in other cities, and then rarely used because the route of travel is so long that the very people it was intended for it will not walk the extra distance. I'm thinking of one in particular where the pedestrians almost always cross at street level right underneath a huge million-dollar-plus pedestrian overpass.

In a perfect world, we wouldn't have situations where middle school kids need to cross one of our largest arterial streets, but there isn't much the City can do about this, and the next best practical solution at 14th and Superior appears to be these underpasses.  Sure wish we had one at Highway 34 and Fletcher for the Schoo Middle School students, and I wish the kids going to Scott Middle School didn't have to navigate 27th and Pine Lake, either. At these large intersections lots of distractions, I especially worry about right-turn-on-red vehicles failing to pay attention to a pedestrian or bike crossing in the crosswalk.

Philanthrophic binge drinking

Just when you think you've seen everything, something comes along to remind you that the human imagination knows no limits. I couldn't possibly make this stuff up.

Yesterday, a colleague at the University of Nebraska forwarded a URL to me of a website advertising a "Crawl for Cancer"--a three hour bar crawl on October 27th in which 10-person teams are served twenty (20) pitchers of beer. At first, I thought it was a joke.

After a few minutes on their site and a little Googling, I realized that this was not a hoax. I got out my favorite online BAC calculator, and plugged the numbers in. Then, I sent the following email to the mysterious contact address at crawlforcancer.org:

From: Tom Casady
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 2:10 PM
To: 'info@crawlforcancer.org'
Subject: Who are you, what are you doing?

It appears you are sponsoring some type of event in our fair City which could potentially result in a violation of the law--serving alcohol to an intoxicated person. According to the promotional material on your website, the plan is for teams of 10 people to visit five bars over the course of three hours, and to consume four pitchers of beer at each venue--a total of 20 pitchers per team.

A typical pitcher of beer is 60 ounces. If 10 people in a team consume 20 pitchers of beer, that would be the equivalent of ten standard 12-ounce beers for each person (not counting any alcohol consumed at the "...after-party with entertainment and yep, more beer.") A 175 pound man consuming this volume over three hours would have a blood alcohol concentration of about .156% at the conclusion. A 125 pound woman would be .240%.

Since it's illegal to provide alcohol to a person who is intoxicated, I am somewhat concerned for the well-being of our local liquor licensees who are participating in this event. I am assembling as many of the owners/managers from the 11 bars listed as can be located for a meeting this afternoon to discuss these data with them.

So, before I start pointing this out to the City Council, the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission, and the local news media, I'd like to give you the opportunity to explain yourself. I'm particularly interested in financial information: how are the funds which are collected allocated, and what percentage does your organization keep? There are no beneficiaries listed on your website for the Lincoln event. The tab for "Benefiting Charities" has a message: "Coming soon."

Our local and State chapters of the American Cancer Society are unfamiliar with your organization, and their director seemed somewhat shocked at the concept of promoting an afternoon of heavy drinking as a fund raiser for cancer. Do you have any specific information about who the beneficiaries are to be from the Lincoln "Crawl for Cancer"? Are there any administrative costs for operating your organization that are paid from the funds collected for team entry fees? Is there any other redeeming information about your organization you would like me to be aware of?

Tom Casady
Chief of Police
Lincoln Police Department
575 S. 10th Street
Lincoln, NE 68508
402.441.7237

Yesterday afternoon, my staff spoke with Samantha Green (the contact person on the website) to make sure she received this email, and I also left a message requesting a return call on the voicemail of the local contact person, Jennifer. I have not had a response from either.

The meeting with the bar representatives hastily called on Tuesday afternoon went well. I just shared the basic math of time, quantity and body weight with them. Some of the bar managers explained that the promoter buys the kegs and keeps the team entry fee to distribute to whatever charities the local sponsor chooses. This arrangement would also violate a couple of the rules and regulations of the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission concerning multiple drink sales and resale of alcohol without a license. The Commission's director, Hobart Rupe, was there to emphasize that, and we had a brief discussion about how they could support charitable work without such risks.

In my conversation with the staff at the American Cancer Society, I learned that the ACS nutritional guidelines suggest no more than two alcoholic beverages daily for men, and one for women.

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  

Oh, deer

A deer crashed through a bedroom window into a house  in midtown Lincoln last week, causing around $5,000 damage before exiting through the front door.  It's not entirely unusual to have such events.  I recall a few years ago when a deer walked into KMart and caused quite a commotion.

Capt. Marty Fehringer had a good deer story from early Friday morning. Officers were busy with the investigation of a serious injury accident, in which a minivan ran over a man laying in the street during a rainstorm (you can't make this stuff up). As they were finishing up near Centennial and O Streets, right at 2:00 AM, a deer came prancing down O Street, right through the height of bar break, eventually heading south and disappearing into the neighborhood near the State Capitol.

That's the heart of downtown, and you have to wonder how she managed to get that far into the urban environment.  Over the years I can recall police scrapes with deer, turkey, cattle of various breeds, and even as ostrich.  Don't mess with a 6 foot tall bird, by the way--at least so I'm told.  

Can't make this stuff up IV

This one hit the news wires and has become quite a phenomenon.

Two-ply preferred

First it was the beer box bandit, now it is Mr. Toilet Paper Head.  I really can’t make this stuff up.

How much is that doggie in the window?

One dollar.  You just can't make this stuff up.  Lightly edited to protect identities, click to enlarge.

Can't make this stuff up

What more can I say? (click to enlarge)

Like I always say…

…you just can’t make this stuff up. I think we could add one more identifying characteristic to the suspect’s description, though. 

Flying Hoover?

I can't make this stuff up...

In the report stack

You read police reports, you find a lot of interesting material.  As I have often said, you just can’t make this stuff up. 

I have edited the original report somewhat to protect the identities of those involved. 

Another try

Sunday morning, an email was in my inbox informing me of a crime that occurred a short distance away from my home. It was a larceny from auto. Someone entered the victim’s vehicle, rummaged around in the glove box, and ultimately stole a pair of insulated coveralls. It looked like the window may have been cracked just enough that the thief was able to pull it out far enough to hit the lock button. I know that sounds a little odd, but with some vehicles, there is a surprising amount of “give” in the window.

One unusual aspect of this case is that the victim’s vehicle was in the driveway. This is somewhat rare. Parking in the driveway (when possible) is usually a good preventative measure. I am going to add “make sure your windows are rolled all the way up” to my list of advice on preventing thefts from automobiles.

A year ago, I probably would not have known about this crime in my own neighborhood. It would have been lost among the 320 incidents we responded to on Saturday. I know about the crime now because I am subscribed to a Crime Alert for incidents within a half mile of my home address. Whenever a police incident report hits our database and is geocoded within that circle, I get a push email with the basic details. It’s a great service, and it is available to the general public through crimemapping.com, one of our two public crime mapping applications in collaboration with the Omega Group.

We’ve promoted this application before, with some success. I checked a couple of weeks ago with the Omega Group, and at that time, there were 742 people signed up for crime alerts in Lincoln. That’s not bad, but it ought to be a few thousand, in my opinion—it’s that valuable, and it’s free. I want to give it another try, and see if a second round of publicity about Crime Alerts can bump that number up. The more people know about crime in their own neighborhood, the more likely they are to take precautions, and the more likely they are to take notice when they wake up for a drink of water in the wee hours of the morning, and see someone walking into the driveway of a house down the block.

My only warning here is to be careful about the distance you choose: a lot more stuff happens in Lincoln than you realize, and if you pick a buffer of a mile or two, you might be getting more information than you want or can comfortably deal with. A block in Lincoln is about 350 feet on average, so a 500 ft. buffer would be a circle with a radius of around a block and a half. A quarter mile would be a circle about a 4 block radius, and so forth.

Occam's Razor

I had an interesting conversation earlier this week with a reporter working on a story about prison and jail overcrowding in Nebraska. Essentially, she was expecting me to make the usual comments to the effect that the methamphetamine epidemic was at the root of bulging correctional institutions.

I couldn’t help her with that. I would probably be the odd man out on this topic in Nebraska law enforcement circles, but I’m not so sure methamphetamine is contributing to crime any more than other drugs. Basically, I don’t know, and I haven’t yet seen any data that would convince me to formulate a strong opinion. I tend to think that the same people addicted to methamphetamine would simply be addicted to something else if meth wasn’t relatively cheap and readily available. Maybe they would be committing their burglaries, thefts, and forgeries to support their addiction to some other drug.

Of all the controlled substances that have waxed and waned in popularity during my career, methamphetamine seems to me to have the most profoundly debilitating effects upon its abusers. This is some nasty stuff for chronic addicts. It is a leap, however, to conclude that it is the cause of increasing jail populations in my opinion. I’m open to being convinced otherwise, though. Often the conventional wisdom is right on, but sometimes it proves to be incorrect when put to the test (ask me about domestic assaults on holidays, or gas thefts when prices rise).

I pointed out something quite interesting and pretty obvious to the reporter: Arrests by Lincoln police officers are up—way up—during the past fifteen years. We’ve had a 58% increase in the sheer number of arrests since 1991. Last year's 28,523 arrests compares to 18,057 in 1991. Felonies are particularly dramatic--a 130% increase from 1,103 to 2,535. Although the vast majority of our arrests are for misdemeanors, and most eventually end up with a citation and arrest, the simple fact of 10,000 more arrests can't help but impact jail population through increased bookings, warrants, and sentences.

The increase in arrests doubles the increase in the number of police officers, and more than doubles population growth. This has occurred during a time period when crime in Lincoln has been falling. Lincoln's high water mark for crime was 1991, and the actual number of FBI Part I offenses last year was 12.6% lower last year than at the 1991 peak. Adjusted for population growth, the crime rate was 29.8% lower in 2006 than in 1991.

Huge increases in arrests during a period of moderate declines in crime is an interesting phenomenon. I can’t think of any way to explain it other than increased productivity by the women and men of this department. We’ve got hard-working police officers with a tough job in an undersized department who outperform any other police force I’ve been able to find.

Keeping a lid on it

Sometimes I am amazed.

Last week, I spent a significant chunk of time responding to worries that citizens expressed including signs placed in the public right-of-way between the sidewalk and the curb, and loud automotive stereos. What amazes me isn't that these things get under someone's skin, rather it's the expectation that the police should make these annoyances go away. I'm a little peeved by those lincolndating.org and "lose 30 pounds in 30 days!" signs myself, but when you struggle to put enough officers on the street to handle the big stuff, it's just a little disconcerting to realize you are letting people down by not picking off those who illegally post garage sale signs with sufficient enthusiasm.

So, here's my response to a nice couple who are being "physically assaulted" by the sounds of stereos at night--so severely that they are thinking about leaving Lincoln--and the police won't do anything about it:

"I want you to know that we do indeed enforce the Lincoln Municipal Ordinance which prohibits car stereos from being audible from a distance of more than 50 feet. This year, we will issue close to 400 citations for this offense. At times, we are bitterly criticized for our enforcement of this law.

Unfortunately, I don't think all the tickets in the world can offset the cultural phenomenon, but we will keep trying. This certainly isn't a problem limited to Lincoln--it is nationwide. It seems to me that every young adult aspires to put a more powerful amplifier and larger speakers in their car--not to mention a number of local businesses who depend on this for their livelihood. Until the culture changes, the police will inevitably be largely ineffective in completely stemming the tide of noise.

If you can depend on the vast majority of people to voluntarily obey the law, the police can generally do a good job of ensuring that the outliers are reeled in. However, if a large number of otherwise law-abiding citizens disregard the law, we have a significant problem. I think these loud stereos (often purchased, directly or indirectly, by parents) are almost in the same category as illegal fireworks—behaviors that are tacitly condoned by far too many adults who ought to know better.

Since your message specifically mentioned car stereos on Friday and Saturday nights, I hope you will keep in mind that this is only one of dozens of problems we must deal with during this time, which is our peak demand period. The dispatch center is frequently holding incidents during this time period, because there are not enough officers to cover all the police calls. Lincoln has one of the smallest police departments per capita in the region and the smallest in the State. There are lots of competing priorities out there, and I am afraid that there is no way that we can meet everyone's expectations at all times, despite our efforts.

At some point, we all have to realize that the police cannot be everywhere for everyone at every time--or we have to be willing to dig much, much deeper into our taxpayer pockets. In the meantime, we'll try to keep up at least a little pressure on the late-night rock and rumble crowd!"

I'm not looking forward to the Fourth of July.

Vulnerable places

At our most recent ACUDAT meeting a couple weeks ago, we noted a series of thefts of purses from autos in the parking lots at health clubs: Gold’s Gym, Prairie Life, the Woods Park Tennis Center, Five Willows, to name a few. These are not new, but it was unusual to have several of these in short order during the dead of winter and spread around town.

We also noticed several thefts from parked cars in the downtown area, late at night while the owner was away at one of the local watering holes or a movie.

These are all examples of places where a purse left in a car is vulnerable, because it is fairly obvious that the owner of the car will be away for a while. The thief simply has to wait until the coast is clear, smash a window, and make off with the purse. Aside from the loss of any cash, the victim has to cancel credit cards, obtain a new driver’s license, watch her accounts like a hawk, and worry about identity theft.

There’s not a easy fix for this, but there are a couple things people could do to reduce the chance they will fall prey. First, make sure all your valuables are out of sight—preferably in the trunk. This isn’t a guarantee, but a purse on the floorboard or seat is a sitting duck to a thief that is window shopping.

If you are going to a place you don’t like to carry your purse into, such as your health club, the movies, or a bar, it would make sense to leave your purse at home and just take your driver’s license, if possible. Stuff it in the side pocket of your gym bag, or the pocket of your jeans and leave the purse at home.

With spring coming, trailheads, dog runs, swimming pools, softball fields, and similar outdoor sports venues will pop up as additional places where purses left in cars are in particular jeopardy. The same advice applies: don’t take it, use a fanny pack, or at least lock it in the trunk.

This is a topic I’ve touched on before, but it bears repeating. There are always going to be crimes like this that exploit vulnerabilities, and we would like to prevent as many as possible. It’s not a good feeling knowing that some cretin has you name and ID, and knows where you live.

What now?

Since yesterday's post about the Journal Star's sex offender map seems to have stimulated a fair amount of comment and an interesting dialog with sex offenders looking for a debate, I've decided to wade in even further. So, you've got a sex offender in your neighborhood, what now? I don't know what to tell you. There is a huge difference among offenders. Some aren't much of a risk at all, others are very, very worrisome. As I've often said, in my job you have to know a lot of stuff that you'd rather not know.

Not really, though. As uncomfortable as it may be, I really do want to know whether the seemingly-nice guy that is actually a sex offender is really creepy, or whether he just did something slightly creepy once, but doesn't represent a risk to others anymore. I usually know such things, because I swim in this information soup, but the general public is left to guess. I suppose you should err on the side of caution. You might look for details of the crime in the online news archives, but that's pretty hit-and-miss. You might meet the offender on your block and just ask him: just keep in mind that it is human nature for people to blame others for their misdeeds, and to paint their own conduct in the most favorable light, even if they fess up to it. Bottom dollar is that it is going to be difficult to make your own determination, unless you're willing to go to courthouse and find the trial transcripts and court documents.

Earlier this year, a friend emailed me after learning that a sex offender was moving into a residence on his block. This offender is one of the scary ones--multiple convictions in multiple jurisdictions, volatile behavior, jammed his time. Reading the reports made me cringe. I don't have a pamphlet or a PowerPoint for this circumstance, so here's the advice I gave him:

"His pattern in Lincoln has been to befriend young teenagers, primarily boys, and ply them with alcohol and pornography. I think he represents a significant risk. If he lived in my neighborhood, I would:

1. Familiarize myself with his current appearance.
2. Check the sex offender registry regularly for any address change.
3. Call the police immediately if I noticed him apparently residing at a place other than the address listed on the registry.
4. Familiarize myself with the vehicles at his address that he might drive.
5. Make sure all of my family members have seen his photograph and are also familiar with the cars he drives.
6. Warn all my family members to avoid him at all times.
7. Provide this same information to my neighbors.
8. Be watchful for any evidence of young people going into his house or hanging out with him, and report any such observations to the police.
9. Stay away from him.
10 Avoid any contact, confrontation,or conversation."

Questionable solution

An interesting editorial by the Lincoln Journal Star on Sunday caught my eye, “Look at the cost of petty prosecution." The editors lament the cost of prosecuting misdemeanor crimes:

“John Wesley Hall, president of the trial lawyers’ organization, told the National Law Journal, ‘It’s a huge waste of money when you think of the huge fundamental costs that go along with misdemeanor prosecutions — the prosecution’s time, the judge’s time and jail incarceration time — these are mostly hidden costs.’ The group’s report recommends revising misdemeanor crimes into infractions that carry penalties such as fines or community service.”

The editorial notes that in some jurisdictions local prosecutors have stopped charging misdemeanors due to budget cuts.

If misdemeanors aren’t prosecuted, what shall become of the drunk drivers, sex offenders who invite teenage runaways to crash at their pad, thieves who break into cars to steal purses, those who shoplift cigarettes, commit third degree domestic assault, abuse their children, smash rear view mirrors for sport, continue to drive after their license is suspended, stalk their ex-girlfriends, use fake police badges to impress women at the bar, window peek, expose their genitals in department stores, climb the fence to defecate in the public pool for a few laughs, dump their old roofing material in Wilderness Park, change their oil by draining it into the gutter, etc., etc., etc..

Fines and community service are the answer, suggests the Journal Star. I’m not as optimistic about that as the editors. While removing the possiblity of a jail sentence from misdemeanors means that defendants would not receive the services of public defenders, I think it would be wise to consider the implications of dropping the possiblity of jail, and punishing such offenses exclusively with fines and community service.

What do you suppose the chances are of this guy ever paying his fines really is? And what will we do about the thousands upon thousands of misdemeanor defendant’s who don’t show up to their court appearance, ignore their ticket, and default on the time payment plan for their fine? If jail’s off the table, it’s more-or-less the honor system for misdemeanants. And do you really want this fellow doing community service, even if he could organize himself enough to show up at the appointed place and time?

About 15 years ago, New York City’s police chief (now the L.A. chief) Bill Bratton, made a startling discovery: if you pay attention to the small stuff, you can reduce the more serious stuff. At LPD, this revelation was meant with a collective “Duh.” Hard to believe something so basic sells books. As previously noted in the Chief’s Corner, we make a large number of misdemeanor arrests here in Lincoln. The editorial quotes Lancaster County Public Defender Dennis Keefe:

“Keefe noted last year that the city misdemeanor docket was ‘out of control,’ logging a 56 percent increase in the number of misdemeanors in the past five years.”

Around 99% of the City misdemeanor docket would be composed of arrests by the Lincoln Police Department. Somehow, I thought that was our job. I most definitely think it has contributed to our low rate of serious violent crime, and to our general quality of life.

I don’t completely disagree with the conclusion reached by Mr. Keefe and the editors. I’m all in favor of reducing costs with things like tightly supervised house arrest and electronic monitoring, and I’ve been pleased with the work of Lancaster County Community Corrections, which oversees these programs that have significantly the reduced jail population in Lincoln, and saved a bunch of money. I'm also in favor of diverting first time offenders, or offering them probation for most of those first misdemeanor convictions--sometimes even for a second or third.

But the editorial fails to acknowledge the fact that probation and fines are already the typical sentence for City ordinance misdemeanors. Jail is rarely in the mix unless the judicial admonitions, probation, and fines have not worked in previous cases. I’m just not sure more fines or community services is really much of a solution for many of our regular customers or for the kinds of offenders that are being sentenced to jail for municipal ordinance vioaltions.

Let the games begin

This weekend will mark the beginning of The Fourth of July fun for LPD. Nothing against, Independence Day, but the 4th pretty much marks the high water of police workload in Lincoln. It's the busiest single day for us. We'll hover at around 500 dispatches--about 30% above our daily average.

You can watch the week unfold yourself. Keep an eye on the climbing number of disturbances. That's a reflection of the deluge of calls reporting illegal fireworks. the 4th was on Tuesday last year, and starting on the Friday preceding, we dispatched officers to 468 fireworks calls. Lincoln's very restrictive fireworks ordinance essentially means that anything that goes bang is illegal. Here's the specific list of permissible fireworks: sparklers, vesuvius fountains, spray fountains, torches, color firecones, star and comet-type color aerial shells without explosive charge for the purpose of making a noise, and color wheels. That's it. Every firecracker you hear and bottle rocket you see is illegal. And of course, anything prior to the 3rd is out, too.

Illegal fireworks are a problem for us, because half the public seems to be disenchanted with the fact that we can't make it stop, and the other half thinks we're stupid for trying, and ought to let them alone. Some people get incredibly wound up about this. I'll have to explain to a dozen callers-to-the-chief, correspondants-to-the-city-council, or complainers-to-the-mayoral-ombudsman that we really can't just shoot a couple of fifth graders and leave their bodies in the street as a warning to others.

It's not that the law is impossible to enforce, and we'll write a scores of citations for illegal fireworks. You catch the slow, the drunk, and the young. You ask them to knock it off. If they persist, or flunk the attitude test, a citation is in the offing. Nobody talks to their neighbor and just asks them to cool it: they just call the police to have us do it. The violations we encounter are primarily handled with warnings, because the volume is just so huge that the paper work would crush you, even if you were inclined to adopt a take-no-prisoners approach. It isn't ideal, but it's about the best we can do.

The kids are particularly problematic. Clogging up the juvenile system with a few hundred arrests for illegal fireworks that will subsequently be dismissed, and serious marring police-community relations in the process sounds like a great idea.

And no, before you start in on me, we can't arrest the parents for the acts of the child. That's not the way the law is written, and that's not my fault. I don't write the laws or pass the laws, despite what some of the gun nuts constantly claim. You cannot, as much as you might wish, bang on the door, get mom out of her apron, take the dish towel away from dad, and trundle them both off to the slammer because junior is blowing up his sister's Barbie doll in the driveway with Black Cats. It's junior you'll have to cuff and stuff.

Truth be told, the police are pretty ineffective in dealing with violations when a large plurality of the public will not voluntarily obey the law. We're great at dealing with the fringe, but when the fringe is as big as the whole, that's a real problem for us. And on this one, the violators are often straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting: mom and dad, the kids, grandma and grandpa, decorating the bikes for the neighborhood parade while popping off bottle rockets. Real SWAT Team material.

I engaged in a preemptive public relations campaign last year aimed at laying a little guilt on the otherwise law-abiding citizens who are buying illegal fireworks for their kids. That was about as effective as a damp punk. I'm not quite sure what to do, frankly. Lincoln's citizens have got to decide for themselves what they really want. The police are currently being placed in an untenable position.

Crime alerts available

Back on June 12, we announced the availability of a new incident mapping service, crimemapping.com. There is a crime alert feature included in this service that is really quite nice, and I've decided to promote that service a little more proactively. There are links to crime alerts at the top of the main page at crimemapping.com and in the middle of our public web site, or you can just go directly to the sign up page. Once you are signed up for crime alerts, you will receive an automatic email with the brief details of any new police incident reports that show up in the area where you have subscribed. Here's a sample (click to enlarge):

Most people who use the crime alerts feature will want to subscribe to the area around their business or home. You can choose various distances, but I would be cautious about picking a 1 mile or 2 mile buffer. This city is much busier than most people realize, and you might be getting a lot of stuff in those emails, if you get carried away. It's easy to unsubscribe if you decide you need to throttle back.

Usually, incident reports are processed, geocoded, uploaded to the Omega Group, and available within a shift of the initial report. This varies, though, because sometimes officers are authorized to hold-over reports to their following tour of duty. One caveat: although there are choices for DUI and Disturbing the Peace cases in crimemapping.com, these two incident types are not contained within our data.

Crime alerts are a nice addition to the department's many resources for keeping you informed, including two incident mapping choices, crimemapping.com and CrimeView Community, and our daily log of police incidents. The key advantage of crime alerts is that the information is "pushed" to you: you don't have to go get it.

The more you know, the better you are prepared to act. When you are more aware of what's going on in your own neck of the woods, you will be more likely to close your garage door, park all your cars in the driveway, make sure nothing is visible from the outside, get a higher security lock, call us immediately when you spot suspicious behavior, and so forth.

Rummaging through the inbox

We’ve got a new spam filter on our enterprise mail here at the police department. It lets users manage their own quarantined mail, and adjust their allowed/disallowed lists. Previously, your blocked email was just gone. It’s been interesting for me to see the huge volume of stuff that gets blocked from my incredibly-clogged-anyway inbox. I’ve also discovered just how many legitimate emails haven’t been getting through. It’s not huge, but it is nice to have the chance to retrieve those that would previously have been lost.

Boy, do I ever get the email. The volume is huge. But the inbox can serve as the source of blog posts when writer’s block strikes, or when time is short. Sometimes, an email message will just hit me as worth sharing, like this one from Friday:

“There is this lady who walks her dog by my house every night and she lets it use my yard and kids toys as a toilet. She never cleans up after her dog and then she puts out her cigarettes out in my grass? and leaves them there as well. Is there something i can do to make her stop or is there a law she’s breaking? If someone could email me back i would appreciate it.”

Here is my reply:

“Lincoln has a city ordinance (6.08.155) that requires you to pick up your dog poop. Flicking a cigarette butt is technically littering, as well. I suggest you politely tell her you would appreciate it if she and her dog would both stop littering in your yard. This really doesn't need to involve Animal Control or the Police Department, in my opinion. If you're not comfortable talking to her, print and highlight the sections from the ordinance, and mail it to her with no return address.”

Regards,

Tom Casady, Chief of Police

Is it really necessary for the police to be involved in every kind, type, and description of boorish behavior? Are we so estranged from one another that we can’t just politely ask, or are we really that afraid of our neighbors? Hopefully, that’s what this correspondent does.