Is there any minimum training requirement for police forces >- state-wide or nation-wide? Is there a police 'profession' > code of standards?
In Pennsylvania, where I live, the basic police training course is about 6 months long, full-time. I assume that individual municipalities can add additional requirements as well. In poorer areas, municipal police make as little as minimum wage. In general, police tend to be working their way towards a big-city job because they pay better.
How much of this is attributable to Sheriffs (heads of police forces) being elected in the U.S., rather than being appointed/promoted?
It depends upon the area. Not all heads of police forces are elected, and not all elected heads of police forces have a lot of power. For example, in Fergusson, it looks like the head of the police department is not elected.
Some are clearly problematic, such as the infamousJoe Arpaio of Arizona.
I would argue that the requirement that judges and District Attorneys being elected has a greater impact on the system than anything else.
What about the admission requirements for police force?
In PA, a high school diploma, plus passing a 6-month police training course. Towns with a greater number of applicants may require associates' or bachelors' degrees.
There are a few other items to consider:
Based on news reports, some of the related suburbs have as much as 50% of their budgets coming from traffic citations. This doesn't help foster good relations between the people and the police. Likewise, the police are one of the top line-items for costs for a municipality. The result is one in which the police have to ticket constantly in order to keep their own jobs. The number of people in Ferguson below the poverty line has roughly doubled in the last 20 years, going from ~15% to ~30% of the population. This hurts the budget. There's also a statistical correlation between poverty and criminality.
The US model of civil and individual rights has largely been established through legislation and case law involving individual people and small groups. Thus, standing on a milk crate in front of the police station and saying not-nice things about the police is nearly inviolable. This gets to be a problem when you have a mob brewing because until somebody actually commits a crime, it is very difficult to get people to disburse. Individually, every person has a right to be there, even though not-nice things are brewing.
The 14th Amendment has made it very difficult for police officers (and the government in general) to exercise any discretion. The result is that the law has to have codified one-size-fits-all rules with general uniform application or else it will be sued and likely lose. Ironically, one of the key Constitutional elements put in place to end slavery in the US has led to a much greater distrust in the same institutions required to rebuild African-American communities, because it is impossible to codify all aspects of human interaction ahead of time.
Small-town police departments usually don't have the people or training budget to prepare for anything complicated. The common large training events are based around active-shooter situations (eg. Columbine), or mass-casualty incidents like a bridge collapse. Managing traffic for a parade or sporting event are likely to be the largest event commonly addressed. These incidents are tricky because the sites seem to fluctuate between legal protest with jaywalking being the biggest concern, to having rocks thrown or guns fired and back again, without much of a way to tell who's who.
My biggest concern is the issue of "officer safety". This is the them-against-us mentality which emphasizes that the officer goes home safely at the end of the night rather than that the best job be done.
]]>As a point of reference, the US and UK sort-of accidentally went to war in 1812, and after 2 years of fighting (including the torching of the White House) said "oops" and agreed to a do-over, restoring status quo.
]]>Pointing out that together, you are able to save 7% on border patrol costs or 2 FTEs in the Office of Paperclip Acquisition and thus direct the resources towards better uses is a much harder sell from the human standpoint than "The English are Ebil" or "If you leave you won't be allowed to to travel anywhere, ever".
]]>I grew up in Canada and now live in the USA. I lived through the Quebec referendum of 1995 which lost by 0.6 percentage points. Is there any way for that event to provide ideas on what might occur with Scotland?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995
Take on the current versions of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fRgnOR-bvg
]]>It need not be a prank. If somebody misinterpreted GMT for local, or time since take-off, or time since system power-on, or Daylight Savings Time, or any other minutia of interpretation, they could be well-placed, well-meaning, sincere, and wrong.
A store-and-forward system (like email) used for reporting engine details could have resulted in data going across the network or arriving hours later. Or somebody make a typo when doing the lookup, or logging the engine into the computer.
Or it could be a cover-up. Or aliens. Aliens are definitely a possibility.
]]>Another area is worth considering: domestic law. When auto-driving cars are more reliable, safe, convenient and fuel-efficient, people everywhere are going to want them. However, much of Google's driverless car technology is based on their street-view photographs. Some states don't allow this type of mass photography as it is treated as an invasion of privacy. There will be forces (both inside and out) to have the laws changed to adopt this new technology.
Another example would be the standards for sign-age and driving rules. US drives on the right. UK drives on the wrong. I think that there will be pressure to normalize this across the world to substantially reduce the development effort and risk associated with supporting differing local standards for road rules.
]]>If you take the assumption that the press might be slightly wrong, consider that "BB" refers to a size of shot. They sell shot made out of steel for hunting waterfowl (who might accidentally eat left-over shot and get lead poisoning).
For example, 10 pounds of BB shot is only about $17:
http://www.ballisticproducts.com/Steel-Shot-BB-bag_10/productinfo/SH2B/
This would be far more affordable and practical to do. The joy of the news media is that even if they were to have access to the correct information they might not have the in-house expertise to evaluate the statements to determine what matters and what doesn't.
]]>Charlie, would it be possible to have somebody you work with at your publisher do a guest-post on the publishing and answer questions? (I suggest warning your moderators ahead of time so they can schedule extra time for the flaming/trolling which will ensue) It would be really great to get insight into the industry from other parts in the workflow. Perhaps also your/an agent, too, who can describe the process from their vantage point.
Does general editing occur before/after/during copy editing?
For books which are expected to be e-book only (or at least initially), would it be possible to use rapid versioning and crowd-sourcing to handle some part of copy-editing? If so, would that be able to cut out cost or turn-around time? Find 10 spelling errors and get access to the next book 3 weeks in advance. Hey - if it "works" in the software industry...
]]>The gun-promoting crowd in the US is very diverse. Though there is still the left-over "the darkies are going to get me" person around, like most other generational shifts, this doesn't apply much any more, and where it does, it is very localized. Most of what would be considered modern gun control laws were put in place after the Civil War of 1865 in order to prohibit ex-slaves from getting hold of weapons, but allowing "good" people to still do so. Most gun-rights advocates have realized this and actively point out the racist historical roots of gun control in this country. Though the after-effects of institutionalized racism still exist in the US, there are very few people who are consciously racist here. Even in the Republican party, which as a fluke currently has more non-white/racial-minority congressmen at the moment.
Please don't attack the character or motives of those who promote gun rights or gun ownership. Yes, enjoying the making of small holes in paper at a long distance is in many ways a silly hobby, but that also describes golf, too. Enjoying "tactical shooting" sports like IPSC or IDPA might be strange, but so is paying to cheer for a football team. The occasional gentile chiding isn't a problem, but neither makes people mentally ill.
Preparing for a disaster (preper/survivalist) doesn't inherently make somebody crazy, either. The US has generally more extreme weather than Europe (esp. the UK). Since most produce is trucked via just-in-time delivery methods, one solid snow could shut down most food deliveries for days. Likewise, we're more likely to suffer from earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, all of which have substantial temporary negative impacts on logistics.
In the US, there are many different trade-offs. For example, the current discussions are focusing on mass-shootings and how to deal with them. This is a perfectly reasonable discussion to be having. However, it is not the only firearms issue which matters in the US. Most people who are using firearms for defensive purposes are doing so against one or two attackers in an obvious setting (eg. store owner being robbed, person being attacked on the street at night, alone). In these cases there are minimal bystanders, the motives of the attackers is clear, etc. Making it more difficult for people to obtain and carry weapons in order to reduce mass shootings also makes it harder for people to carry weapons to defend themselves. I'm not arguing for one or the other, just pointing out that it isn't strictly "obvious" what the answer is as there are additional considerations.
Megan McCardle had a good column with references which addresses many of the issues put forth here.
One thought that comes to mind is a recent study which showed that people are generally more supportive of social/welfare programs in homogeneous populations. That is, you see more of yourself in those less fortunate and so are more likely to support them. I wonder if that same attribute results in reduced violence as well.
There are currently more people killed every year in the US being beaten to death with bare hands than with rifles. Though this doesn't diminish the issue of people being shot with rifles, it does show that there may be other areas to consider which have a better lives saved/$ spent return.
In the US, something like 2/3 of gun murders are directly related to the drug trade. It seems to me that we could reduce the murder rate substantially by legalizing a lot of drugs, if the murder rate is the concern.
In the US, a large number of those murdered by firearms have already been convicted of felonies themselves. I don't want to demean those who have set themselves on a straight path, but it is also possible that these people were continuing to show poor judgment and were in a situation which made them more likely to be shot. (Perhaps bad dealing drugs after a conviction).
]]>I wonder if impressing upon people the concept of "disease comes from tiny creatures that get into your blood" would save a post-collapse civilization a ton of time in the development of medicine. At the very least, they might grasp the significance and means of proper sanitation much earlier on, helping to reduce the "sinkhole of sewage and garbage" factor that you got with many big European cities.
Yes!
A little knowledge of antisepsis can go a long way. Simply knowing that much like we like to live indoors, so do mice, stuff likes to live inside of us and it can make us sick helps a lot.
You can drop childbirth mortality substantially by using antisepsis provided by distilled spirits (and I can guarantee you that making booze will survive any apocalypse that the human species does) and cleaning/boiling.
If you understand that the same thing applies to intestinal parasites, you can treat water so as to be safer to drink. If you understand the basic fecal-oral route for distribution, the principles of waste sequestration make sense. Towns just need septic systems (or chemical treatment plants at more advanced tech levels) and you've managed to get nearly the same lifespan as we have today, and comparable mortality and morbidity up until age 40 or so. Sadly, most of this could be accomplished with bronze-age technology, but required fairly modern knowledge to put it all together.
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