Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except it's not the police web site. It's an auxiliary site intended for news. Go search for "Milwaukee police" and see what the #1 hit is and what the official web site is. It's not this one.
"Official" or not, it's a public-facing website for the Milwaukee police force. What it was "intended" for, and how the public is going to see it, are two different perceptions that are clearly not aligned.
Milwaukee Police News
101–110 of 119 posts
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#102This looks as if it had been done by the Yes Men, but the WHOIS record tells that it is official. Seriously, the job of the police is to uphold the law, not to look catch criminals or look cool in their paramilitary gear. Here's the scary bit: the police relies on the support of the community and yet puts forth that image of itself. If they think that looking that way improves their image one will be better off stayi…
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#103A nitpick about the website: It completely breaks the back button. Back un-scrolls?! WTF. And now for the sad commentary on the social state: The vehicle in the picture says "Rescue" on it in large, friendly letters. The vehicle is a tank festooned with gun ports.
Keyboard navigation appears to be completely borked: try page up, page down, ctrl+home, or ctrl+end none of them appear to work! ARGH! Just for fun, I tried searching for rescue in the page. The scroll magic they are using causes the found word in chrome to be off the screen.
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#104Why are the Milwaukee police more heavily armed than the soldiers in Afghanistan?
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#105It's militaristic, it's alienating, it's fetishistic, it's hostile, it insidiously portrays class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting, and it panders to the worst in Americans who already endorse the myriad excesses and injustices of an ever-growing quasi-private law and order machine that has ruined the lives of millions. But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.
I live in Melbourne Australia and I have got to say, this is the first reaction I had as well. The imagery used on their website was frankly shocking. My first response was "WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police? Is their job to charge round shooting people?" Compare and contrast the pictures used on the 'about' page of the Victoria police website: http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=3 W…
Militarization of the police because we took the most violent route in trying to control the "illegal" drugs.
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
The division is segregation, not conservatism. That being said, I find Milwaukee to be more conservative than some Wisconsin cities, especially Madison (where I live now).
Is there a single Republican/conservative in any elected position in Milwaukee? I realize that the city elections are technically non-partisan, but there are clearly no conservatives in positions of power here. The only cities Milwaukee would be more conservative than (in WI) would be Madison and possibly Racine. All you have to do is look at the results from the recall election to see that Madison and Milwaukee are…
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I grew up in Milwaukee, and I agree, it only serves to support the strong division in that city. Can you elaborate on this? Wisconsin has never struck me as a state with a particularly conservative streak.
The Milwaukee police department has an ugly history. Some of its excesses are the result of institutional traditions dating back a century, when it was seen as a bastion of civil order against anarchists and, later, political progressives. Milwaukee had Socialist mayors from 1910 to 1960; unlike most American cities, the state legislature had authority over the city police and appointed police chiefs who often were h…
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I grew up in Milwaukee, and I agree, it only serves to support the strong division in that city. Can you elaborate on this? Wisconsin has never struck me as a state with a particularly conservative streak.
I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee and diversity just isn't a thing here. As a white dude there are just some areas you are not allowed to go in the city. Hell there was a race riot after the state fair last year. This segregation definitely contributes to negative stereotypes on all sides. Now that I live in SF I understand what diversity really means. Poop everywhere...
The public urination/defecation problem SF has is connected to its large homeless population, many of whom are mentally disabled. The reason for SF's large homeless population is not only because of its liberal views, but also because of its year-round mild weather. If it were burning hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter (as it is in many parts of the Midwest), living on the streets simply would not be physically possible.
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
"WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police? I live in Wisconsin, in a small town of 20,000. Our police department has an armored car, with a mount for a water cannon. We've got a TAC [1] team. Our cops carry rifles in the trunks of their patrol cars. Elsewhere you can find comparable sized police departments that have .50 machine guns, armored personel carriers. So .. yeah. That's not how we see the police.…
I live in a small Pennsylvania borough with an operating budget of about $1 mil/year (this includes all services for the entire borough of 3-4 precincts). Our police department is 8 full-time officers and 3 part-time officers with I believe 2 full-time admin/support staff in the office. We have 5 cruisers, 4 SUVs and at the last borough council meeting the council approved the purchase of a 6th brand new cruiser and…
Well .. because politics, because 9/11, because War On Drugs.
new fleet of AR-15 style rifles
Most police officers are better armed and equipped for patrol than I was when I was on sentry duty at Marine Barracks in the 80s.
Something is amiss here.
Re: Milwaukee Police News
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you scroll the experience is terribly broken and scrolling is a deeply ingrained interaction paradigm for web sites. Its particularly annoying on a mac trackpad due to inertial scroll. Saying "don't scroll, use the buttons" to get a non broken experience is like saying "don't click the big red button" to avoid the server throwing a 500.
Well I personally don't find the experience terribly broken, or broken at all. I don't see why anything on that page even has to perfectly line up. I mean on Pinterest you don't expect everything to perfectly line up when infinite scrolling, and you don't really lose any information if the image doesn't line up on this page. However, I can see how it can really annoy some obsessive type personalities (who consider it…
The timeline page is basically unusable unless it lines up really well. Additionally it took me 4-5 times through to realize the years on that page were click actions (except 2013 which looks identical to the others???). Partially because of the annoyance of lining stuff up took me out of the mindset of 'what should i click on' and partially due to the inversion of focus. Generally actions the user can make should be clearly defined and stand out. In this case the current year stands out and the other years are very muted. In most interaction cases the elements that are muted are 'inactive'.
While you can read the content on the other pages with them out of alignment, the stiff breaks in the image background are very distracting.
All I can say to get to the real point is that if I hadn't grown up riding that mountain 30+ days a winter I never would have stuck around long enough to glean anything useful about it.
For what its worth the general feedback I've heard from other Sugarloafers indicates its not just me or my personality type that hates this site, it's a wide range of folks whose response has been "yuck".