151–160 of 254 posts
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2k for a cow? Try 60 dollars... http://www.cattlenetwork.com/cattle-resources/cow-calf/price...
I'm looking around the internet, and seeing prices all over the place actually. $60 is the lowest I've seen, NASDAQ.com says $120, some farming websites are saying $1000-$2000, etc.
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> If a policeman has access to body armor and machine guns to serve a warrant on some guy in a house, he will take them along. Interestingly, in the UK, where regular policemen don't carry guns, most policemen apparently don't want to have firearms. Obviously this is a rather different culture, and there's a difference between a collective matter (should we all be armed?) and an individual matter (should I be armed t…
I think part of the reason for UK police not wanting guns is primarily what the UK police see as their mission: It is community policing, where UK police try to work within and with the permission of the community because they feel they're most effective that way (also called "policing by consent"). http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/policeNine.php Police carrying guns makes them "scary" to the general public, and as suc…
I believe there is a much more pragmatic side to it. One could see fire arms as a specialisation which needs to be handled by a specially trained squad, much like riding a police horse or doing mountain rescue.
In a country with relatively very little gun violence that makes perfect sense. You train but a little group, which also gains in experience from the incidents that occur, instead of (under) training every single police officer for a shooting incident that will most likely never take place in their whole career.
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If you think limited freedom cultures are good for our work go on ahead ignoring this stuff. Or realize that we generally need a good free society to work in and flourish in and these are all precursor warnings to more political crack downs that could drastically curb the hacker scene in the US. There are already increased cases of security researchers getting the SWAT treatment followed by jail. Who thinks thats goo…
If you think limited freedom cultures are good for our work go on ahead ignoring this stuff. I exist outside of HN. HN though is where I want to see technology articles and discussion, not politics. From the guidelines: Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.
Certain parts of NYC has seen amazingly drops in violent crime due to more "community-oriented" policing that requires officers to integrate themselves into the fabric of the neighborhoods in their precincts (I think it's NYC...). On the other end, you have that Salon article about SWAT teams gone willy nilly.
Some basic correlations, and visualizations showing comparative effectiveness of the different techniques could go a long way....
I honestly do.
They glamorize and hero worship mega violent law breaking cops, while at the same time portraying criminals as super beings with government like resources, who always lose due to the violent law breaking cops.
The people in the end believe this to be a vaguely true, even though in their lives they rarely see it, most cops are in fact fairly decent professionals, and criminals are average to dumb folk with bugger all resources, while the cops think they look crap compared to the Hollywood versions, and want more powers and toys.
No? Well, I'm yet to see a credible argument as to why adverts influence us, but movies don't. One of those special people who claim ads dont work on you? Simply, I don't believe you. Every one reckons that, yet ads work.
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"Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high." Isn't this cause and effect? Crime is lower because we are hiring more policemen. That is certainly one conclusion from Freakonomics. This is just a digression, because I do think the "Cops as Warriors" model is very scary, as "collateral damage" becomes acceptable in a war.
I attempted to address that in my comment. Check out, Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" which shows that violent crime is down globally, not just in the US. Also, Levitt did say increased policing decreased crime, but only caused around 5% of the decline ( http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUndersta... p. 184)
[1] http://www.zcommunications.org/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged-...
Somewhat tangential: There has long been a tie-in between the military and the police. Former military members make an easier transition to the police, and a lot of policemen have a strong weekend-warrior, macho mentality and like big guns and things that go boom. Plus the rank system is similar, there's use of deadly force, and so on. The U.S. has also seen major mission creep in the military. Instead of going in an…
Honestly, I think the army, along with a handful of progressive city police departments, will solve the problem of community policing long before most local U.S. law enforcement agencies. The army has greater ability to control and change its culture. It won't happen overnight, but we can hope that eventually U.S. cops will learn to respect their neighbors across town by the example of how U.S. soldiers treat people from the other side of the world. The army will also learn how to assess soldiers' fitness for interaction with civilians, which will have interesting implications for law enforcement.
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> The US police is VERY militarized in Urban areas. U.S. urban areas are very militarized. London, a city of 8 million people, had 100 murders last year. Over the last 20 years, the number broke 200 only once, in 2003. Chicago, a city of only 2.7 million people, had 532 last year. And this is way down from the peak. Murders in U.S. cities peaked in the early 1990's. L.A. county had 2,589 murders at its peak in 1993.…
This is true but a lot of these murders are gang related so it isn't quite a great comparison not? I know the topics of guns in america is a hot topic in general but even for the usa the general trend is downward.
Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high. (Those factors could have a causal relationship, but I doubt it's the primary cause based on reading "The Better Angels of Our Nature".) http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1950_2010... Having big budgets but less crime means these swollen budgets end up being wasted on a lot of "fun" things like military gear. (Did you know t…
"Crime is at an all-time low yet spending on police is near an all-time high." Isn't this cause and effect? Crime is lower because we are hiring more policemen. That is certainly one conclusion from Freakonomics. This is just a digression, because I do think the "Cops as Warriors" model is very scary, as "collateral damage" becomes acceptable in a war.