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LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

lapdhelicoptertracker.com

191–200 of 317 posts

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could I have damaged the cars even though I saw no signs of damage? It would be nice if someone else with knowledge would chime in here. If this damages cars, then I want to know, so I can stop doing it in the future.

Unless the cars are perfectly washed and clayed, even running a clean finger over a car is likely to introduce scratches. I just wouldn’t ever touch someone’s car. You can look up people even trying to detail their cars to make them cleaner and end up leaving “love marks.” It doesn’t matter how soft the thing you’re using is. It’s because the car has contaminants on it and by rubbing anything on the car, those contam…

Cars spend a significant amount of time outside and they depreciate so quickly it just doesn't matter. One shouldn't expect a paint to stay perfect the same way we expect our skin to wear and age over the years.

I don't even know what a 5 stage detail means but I can safely say you are overreacting. A car is just a tool and a rando putting a fridge magnet or leaning against your car once in a while is just completely negligible compared to the amount of shit a paint is exposed to when driving it. Sand and dirt do not ask for your permission either.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve had people just lean against my car when it wasn’t completely clean and completely ruin the paint requiring an entire 5 stage detail Assuming this is true, it seems like something has gone badly wrong somewhere in this process. Why can't cars have paint that survives being "leaned on"

I think the person you replied to probably just has a different definition of "completely ruined" than you or I.

Yeah we are talking pathological territory here. Car paints need less love than their owners need therapy if they have to "detail" their car every time a cat jump on the hood to enjoy the warmth.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#193
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, letting them run away and then setting up a raid at their house the next morning is safer for everyone. If you can follow them from altitude well enough to do that, you reduce risk dramatically relative to either interception or chase. > They could learn a few things from the Georgia State Patrol, the undisputed world champions of the PIT. Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? PIT maneuvers…

Buddy, most of these are stolen cars. Do you think they are driving them home and parking it in the driveway? If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home. >Why not just open up on them with antitank weaponry? I've heard cops say something similar on body cam footage.

> If you are eluding the cops at 100mph you are a danger to the public, they are not going to let you go home.

They would not even try to reach those speed if they weren't chased. A criminal who thinks he escaped the police will try to not attract attention. They would just follow the normal flow of the traffic and you can follow their path thanks to the millions of cameras and the helicopter mentionned earlier. We are not in the 70's anymore.

You can follow them from a distance they can't spot you so you can lock the road if they turn back and dispatch police force form in various exit points of an highway without starting an high speed chase.

High speed chase is about cops endangering the public for the thrill and adrenaline really. They do that because they like it, not because they need it to arrest criminals.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population density. In other countries they have a lot of motorcycle chases, and a lot more motorcycle based crime, but it's a crime of opportunity, which is created by highly dense and interwoven urban cores.

European cities are small? You don't hear about many chases in Berlin/Paris/London, do you?

Berlin and Los Angeles _city_ both have 3.8 million residents. The greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area has 18 million residents. The greater Berlin Metropolitan area has 6 million residents.

It's not only dense but the scale is far larger than most European cities. Only Asian and South American cities outclass the insanity that is LA. Until you've been there it's hard to appreciate the scope of it.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#195
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean in most other places people have simply realized that unless there is an immediate risk to life, the only thing high speed police chases do is create that very risk . Nicely contrasts with all the news about the omnipresent license plate scanners - it's just pointless, don't take the risk, arrest them at your leisure.

So your proposal is to just let the criminals run away? And that somehow won't embolden them further? "Once this baby hits 88mph, we're home free!" Air support is used to coordinate with law enforcement up ahead to deploy spikes to end the chase. You are just repeating empty political talking points that simply don't work in the real world.

It's probably reasonable to take a step back here and ask: Why is this not a universal problem? It's not as if every juristication outside the US simply lets criminals run away.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5 per person per year then. Or, the price of a can of coke per person per month. Much of which flows directly back into the local economy through wages spent and maintnance paid.

That 46 million could be spent on education, transportation, aid for low-income families, the homeless, jobs programs, small business tax breaks, infrastructure renewal, public works, etc. According to the report, not only are they largely not used for anything productive, there's potential harms to both people and the environment. And as many have pointed out, the same work can be done with drones.

To drive this point further: The one stable causal relastionship relevant here is the one between inequality and crime. Reduce inequality in ways 0xbadcafebee suggested would reduce inequality - though probably not in sizes measureable after a few years.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I wasn't driving at the time. Someone took my car." There is generally no crime for owning a vehicle used in a crime. The violation belongs to the _driver_ and to no one else. Burden of proof can be extreme in US courts.

You don't need to be chasing them on the road. Attach a GPS tracker to the car and follow it with drone, collect surveillance footage and arrest them once they come to a stop.

They do have GPS dart launchers and other systems. They're fairly unreliable. It's difficult for the lead driver in a chase to deploy accurately and cars are typically dirty enough to make most adhesives ineffective particularly when deployed at highway speeds.

A hoodie is enough to defeat the drone surveillance, and regardless of what facial recognition technology you use, a jury still has to buy the output of that system.

For drones with less than a 6 foot wingspan that don't require a runway you've got maybe 30 minutes of flight time at a top speed of 30 miles per hour. So unless you know where they're going already you're not going to be able to effectively deploy it in the time necessary to capture them and you can't loiter long enough to track them with infrared.

The helicopter is an insurance policy. When you have a bunch of marked units doing twice the speed limit on a long enough chase they're going to hit something. Those crashes are devastating and lead to eye watering settlement amounts. The helicopter can safely chase most vehicles at almost any speed and the risk of them crashing with any civilian or even civilian property is effectively zero.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European cities are small? You don't hear about many chases in Berlin/Paris/London, do you?

Berlin and Los Angeles _city_ both have 3.8 million residents. The greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area has 18 million residents. The greater Berlin Metropolitan area has 6 million residents. It's not only dense but the scale is far larger than most European cities. Only Asian and South American cities outclass the insanity that is LA. Until you've been there it's hard to appreciate the scope of it.

The Greater LA areas has 34k square miles of area. Germany, the whole country, has 128k square miles. In other words, the LA area alone is a quarter the size of all of Germany.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Berlin and Los Angeles _city_ both have 3.8 million residents. The greater Los Angeles Metropolitan area has 18 million residents. The greater Berlin Metropolitan area has 6 million residents. It's not only dense but the scale is far larger than most European cities. Only Asian and South American cities outclass the insanity that is LA. Until you've been there it's hard to appreciate the scope of it.

The Greater LA areas has 34k square miles of area. Germany, the whole country, has 128k square miles. In other words, the LA area alone is a quarter the size of all of Germany.

A huge chunk of that is national parks and deserts. It's not all inhabited. Only about 25% is classified as urban with the overwhelming majority of that being concentrated in Los Angeles and it's surrounding cities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles#Urban_area...

This isn't a size measuring contest. I think Europeans forget how _young_ America is. That's the only unique part of this country. Give us a few thousand years and we'll be on par.

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