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LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

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Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#291
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report is wrong. If you bother to watch LA news you'll see they are used a few times a night to track vehicles from the air. This frees up ground units and avoids high speed chases which saves lives. It's fun to call this a waste of taxpayer dollars until you watch a carjacked vehicle recovered with kids inside.

Do you really need 17 helicopters and 90 employees for the occasional car chase? This feels wildly over the top. They could do that just fine with one third the resources.

Just LA city police service an area about half the size of Rhode Island. If you count all the surrounding areas LA has mutual aid agreements with, it would be the 6th largest state by population.

LA Sheriffs are responsible for an area larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

They also assist in rescue operations, transporting SWAT and crisis negotiators to scenes, flying snake venom antidotes from the airport to the hospital, and dozens of other things.

I'd say 17 helicopters and 90 employees is pretty lean given that they have a crew ready to go within 5 minutes 24/7.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#292
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about depressed people? What about stressed people? What about people with autism who overreact when spooked? What about people on the edge who didn't care about the consequences because of the life situation? What about people who are convinced that police may kill them for mild violation as they saw that multiple times on the news and social media? The reaction to flee may be justified at the moment as it is l…

You're literally just making up scenarios in your head.

No they're not, people have irrational reactions to things all the time, especially under stress. Getting startled, panicking, and fleeing is definitely one of those.

People will confess to crimes they didn't commit if the police are persuasive enough, that's why such evidence is illegal.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California's 3 strikes law only applies to "serious" felonies. The list is pretty reasonable IMO . No one is getting life in prison for littering or insurance fraud It's basically a list of violent crimes, the only one that seems out of pocket is selling PCP, meth, or cocaine to childre, which is bad but could arguably be less bad than the others on the list

> California's 3 strikes law only applies to "serious" felonies. But not all states are California. > No one is getting life in prison for littering or insurance fraud William James Rummel begs to differ[0] - fraudulent use of a credit card ($80), forged check ($28.36), failure to return payment for non-performed work ($120.75) and voila, life sentence (albeit later reduced to time served on procedural grounds.) [0]…

LAPD helicopters rarely if ever leave California. IMO we shouldn't base our law enforcement on what Texas was doing 50 years ago (or West Virginia before helicopters were even invented)

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I humbly disagree. Humans have inherent bias, and politics and ideologies skew their behavior, even if they themselves mistakenly think it is well intentioned when it really is not. Social media and news media, in general, are controlled and dominated by Leftists. And that inherent bias and prejudiced ideology is very evident on social media posts, news articles and Wiki articles, especially about my country and cult…

We are talking about different things. I am discussing the legitimacy of content from accounts that are new, and/or post low-effort contrarian content which is a signature form of trolling. I'm also talking about the ease of script kiddies all the way up to nations using AI to more intelligently troll as bots with endless questions and logical fallacies when talking about current events. In other words, literally the…

I think we are talking of the same thing, but from different perspectives.

If I understand you, you are talking of non-AI-generated social media content posted by and interacted by humans vs the AI-generated junk created by AI bots & script kiddies. You probably feel the internet is getting diluted as the authentic (human-created) content is replaced or superceded by junk stuff (AI generated or trolling content) that are more irrelevant fluff & unavoidable diversions than the real raw human-driven content and exchange of ideas spurring meaningful dialogues.

I am talking of same human created social media (and news media, and info-repository media (including wikipedia, books, journals, etc.)) content created and maintained by humans, which unfortunately tend to have inherent bias & skewed ideologies leading to bad/unwarranted behavior. But when all that online and offline content is consumed as data repository and training material for AI LLMs, then the AI bots will inherit and demonstrate those same biases, skewed ideologies and resulting bad behavior.

e.g., the main subreddit (under Reddit.com) for my nation, is operated by admins belonging to enemy nation. They use bots for such propaganda. Reddit knows this problem, but hasn't bothered to do anything about it, because that bias and malice against my country and its culture is widespread among Leftists, who own and control most of social media, news media, info-repositories (like Wikipedia, which too openly spreads such propaganda). So that subreddit is filled with hate posts and malicious misinformation about my country and culture. Last year, Google made a deal to absorb all Reddit content, in order to train it's AI LLM models. Now guess what those AI LLMs will think and say about my country and culture?

You miss the real human content and realistic online interactions, but I feel you are missing the fact that such content will always have bias and driven by ideologies or opinions. But perhaps that difference in ideas and opinions is what you seek. You are probably afraid that AI will replace such content creators and content, thus leading to boring online communities and lack of meaningful interactions.

I am afraid that such human created content and bias will inevitably percolate into AI LLMs content and behavior, and it will forever skew the world's opinion about my nation and its ancient culture.

Unfortunately , it looks like AI will reshape our online realities and interactions to make it all a worser place from which there's no return or escape (AI will become all-pervasive in our lives, whether we like it or not).

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t all modern cars galvanised?

The unpainted parts.

Are you saying the unpainted parts are or aren’t galvanised?

What metal parts of a car aren’t painted? Or more broadly: coated.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's 3 strikes law only applies to "serious" felonies. But not all states are California. > No one is getting life in prison for littering or insurance fraud William James Rummel begs to differ[0] - fraudulent use of a credit card ($80), forged check ($28.36), failure to return payment for non-performed work ($120.75) and voila, life sentence (albeit later reduced to time served on procedural grounds.) [0]…

LAPD helicopters rarely if ever leave California. IMO we shouldn't base our law enforcement on what Texas was doing 50 years ago (or West Virginia before helicopters were even invented)

> LAPD helicopters rarely if ever leave California.

The person I responded to said "so why do americans have more high speed chases?" Last I checked, "americans" covered more than just California.

> IMO we shouldn't base our law enforcement on what Texas was doing 50 years ago

Indeed not! California's Three Strikes law isn't all that great though[0].

"Project clients have been given life sentences for offenses including stealing one dollar in loose change from a parked car, possessing less than a gram of narcotics, and attempting to break into a soup kitchen."

I'd say two of those were even sillier than the Texas example.

But to its credit, California did vote to reform it in 2021 and people have been released since.

[0] https://law.stanford.edu/three-strikes-project/three-strikes...

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#297

I find it interesting that the question is "why don't they use drones". My question is: why so much air surveillance? I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all.

> I live in Germany. The only times I hear a helicopter is if someone is being rescued or if someones missing. I rarely see them at all. Same for me, but I live in America. The specific location matters a lot. The LA area is more population dense and bigger than might be obvious. To put it in perspective, the GDP of the LA area is about 1/4 as much as the GDP of your entire country.

> The LA area is more population dense

LA is absolutely not “dense” by any European standard though.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> California's 3 strikes law only applies to "serious" felonies. But not all states are California. > No one is getting life in prison for littering or insurance fraud William James Rummel begs to differ[0] - fraudulent use of a credit card ($80), forged check ($28.36), failure to return payment for non-performed work ($120.75) and voila, life sentence (albeit later reduced to time served on procedural grounds.) [0]…

I would love to see more comprehensive stats to answer this question, rather than relying on cases studies you have to go back over one hundred years to find.

> over one hundred years

Look, I know I'm old and it feels like it but 1980 is absolutely not one hundred years ago.

> I would love to see more comprehensive stats to answer this question

Have some more recent California examples (between 1994 when they created the law and 2012 when it was loosened): "[...] given life sentences for offenses including stealing one dollar in loose change from a parked car, possessing less than a gram of narcotics, and attempting to break into a soup kitchen."[0]

[0] https://law.stanford.edu/three-strikes-project/three-strikes...

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they're not optional, but you shouldn't be starting a high speed pursuit over a seat belt violation, or for someone going 5 over the speed limit. Principle of proportionality should apply, you shouldn't be risking the lives of the public over anything but the most serious offences where them getting away poses a greater threat to the public than potentially killing a bystander.

> you shouldn't be starting a high speed pursuit over a seat belt violation, or for someone going 5 over the speed limit. That's the thing: normal people don't. Violent criminals, people with active arrest warrants, and people carrying highly illegal/dangerous things in their vehicles are the types that run from traffic stops.

> Violent criminals, people with active arrest warrants, and people carrying highly illegal/dangerous things in their vehicles are the types that run from traffic stops.

I beg you to watch the John Oliver segment where he gives several counter-examples to this narrative.

Re: LAPD helicopter tracker with real-time operating costs

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Canadian and American, and have lived in both places and seen the stark differences myself. In the US, the police culture is certainly militarized and proud of it. Even in small towns you have days where the police roll out the biggest armored vehicles they have to show off, and that's their idea of a "community event", kids think its cool obviously, but it's really just "lets show off all of our high power toys"…

Those high-powered toys by the cops are merely for showing off and to victimize the weak. Those toys typically never come into play to protect the citizens. Case in point: during the Uvalde school shooting incident in 2022, when a shooter (Salvador Ramos) went on a killing spree inside the school, then hundreds of cops gathered outside with brand new body armor (gifted to them just months ago) and armed with automati…

```you should know the Uvalde school shooter was a minor but he managed to buy the guns legally from a gun shop on credit!```

That does not appear to be true. The investagiom reporting shows that the shooter bought the guns after he turned 18 - the legal age to purchase them (long guns, aka rifles - different from pistols) in the state of Texas.

Buying things on credit seems like a reasonable way to do business in general - are you suggesting that all deadly weapons should be sold for cash to increase the difficulty of legally acquiring them and so lowering the frequency of mass shootings?

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