Police Organization Wants Cop-Spotting Dropped From Waze App 468
An anonymous reader writes "The Register reports on a request from the US National Sheriffs' Association, which "wants Google to block its crowd-sourced traffic app Waze from being able to report the position of police officers, saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk." From the article: "'The police community needs to coordinate an effort to have the owner, Google, act like the responsible corporate citizen they have always been and remove this feature from the application even before any litigation or statutory action,' AP reports Sheriff Mike Brown, the chairman of the NSA's technology committee, told the association's winter conference in Washington....Brown called the app a 'police stalker,' and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk. Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members had concerns as well. 'I can think of 100 ways that it could present an officer-safety issue,' Pasco said. 'There's no control over who uses it. So, if you're a criminal and you want to rob a bank, hypothetically, you use your Waze.'"
Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop setting up cash-cow speed traps. :P
Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the watchmen don't like being watched? Tough shit. You want more power than the average person, you had better get used to extra scrutiny too.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Informative)
Just the download counter for the app could be read as a social barometer of public trust.
It's not a cop locating app, it's an app to suggest alternate routes of travel around congested areas. It just has a feature to show where police are, but that's not the purpose of it.
If this app is downloaded more than a few hundred times that would indicate that more people than just hardened criminals want to keep tabs on cops.
Is what the results of your study show, that there are a few hundred hardened criminals around?
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just the download counter for the app could be read as a social barometer of public trust.
It's not a cop locating app, it's an app to suggest alternate routes of travel around congested areas. It just has a feature to show where police are, but that's not the purpose of it.
It's BS to say it's putting cops' lives at risk, for the most part. That being said, a lot of cops are feeling really under attack these days because of the public outrage over the last few months and the cops who were ambushed in NYC--like, their families are really worried about them, and I Can respect that.
The cop locator does two things for the ap. It lets people speed, I suppose. But the only situation where I've seen it used is really for fun, in a spot-the-cop kind of way.
That being said, people would be dumb not to check it before robbing a bank, I suppose. Of course, most people who rob banks are pretty dumb.
(It is not productive employment--it pays something like 30-60K/yr with a high likelihood of getting caught each year, IIRC).
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's BS to say it's putting cops' lives at risk, for the most part.
Well, "Save the children" and "all men are rapists" have already been overused, they had to come up with some type of appeal to emotion slogan to be taken seriously right?
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's BS to say it's putting cops' lives at risk, for the most part.
Presumably anybody using this app to search for cops is going to be using it to deliberately avoid coming in contact with any cops. This outcome is actually the lowest risk outcome for any type of police encounter.
The way this has been phrased, you would almost imagine that there are anti-police death squads roaming the city, looking for isolated police units far away from backup and slowly picking them off with a sniper rifle.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Informative)
So either this sherriff's association has their heads completely up their asses, or what they're really doing is boo-hooing over the fact that people are interfering with their daily traffic ticket quota. Which means they have their heads up their asses, because what they should be doing is solving crimes.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be happy to use an app that didn't track me so much, but to give voluntary info on police speed trap warnings, and traffic incidents, but I don't want them keeping my travel data and tracking me in real time.
This thing looks like a privacy nightmare from the TOS.
I"ve used an older app called "Trapster" which was a bit more anonymous and allowed folks to report speed traps and traffic cameras, etc. I think it fell a bit into dis-use which makes these kind of apps useful or not, but man, I don't like all the tracking and all that Waze does and the information it collects and seems to keep. Otherwise I'd jump on board big time.
Would be nice to know where speed traps and DWI roadblocks are set up when driving.
I prefer to avoid the police while out no matter what the cause.
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It's BS to say it's putting cops' lives at risk, for the most part.
Presumably anybody using this app to search for cops is going to be using it to deliberately avoid coming in contact with any cops. This outcome is actually the lowest risk outcome for any type of police encounter.
The way this has been phrased, you would almost imagine that there are anti-police death squads roaming the city, looking for isolated police units far away from backup and slowly picking them off with a sniper rifle.
The recent cop killings in France are enough to not laugh at the idea, though I doubt that taking cop spotting off waze would make any difference in reality.
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The way this has been phrased, you would almost imagine that there are anti-police death squads roaming the city, looking for isolated police units far away from backup and slowly picking them off with a sniper rifle.
Dude ... don't give away the plot for the next Die Hard movie!
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a cop locating app, it's an app to suggest alternate routes of travel around congested areas. It just has a feature to show where police are, but that's not the purpose of it.
It's BS to say it's putting cops' lives at risk, for the most part. That being said, a lot of cops are feeling really under attack these days because of the public outrage over the last few months and the cops who were ambushed in NYC--like, their families are really worried about them, and I Can respect that.
Then you're as stupid as the cops. Its the cops' job to put themselves into "dangerous" situations in order to protect the public. Cops are scared of "stalkers"? As if stalkers wouldn't exist without a phone app??? Should cops be scared of breathing city air? Should we be providing them breathing masks along with their bulletproof vests and 17 round firearms?
Those two cops that were murdered in NYC were not killed because of an app. They were killed because a deranged shitbag got the jump on them. If cops feel justified killing misdemeanor lifestyle criminals with dangerous, prohibited chokeholds, then they should not feel like the people who pay their salaries support them.
Use your brain. The cops don't want waze because it makes it harder for them to meet their arrest quotas. That is the only effect a speedtrap app can have
That being said, people would be dumb not to check it before robbing a bank, I suppose. Of course, most people who rob banks are pretty dumb.
Only a moron would depend on a voluntary participation app to keep him from getting arrested in a bank robbery. Don't go into crime, you'd get arrested with the other dumbasses.
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That is the only effect a speedtrap app can have
Well it does get people to slow down too. :)
And also, warning people about speed traps is free speech according to the legal system linky
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Yes, it gets people to slow down until immediately after the speed trap, then they speed up again.
So the only result is traffic congestion and speeding tickets.
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What was that saying on the side of police cars?
To serve and protect I believe it was, so their job is not to protect? Than what exactly is their purpose?
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed and trapster and other apps do the same crowdsourced speed trap locating trick.
Trapster had better audio alerts but they don't work on my new phone so I use waze now.
It also flagged "likely" speed traps even when the police were not yet reported in the location.
Using the app to locate a speedtrap is about as productive as driving along the road and observing parked police cars then circling back around and attacking them now that you know where they are.
The police have a problem because they have been killing united states citizens at a rate of roughly 1200* citizens per year (via 528 validated trustworthy news source reported face page reports). More of those citizens killed by united states police were children than all the citizens killed by the police forces of england, france, and germany combined. It is literally (not figuratively) about 120* citizens vs under 20 citizens in england, france, and germany total per year.
Not to mention countless beatings, illegitimate property seizures, and a solid reputation of "good cops" standing aside doing nothing while the "bad" cops commit crimes.
*People who are police officers killed about 1450 citizens but 528.com found that about 200 of the killings were not related to their police status or police duties.
** I support the police and donate to the police fund but our police are out of control and have terrible community relations. We need to get them out of dealing with drug gangs and drug money and swat teams and military equipment. Move that activity to the FBI and return the police to ordinary police enforcement actions. Having a tank and heavy automatic weapons misleads them into killing 7 year old girls when they were at the wrong address.
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I believe you're referring to fivethirtyeight.com not "528.com". And this article in particular:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/dat... [fivethirtyeight.com]
So, just to be fair, the combined population of the three nations you mentioned is ~119 million, and the U.S. is at 316 million.
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> It's not a cop locating app,
That is literally all I use it for.
I'm just saying.
I speed all the time and I use Waze to know when to slow down.
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I dunno how it is in america (or any other country for that matter) but where i live, speedometers in cars are required by law to over-report speeds by a small percentage.
I don't think the USA has such rules. The issue is most likely because the speedometer measures tire rotation with an assumed tire diameter. New tires will indicate close to the true speed, but as the tire wears down, it has to rotate more to travel the same difference, and therefore the reported speed will be higher than true speed.
Car manufacturers would get a lot of complaints if their speedometers were underreporting the speed, so they probably add a little margin to ensure that doesn't happen.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Also, the watchmen don't like being watched? Tough shit."
Exactly. Google should word it more politically but I hope "No, fuck you" is an accurate paraphrase of their response.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Informative)
Waze isn't a cop searching app. It's a driving directions app that shows where cops are so people can avoid speed traps while driving. It also shows traffic accidents, where cars are pulled over on the side of the road, where lanes are closed, where construction is taking place, etc. Basically anything that would be useful for a driver to know. In fact, most of the time it's making the road safer for cops because if they've pulled someone over on the side of the road and a person using Waze reports that there's a cop, then other drivers on the road using the app will know to look out for the cop when they drive near that area and are less likely to accidentally hit them.
Note that I'm not making any argument that the ability to point out cops should be removed. Just that maybe you should do some modicum of research (i.e. type "waze" into google and skim the first result) before you start talking about shit and end up sounding like a moron, which decreases the strength of your argument considerably.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Interesting)
Colour me confused but aren't police meant to be visible on patrol, reassuring the public and obstructing the criminals by their presence. Being a police officer is not meant to be about being a revenue machines on the clock but a peace officer assisting the public in upholding the law and providing a first response emergency service. So shouldn't police be more like, hmm, great app, let's try to be everywhere on it and not just sitting down on our doughnut munching lard arses, as mobile revenue machines targeting the poor and middle class.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have to say I disagree with your premise. Sure, traffic safety is important. As an older guy with two young kids and a wife that freaks out when I drive more than 5 mph, I always drive at or slightly under speed limit. I still like knowing where the cops are. Your argument is akin to just do nothing wrong and the NSA will not pose problems for you while they read your emails.
I lived abroad for 10 years in Asia pursing a banking career, I came back with my family about six months back. In this time, I
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Towns that literally re-drew their jurisdictions to cover a slice of a high volume highway and set about becoming the one of the worst speed traps in the US. Look at the maps. Hampton literally is a square with one long sliver out to the highway. Only one reason to have that.
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I guarantee that your life will not be adversely affected if you were to just drive 5mph BELOW the speed limit everywhere you went, all the time. In fact, you could even save someone's life, will experience less stress, and usually save money on gas and tires.
Sorry bro, logic fail here. There are many cases where driving less than the speed limit is actually MORE of a hazard than driving the correct speed for the highway. I can't even begin to tell you how many times a slow driver has caused problems or even an accident. They are just as much a hazard as the speeders.
People just need to pay attention to what is going on and drive speeds that are appropriate to the conditions of the road, including weather and other drivers. In my opinion, speed limits (on fr
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Re: Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:4, Informative)
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I've slowed down and drive much less aggressive as I've aged. Not because I feel more responsible now or that I was carefree when I was younger. I just don't have the awareness I used to have when I was younger and I am not as comfortable pushing things. It takes me much longer to verify no one is next to me before changing lanes, I used to just whip my head around, scan my mirror and then go, it takes me longer to refocus when I look in my rear view mirror or down at the speedo and back forward again, m
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I don't need superhuman ability to control my 4700lb vehicle at speeds above the arbitrarily low limits posted in many areas. I've driven safely for over 40 years, and typically above the limit, to either what I believe is safe for conditions, or what will keep me from getting pulled over, which ever is lower. I put value on my time, and you're welcome to view it differently, but I have better things to do than sit in a car. While nothing is perfectly safe, the point of transportation is to go from A to
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Predatory policing (Score:4, Interesting)
I now live one city over, and there's a major state university here, but even with all of the youth hijinks and the college dropout slums a few miles from the school it still doesn't feel as predatory. Only time I was pulled over in this city I deserved it, and the officer was professional and civil even if he was firm in issuing me a citation. When pulled over in the previous city it always felt like the officers were just looking for excuses to get tough.
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pasco said. 'There's no control over who uses it. So, if you're a criminal and you want to rob a bank, hypothetically, you use your Waze.'"
What about the non-criminals who want to know where the police are so they can get some help from them? Or what about the non-criminals who want to know when police officers are blocking a side of the road, or dealing with a traffic situation? If they really don't want to be bothered, they should just drive unmarked cars, make their phone numbers unlisted, and institute some kind of paywall for their official web sites.
Instead of removing information from Waze, they should just be adding information to it with their own api. They could transmit the gps location of their marked cars in real-time (like bus systems now do with the nextbus api). When responding to a call, they should just send the person who called a real-time update of their estimated arrival. And when there is a bank robbery, they should just flood the Waze api with virtual police officers everywhere.
Not only that, but if the police could try to crowdsource the effort of looking for bank robbers, child abductors, or the obvious-looking drunk drivers, through Waze instead of overburdening the outdated the 911 system, that would help them prioritize and weed out most of the false positives in real-time.
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Yes its nice to be alerted to the police, not just for checking if your speeding. Here in Texas, the law is "The law states a driver must either vacate the lane closest to the stopped emergency vehicle if the road has multiple lanes traveling in the same direction or slow down 20 miles per hour below the speed limit. (If the speed limit is below 25 mph the driver must slow down to 5 mph.) "
Waze does not have listing for Ambulance, or fire truck etc. But you still have to move over, and with traffic here its
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
Speeding laws and their enforcement are corrosive to our sense of justice. Think of it as a gateway law to break.
Drive the speed limit and you get angry people tailgating you and angrily making unsafe passes even when you are in the slow lane. Clearly in most places the speed limits are too low. So most folks in decent highway conditions drive 10-15 mph over the limit, which makes them all law breakers.
Cops don't clearly state at what point they will pull someone over, or what cup size allows you to talk your way out of a ticket, which really erodes our sense of equal justice for all (and violates our constitutionally guaranteed right to equal protection under the law). In fact we all violate the law several times a day just to live like a normal citizens, and much of the time we are pretty unaware something was even against the law (a sure sign our legal system has gotten out of hand). Cops get to choose when to apply esoteric laws and when to ignore pretty basic ones (depends highly on skin color or the presence of a badge).
Re:Who eats doughnuts with the doughnut men? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...but lets not pretend that the reason you identify police on Waze exists for any other reason but to let other speeding drivers know to slow down until they pass the cop and speed back up to well above the speed limit.
it also causes traffic jams when cops pull people over. It's for route selection. You can "avoid" routes that may have speed traps, as well as possible slow-spots from cops pulling people over.
get out of the house more often (Score:4, Interesting)
Go to a peaceful protest somewhere, something anti-government. Go up to random cops and just try to strike up conversation. Sure, some cops are cool and some people appear to ask for trouble. At the same time, you will find a tremendous amount of unfriendly and unprofessional cops.
The best experiment I ever saw was of ex cops trying to ask for complaint forms at police stations. Yeah, now that's a good time to be had for sure.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
give all the money to the state
Donate it all to charity (that isn't the fraternal order of police, or some self-serving operation), mail it all to the north pole, but not the state. In some places the states or local governments have "arrangements' with the police to share this money. Further amongst themselves the police divide up roads for state, county and local coverage. You can tell because you can blow by a local cop on the interstate and he won't twitch, even if you're in his city limits. If it was about public safety he'd pull you over just to stop you, even if he was powerless to ticket you. The cat and mouse game around stop signs and traffic lights in some areas has reached epic proportions. There should not be a debate about whether you fully stopped, or almost stopped... only that you followed the intent of the intersection control.
Take away the money motive and I think police would start enforcing traffic laws based on actual danger, rather than what they think they can stick you with.
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If it was about public safety he'd pull you over just to stop you, even if he was powerless to ticket you.
If he is powerless to ticket you, that means you're out of his jurisdiction and doesn't have authority to stop you.
The reason the local cop on the interstate didn't stop you for "blowing by" him was probably because he was there doing something else that he was called to assist with. There's no other reason for him to be there if it isn't in his jurisdiction.
There should not be a debate about whether you fully stopped, or almost stopped... only that you followed the intent of the intersection control.
OMG, you do NOT want law enforcement to become a guessing game of "what is the intent of the traffic signal". There is never a debate about whether
Re:Simple solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Can the police supply a single instance where Waze actually caused a single injury of a police officer? If is amazing how many police officers signed up for an exciting career in law enforcement (exciting because it has risk) and recently they have been starting to whine about the risk from non credible sources of risk.
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Exactly, example would be a school zone (25 mph) in the middle of a 45 mile zone. Chances are you're too busy checking your speedometer than looking out for children in the crossing, or hoping the guy behind you realizes the speed drops by nearly half.
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If you can't drive a vehicle at a specified speed (designated by road signs) without being so distracted by the speedometer that you might crash then you should not have been issued with a driving licence and have no business operating a motor vehicle on a public road.
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In 1999, the most recent year for which data are available, more than 6 million crashes occurred on U.S. highways, killing over 41,000 people and injuring nearly 3.4 million others. Rear-end collisions accounted for almost one-third of these crashes1 (1.848 million) and 11.8 percent of multivehicle fatal crashes (1,923). Commercial vehicles were involved in 40 percent of these fatal rear-end collisions (770), even though commercial vehicles only comprised 3 percent of vehicles and 7 percent of miles travele
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Sure. It was really hard to google "NTSA studies speed" and click the first link, but here you go:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=NHTSA+stu... [lmgtfy.com]
Direct link:http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nhtsa.gov%2Fpeople%2Finjury%2Fenforce%2FSpeed_Forum_Presentations%2FFerguson.pdf&ei=qrjHVNy0C8OkgwTDuIHQCg&usg=AFQjCNGC1ELU62qSlGqu5aHElfXjNglI4g&sig2=H8dxIRK6EENhrYUXok6L1Q&bvm=bv.84349003,d.eX
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But that's what we're paying them to do. That's why it's called a "cash cow." If we don't like it, we should stop paying them to do it.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't; have you ever even tried to get involved in your community's police decisions? Its hard. The police convince citizens that certain things are important; we use them as the experts to determine their own worth and then pay them for that expertise and for the work in question. Police services are very rarely doing what citizens have asked them to do but instead what they've determined is the best way to keep their jobs.
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Someone should ask him to list all 100 of his ways it could present an officer safety issue.
I can name a few reasons that speed traps present a civilian/driver safety issue...
Let's be honest here: Police traffic fines have almost nothing to do with safety anymore. They're about income for whatever governmental organization the police represent.
Re:Simple solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe cops need a sensible, community-minded mission in a media friendly format? "Serve and Protect", maybe, or "We're tackling real criminals now instead of the harmless pot smokers".
We have plenty of reasons to hate cops, from racially-motivated shootings [yahoo.com] to blatant theft [fff.org] and rage murder [huffingtonpost.com], these incidents happen many thousands of times every year. If they want to change I'm all for it but in the meantime let me know where these trigger happy fuckers are so I can avoid them. I believe believe in personal safety, freedom to possess property and the inviolable rights of every human being. That's why I feel justified in helping highlight gang members with badges on Waze. Think of the children (AKA collateral damage) please folks. [opednews.com]
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stop being a troll on the internet.
Criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about ticket revenue. Nothing more, and nothing less.
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...and we all know, if officer location reporting was removed from Waze, some enterprising soul would just create a plug-in for the Marshal's Extracurricular Event Notation System.
You know: Waze and Meens.
Newsflash: You're in public too (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding out where the police are should be as easy as it is for them to find you.
Re:Newsflash: You're in public too (Score:5, Insightful)
The police should just man up and trust us with this unimportant information.
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No shit, I don't see them going after the owners of doughnut shops.
Re:Newsflash: You're in public too (Score:5, Insightful)
It should be easier for a citizen to find the police. They are public servants, and they are there to help us. Right? An app that shows where the nearest police officer is located should even be tax funded, possibly.
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It should be easier for a citizen to find the police. They are public servants, and they are there to help us. Right? An app that shows where the nearest police officer is located should even be tax funded, possibly.
Maybe you could explain why 911 isn't going to work but this phone app would?
The "nearest" police officer may not be available to help with your problem since she may be engaged in another issue. Is your plan to bounce from "nearest" police officer to "nearest" police officer until you find one available to go back to where you had an issue to help you? And that is an improvement on calling 911 how?
You're trying to put lipstick on a pig of an idea.
Even though the police are "public servants," that doesn't
No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy (Score:3, Insightful)
If they are on the road and performing their jobs, they have no reasonable expectation of privacy. In fact, knowing where the nearest police officer can be found could enhance the safety of the general public.
Our revenue stream your personal freedoms (Score:5, Insightful)
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Then you forgot to escape it. < > posts just fine.
Lying Headlines (Score:2, Funny)
Nothing in here says anything about the NSA. Could we at least get a decent website.
John
Re:Lying Headlines (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the article does say something about the 'NSA'.
Title of article:
NSA gunning for Google, wants cop-spotting dropped from Waze app
Subtitle of article:
Not that NSA, the other one
First sentence:
The US National Sheriffs' Association wants Google to block its crowd-sourced traffic app Waze from being able to report the position of police officers, saying the information is putting officer's lives at risk.
NSA = National Sheriffs' Association.
Re:Lying Headlines (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of a scene from an old Andy Griffith Show episode that, for no good reason, has been relegated to long-term storage in my brain.
Andy and Barney are checking into a hotel somewhere for a cop convention. The receptionist says "Thank you Mr. Taylor. Thank you, Mr. Fife... oh, excuse me, DOCTOR Fife!"
Andy incredulously looks at the sign-in book and notes that Barney has appended an "M.D." to his name - after which Barney sheepishly explains it stands for "Mayberry Deputy".
(okay, in all likelihood I'm the only person here who thinks that's funny...)
No fuck off (Score:2)
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Every time I see a cop doing something useless like sitting at the side of the road I want to see their budget cut. They do that crap instead of helping with real crimes. And don't say "but the traffic cops are the same cops that would be investigating crimes" because it's all under one budget.
How do you know they are doing something useless and aren't sitting there filling out paperwork while keeping on eye on the road looking for the more egregious violations? You may argue that filling out paperwork is a useless waste of their time, but no police officer has ever said "Gee, I sure wish I had more mandatory paperwork to do!" A single felony arrest can result in several hours of paperwork to complete, and If it's not all filed perfectly, that may let the suspect go free.
Re:No fuck off (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't actually work "real crimes" anymore. They have automated systems which allow you to file a police report that they can then ignore. However if you're sleeping in a park, it takes three cop cars and a supervisor to harass you.
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Oh I don't know....
I had every cop on duty in the small town I live in show up at my home once. What where they looking for? Some kids playing with guns during school...
It turned out to be some neighbor who called to complain about my kid playing with the kids across the street (both home schooled) and their arsenal of bright blue and orange nurff guns that shot orange foam darts about 15 feet, the day before.
They showed up with all three squad cars and 5 officers, right after lunch to let us know we
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Sometimes they're sitting there between calls doing paperwork.
The problem with cutting their budget is that traffic enforcement(writing tickets) generates revenue, solving crimes doesn't. So you'd be forcing them to write even more tickets.
Even in areas where the police department doesn't get a cut of ticket revenues, generally the legislatures will alter funding - IE give the cops money to be able to afford to write tickets where the money from the tickets goes to the schools. If they don't write enough
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The problem with cutting their budget is that traffic enforcement(writing tickets) generates revenue, solving crimes doesn't.
Fixing that would make a great initiative petition. "Henceforth all ticket revenue will be rebated to the taxpayers directly on a quarterly basis".
Re:No fuck off (Score:5, Informative)
Actually it isn't useless. Having emergency responders spread out, instead of gathered at the station, can significantly reduce response times in the event of an emergency.
This was one of the subjects of a friend's Ph.D. dissertation. He used it to show that while random spread can reduce emergency response times, creating patrol routes that target hot spots based on time of day can reduce response times nearly in half (compared with random spread).
Wait a minute... (Score:5, Insightful)
...you mean the police don't like being stalked, electronically followed, and reported on without a warrant?
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Actually, it's usually safer for all if the cops don't show up during the bank heist. That's how hostages get taken and people get shot/stabbed/etc. Plus, if they "get away", it's instantly the FBI's problem. (also, with technology what it is today, few ever totally get away with it.)
FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
Waze has been around for over 6 years. If this were a legitimate concern why can he not point to a single incident of someone doing exactly this rather than merely spreading FUD?
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What's much more entertaining to me is that more often than not, the police reporting function isn't that valuable because the officer will have caught someone and moved on to a new spot by the time I see the notice.
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Waze has been around for over 6 years. If this were a legitimate concern why can he not point to a single incident of someone doing exactly this rather than merely spreading FUD?
You seem to have missed some news stories.
NYPD Cop Killer Used App to Track Police Movements Since Early December [breitbart.com]
NYPD Cop killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley was using a traffic app called Waze to track law enforcement’s movements, NYC Alerts tweeted on Monday. According to an available screenshot, Brinsley was tracking two officers who were almost 4 miles away from him in Staten Island at 10:44 PM EST since the beginning of December.
Seems to me that the cops getsit backwards (Score:3)
Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said his members had concerns as well. 'I can think of 100 ways that it could present an officer-safety issue,' Pasco said. 'There's no control over who uses it. So, if you're a criminal and you want to rob a bank, hypothetically, you use your Waze.'"
If bank robbers only rob banks far away from where the cops are, and are gone by the time the cops get there, doesn't that LOWER the chances of an armed confrontation? Just saying ...
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>executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police,
That sounds pretty gender discriminatory to me.
Risk is part of the job last I checked (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure the recent increase in behavior trends in Law Enforcement are what's putting officers lives at risk.
( Pro Tip: Keep killing unarmed folks and the masses eventually will break out the pitchforks and torches )
Hell, to be fun, they should remove the COP logo from Waze and replace it with a Pistol instead to reflect the increased likelihood of being shot.
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Where is this shit coming from? How did you get voted so highly?
Police who commit misconduct of any kind is are the extreme minority.[...]
Here's a concrete example for you.
Cleveland Cops recently shot [wikipedia.org] a black teenager who had an air-pistol.
That's OK, because the air pistol is indistinguishable from a real pistol (the red tip had been removed), and the police followed proper procedure. In a statement given to the press, the police described how the teenager had been told three times to raise his hands, and when he didn't comply and went for the pistol, he was shot twice and killed.
No problem, it wasn't a black-on-white issue, the police were r
Cognitive Dissonance (Score:2)
What happened to "Bring it on"?! (Score:2)
Huh?
Police are (or supposed to be) our first line of defense against criminals and other miscreants. Having eaten our bread and taken our shilling, they should be proud of drawing the fire on themselves to protect their masters (that's the rest of the citizenry), not whine the risks...
I tend to think, the whining is done by the pigs among them. The actual officers are fine w
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Actually, I've noticed the exact opposite... Maybe, we are talking of different things — use your own account and explain, if you wish to continue the conversation.
I was not talking about legalities — ethics, mostly.
Oversight (Score:5, Insightful)
Police want to be able to (without warrant or cause) track you, record you, search you, go through your cell phone, and whatever else the fancy at the moment but once there is the slightest attempt at any monitoring or oversight of the police they go apeshit about their rights and their safety.
It's so backwards it's almost a parody of the intent of the constitution and government accountability.
Utter nonsense. (Score:2)
Pot, meet Kettle (Score:2)
"...Brown called the app a 'police stalker,' and said being able to identify where officers were located could put them at personal risk."
Oh, that's rich right there...a representative of the fucking NSA trying to label civilians as the group screwing with people's right to privacy.
I can't tell what stench hanging in the air is winning Charlie Sheen style; Irony or Bullshit.
This is a BS concern. (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Waze virtually every day. It can only be used to spot for cops who are running speedtraps. It doesn't "stalk" them in anyway. It is not very accurate because it relies on someone to note their location, and cops move a lot (say, when they go after a speeder and setup somewhere else or move on with other duties). At best it can bed give you info like "There's been some activity by police looking for speeders around here recently."
If Google caves to this nonsense, I'm going to be very disappointed. And, for the record, never have any reason to use Waze again.
Re:This is a BS concern. (Score:4, Interesting)
Waze also tends to give me much better directions than any other app, and much better ETAs as well.
So long as user reporting and map chat is there, there will always be a way to report officer locations; no matter what they do with the official feature.
Cops Gone Wrong (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Hypothetically? (Score:2)
Who Watches The Watchmen? They Prefer "No One." (Score:4, Insightful)
The Romans had a saying: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" -- "who watches the watchmen?"
Apparently, the sheriff's association would prefer "no one."
Meanwhile, they want unfettered access to track you, to search you at will, to apply force when they deem necessary - with no potential repercussions, and to have their word taken as literal truth in courts of law. In short, they want to answer to no one, and especially not to the public that pays their salaries and that they are sworn to serve.
To have their way, they threaten litigation or new statuatory laws. I suppose that they forget that the public has the right to free speech, and that the police are not the *secret* police in this country.
Here is police opinion (Score:4, Informative)
From the cited article:
>> “There’s no expectation of privacy” for a vehicle driving on a public road or parked in a public place, said Lt. Bill Hedgpeth, a spokesman for the Mesquite Police Department in Texas.
http://washington.cbslocal.com... [cbslocal.com]
Man that must be a real bitch for them.
Simple Solution (Score:3)
Just make it illegal to use Waze to commit a crime.
There. Problem solved.
"hypothetically, you use your Waze" (Score:3)
Here is a little scenario. An officer stops on the side of the road, and waits until that location gets marked on waze. Then he moves to another street and waits to get marked again, and again. Now the map looks like the police are all over the place. Properly played waze is a force multiplier. If waze were to simply change the marking algorithm so that marking an officer took one user event, but removing it took several, then the police would have the kind of visual presence on the map that would serve their better interest. People in those areas will slow down, and no you won't know which is current and which is merely recent.
Fear! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let me get this straight.
Cops have guns, shotguns, assault rifles, armored tanks, armed robots, tasers, pepper sprays, billy clubs, body armor, police shocks, police engines, police cars, police radios, helicopters, and the power of law behind them.
But they are afraid of an app.
To take the opposite approach from most... (Score:3)
I agree that this is free speech, and that police should not only be okay with people reporting on their location, but should be *required* to report their location publicly, constantly.
But that's not what this post is about. Others are saying "maybe if police didn't abuse their power, people wouldn't want to circumvent police and speed traps"
To take the opposite approach: maybe if speed limits were not only sane, but actually *enforced*, people wouldn't care so much about speed traps.
Speeds traps being a thing is really a sign that something is fundamentally wrong. Speeding should not be a thing which everyone does, unless there's a speed trap. Speeding should be a thing which, when it happens, everyone on the road reports the speeder, because they are creating a dangerous situation (just as you might call the police to report a chemical truck on fire).
If we live in a world where a law exists that *only police care about*, that's a problem.
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