Police Officials - New Crime Detection & Prevention Technology

Random gunfire has continued to be a significant problem in several large cities throughout the United States. However, city police stations are now entering a new realm of crime fighting and prevention with Gunshot Detection Systems.

Gunshot detection systems use sensors designed to detect the sonic boom of a bullet that travels faster than the speed of sound. Others use sensors that pick up the optical characteristics of a muzzle blast, the explosion that propels the bullet out of the gun barrel. Shot Spotter, a system deployed in Washington, D.C relies on an acoustics based and GPS-equipped system that automatically locates the origin of the shot and notifies authorities. A series of acoustic sensors picks up the sound waves of a muzzle blast that radiate outward from the barrel in all directions.

The devices are mounted on telephone poles in what has been deemed 'High Crime' neighborhoods. They listen for the distinctive sound of a gunshot and immediately alert a police dispatcher when one is detected. A video camera in the device allows the dispatcher to keep an eye on the scene until officers arrive.

If the police department has installed video cameras with the detection devices, either the device or a dispatcher can angle the video camera in the direction that the gunfire came from. Dispatchers can also listen to a recording of the sound on their computers to make sure it's not a false alarm, as might be caused by a firecracker or other explosion.

The devices are still being geared in perfecting the sound recognizing process. Shot Spotter devices were tested originally in Texas & in Redwood City, CA which indeed accurately detected 80% of test shots. However, when the devices were first turned on, they got a detection of gunshots, so police rushed to surround a senior citizen in his old back firing truck.

Even with the few misguided / mis recognized sounds, police officers say they are amazed to learn just how often guns are actually being fired in their cities. Police have said that they can now respond to incidents they may never have known about before and to events of multiple calls much quicker and accurately. In one city, police responded to a Shot Spotter alarm that went off two days after the network was installed and found two men firing shots from a stolen pistol. According to police reports, it took the officers only three minutes to arrive at the location of the incident. The pistol had been stolen just 15 minutes earlier.

In Redwood City, law enforcement officials recorded nearly 400 gunshots on New Year's Eve in 1998. Most are thought to have been "celebratory" shots fired into the air. On New Year's Eve 2002, the city recorded fewer than 10. With the gunshot detection systems, crime has decreased and it has been attributed to a combination of the gunshot detection systems and a widespread campaign to let residents know that they could get caught, said Chris Rasmussen, executive director of the Redwood City Police Activities League.

The FBI brought a Shot Spotter system into Franklin County in an attempt to catch the alleged Ohio sniper wanted for a number of shootings in the area. Though the system did not directly lead to the arrest of the suspect, an FBI representative said he wished his department could have kept the system after the investigation. "It's an incredibly good system," he said. "It gave us the ability to respond very, very quickly to shots fired.... You never knew which one could have been the right call."

Following what was said to be the most violent year in Boston, Councilor Rob Consalvo proposed that city officials look into installing gunshot detection systems because only 20% to 30% of gunshots are reported to authorities because people fear the repercussions for reporting the shots.

Conversely, public safety does not come without a high price tag. The systems can cost tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on how many devices are being installed and what the unit's capabilities are. Police departments can decide whether they want to make them bulletproof and whether they want to make the units conspicuous so residents know the devices are in the area. In the Chicago units, they have large police stars on the side and blue lights on top that flash when the system is activated. But is that a good thing? Do they really want to announce to the criminal suspect that police are on the way and they should leave or hide to avoid being caught?

As America continues to enhance homeland security measures, it is interesting to find out that PDAs may soon play an important role in early detection of a problem. The company Proxity is working on the development of the On Alert Gunshot Detection System (GDS) that will allow a device to capture data related to gunshots and send it to law enforcement officers via a wirelessly connected PDA for a faster response. Future versions may also include the ability to pick up people's screams or natural disasters to provide for faster emergency response.



Safety Dynamics, Inc. has been continuously working on advancements and continually adds sound signatures to be part of the DSNN library of recognized sounds. Training the DSNN to recognize other signatures, like a running diesel truck engine, is under way. What will set this technology apart will be the level of recognition even when background noise levels are high.


While the new technology is fascinating and reassuring that police crime fighting and prevention have not lagged behind in the cave man progression of technology there are questions to be considered.

Can technology in the software truly tell the difference between sounds of gun fire and trucks / cars that back fire?

Will the units know the difference between a shoot out and some immature malicious people driving around throwing firecrackers out the window?

Are we, as the public they protect willing to accept that our safety comes with a high price tag and are we willing to pay the price?

With so many negative police articles, discussions, debates and even witnessing police present tickets for the least harmful of civil offenses, sometimes on a daily basis... we still need a structured police force with the capability to respond to criminal offenses.

Employment positions that need to be filled by police and detectives is expected to grow as much as 30% in the next 7 years.

However, there is a debate in our security conscious society that could do us more harm than good if we continue to work against police instead of with them and vice versa.

As a result, some city police forces are having trouble filling vacant positions with qualified candidates. As we demand that police do more about drug related crimes, an increase will rise for police services. The police of today needs the technology of 3 years from now in order to prevent criminals who have tomorrow's technology yesterday.

Law enforcement jobs provide a great deal of security after you pass probation. There is job security, the pay is good, the benefits are on average very good, and there is an excellent pension plan and there is always a step on the career ladder. In addition, Police Officers have a career that makes a real difference in people's lives and helps to make communities safer.

It's definitely not the glamour career of celebrities, but it does allow you to know you are making a difference and you are part of something valuable...even if there are a few dings in the shield.

Online Slander & Threats

Much easier to intimidate and slander behind a computer screen.

More and more people are becoming targets of harassments. Although far more women are targets of sexual harassment and threats, men are becoming the targets of jaded and misguided women. For middle and high school (mostly females) students, online social networking Web sites such as MySpace have become the new venue for school bullying.

Arianna Huffington, operats Huffington Post which is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women. Huffington said online anonymity has allowed "a lot of dark prejudices towards women to surface."

Men Harassed By Women Online

Most of the results for online harassment found online will be for women harassed by men. However, women are finding it much easier to go online and accuse men of wrong doing in the emotionless electronic communication system. Once a women is “wronged” some women may go in search of restoring her pride by lashing out at male who wrong her by extending the truth of a occurrence.

Someone may become furious when their attraction is not returned. Other times, what should have remained a disagreement between two people can easily turn into an vicious battle of “Who’s telling the truth” where both parties and supposed eye witnesses state they saw the whole thing. Yet some people may simply be an online bully, who likes to push people around by posting slanderous forum messages and or enjoys terrorizing anther from behind a computer screen.

Too often, people and especially supportive women are willing to assume any man is capable and willing of commenting sexual harassment. The problem with the “I saw it all” kind of thinking is that there is almost always one person who will stretch the truth in order to ensure the accused victimizer will receive his (or her) due punishment.


Cyberspace Is The Place of Lowered Inhibitions.

Forums, social networking sites and instant messaging encourages people to say things they might not have said if they were face to face because people talking to one another online are far away from physically contact. Anonymity and physical distance mean that people online are protected from the immediate consequences of their actions. A person can type words that if they had been said face to face might have provoke a physical argument.

Face to face, people are careful how they talk to strangers because they don't know what offends them, online the majority of people do not care. Online people are often very direct with strangers regardless, because after all, "so what if I make a mistake and offend the other person? What is that person going to do?"

The New High School Bully

Many high school students don't see any difference with the online environment and joking around, and what amounts to idle threats. To most kids online postings is just the new way to joke around. Many school districts have blocked MySpace type web sites from use on school computers. But students often upload the threats at home or in neighborhood libraries -- which is outside the district's jurisdiction.

Two Bullitt County (Kentucky) teens were charged and convicted of terrorist threatening when they posted a MySpace comment threatening to put a bullet through a middle school student's head. The court system placed them under home incarceration and on Monday after the court decision, they were back in school because the juveniles didn't violate any school policies.

Cyber harassment is gaining more attention and as the more serious individuals become more daring, laws are being created to silence them. WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse) is at the forefront of information to educate what is online harassment and empower victims of harassment. In addition, they continually work to articulate voluntary policies that network administrators can implement in hopes of lessen potential abuse.

Police Officials - New Crime Detection & Prevention Technology

Getting your swim on

All the show without the burning sting and possible death.

Battery-operated Floating Jellyfish Pool Lights unleash a kaleidoscope of color as they float in the water.

• Crafted of durable PVC
• Realistic, fiber-optic tentacles emit a vibrant glow
• Top changes colors throughout the light show
• Controlled by a simple auto-off switch

For a more disco effect, add an Underwater Laser Light Show which projects variable dancing light patterns and colors onto the sides and bottom of the pool.

Product Development

Seattle to unveil the world's first hybrid tugboat

Foss Maritime of Seattle has announced it will construct the world's first hybrid tugboat. Why a tug boat? Seattle uses a variety of tugboats in their city tourist / maritime trade. In an effort to promote the idea of cleaner greener boats, the project was partially funded by the Port of Los Angeles.

A Memorandum of Understanding was made between the Port of Los Angeles and South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) in an effort to develop less polluting technology for harbor craft operations within the L.A./Long Beach port harbors. As a potential solution of satisfying the Memorandum of Understanding, The Port matched a $1,000,000 California Air Resources Board (CARB) grant to create a $2,000,000 program to help develop less polluting technology.

One of the biggest benefits of the hybrid will be eliminating the loss of fuel used when they're simply idling in harbor. Currently, tug boats use nearly half their fuel idling just waiting to be used while docked. With the new rig, however, "instead of idling the main engines while in standby mode when alongside a customer vessel awaiting orders from the pilot, the hybrid tug will run on battery power with the main engines shut down."

The result of the hybrid will be reduced fuel consumption, carbon, nitrogen oxide, and sulphur dioxide emissions; and noise. The look and feel to the boat will be almost identical to its sister Dolphin-class tug boats coupled with diesel generators and feature a modified engine room accommodating two 670 horsepower battery packs and two 335 horsepower generators.

"Tugs are the backbone of ports worldwide, and the 'hybrid' tug Foss will produce is a first in the industry,"

said Geraldine Knatz Ph.D. executive director of the Port of Los Angeles.

"Because the air emissions reductions are absolutely extraordinary, this is the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that our port encourages and welcomes in line with the San Pedro Bay Clean Air Action Plan."

Foss Maritime isn’t the only bold boating commence. Germany's Beluga Shipping will unveil the world's first hybrid container ship this fall.

First Potentially Habitable Planet Outside the Solar System Found

Born Libra - Hope?...Maybe I really am from anther planet!?

A multi-national team of Swiss, French and Portuguese scientists have discovered the first potentially habitable planet outside of our solar system. It is estimated to have a radius 50% bigger than the Earth, so gravity on it would be about twice as strong as it is here, and it orbits a red dwarf called Gliese in the constellation Libra.

The exoplanet is 14 times closer to its star than the Earth is from the Sun and so its year is only 13 Earth days long. The good news is that since the red dwarf is “smaller and cooler than the Sun, (one third of the mass), the plan­et lies in a hab­it­a­ble zone. I wonder how many days of summer would that be?

"Av­er­age tem­pe­r­a­tures on the planet lie be­tween 32 to 104 de­grees Fahren­heit " said Stéphane Udry of Switz­er­land’s Ge­ne­va Ob­serv­a­to­ry, lead au­thor of a pa­pe­r re­port­ing the re­sult. “Mod­els pre­dict that the plan­et should be ei­ther rock­y—like our Earth—or cov­ered with oceans,” he added

“Be­cause of its tem­pe­r­a­ture and rel­a­tive prox­im­i­ty, this plan­et will most prob­a­bly be a very im­por­tant tar­get of the fu­ture space mis­sions ded­i­cat­ed to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treas­ure map of the Uni­verse, one would be tempted to mark this plan­et with an X.”

The find was pos­si­ble thanks to an in­stru­ment known as a spec­tro­graph on the Eu­ro­pe­an South­ern Ob­serv­a­to­ry’s 3.6-meter tel­e­scope at La Silla, Chil­e.

Great…. Anther planet for humans to destroy… I hope extraterrestrials are working on a force field or at the very least an extraterrestrials brain wave scanning system. Than again, if they are already scooping us out for potential galaxy trade, than I, for one, will welcome the new class M planet overlords.

"You expect us to sit up here for a week while probes have all the fun?"

- Enterprise/Strange New World - Tripp (Commander Charles Tucker)

Epic poetry can be written by one author... but epic technology requires an army.

An Unconventional, Delphic Craigslist Job Listing


Summary:
A year ago, Wilford and I had an idea for our own kind of epic poetry... an epic social media technology that would capture the range of human experience and emotion, and leave an indelible mark on the history of the world.

Epic poetry can be written by one author... but epic technology requires an army.

Avanoo is beginning to build that army... and we're looking for two talented, driven, and passionate software developers to be our first officers.

Bad Business - Changing Your Truth

A Fish Out Of Water

Lloyd Godson is a marine biologist with a love for water adventures and the marine ecosystem. He spent 13 days underwater in a steel box called the BioSUB

The experiment was to see if it would be possible to live underwater long term and to make a point about sustainable living. Located in Australia, near the Wonga Wetlands between Albury and Howlong, Lloyd Godson used a system of solar panels combined with both plants and Like-A-Fish technology to provide his oxygen.

A pedal-powered generator was built to create the electricity to recharge his laptop for communications and entertainment, and an algae garden was established to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen for breathing.

For bathroom disposal, Godson recycled his own urine through the algae garden but his waste was disposed in airtight containers, which was than removed by divers who delivered him food and drinking water.

For entertainment, Godson watched videos on his laptop and used a wireless Internet connection to communicate with schoolchildren from around the world. And on Easter; according to media reports, an "Easter shark" swam by with an air tight basket container of chocolate eggs.

Resistance Is Futile