Your Phone May Send You 'Blue Alerts' To Warn You When Local Police Are In Danger (androidpolice.com) 318
The FCC recently announced a new alert program called "Blue Alert" that will notify the public of threats to law enforcement in real time. "With the creation of a dedicated Blue Alert event code in the Emergency Alert System, state and local law enforcement will have the capability to push immediate warnings out to the public via broadcast, cable, and satellite providers, as well as to consumer smartphones through the Wireless Emergency Alert system," reports Android Police. From the report: Much like both the SILVER and AMBER alert programs, and utilizing the same notification system, Blue Alerts aim to warn the general public of threats to public safety and/or imminent danger. However, the police force focused alert system provides timely information to the public when police officers may be in danger. Chairman of the FCC and recent deregulator of the internet, Ajit Pai detailed the new FCC order saying, "Similar to the Amber Alerts that many are familiar with, Blue Alerts will enable authorities to warn the public when there is actionable information related to a law enforcement officer who is missing, seriously injured or killed in the line of duty, or when there is an imminent credible threat to an officer."
The December 14 order from the FCC activates the Blue Alerts service for one calendar year to deliver the notifications over the Emergency Alert System, and for 18 months over the Wireless Emergency Alert system.
The December 14 order from the FCC activates the Blue Alerts service for one calendar year to deliver the notifications over the Emergency Alert System, and for 18 months over the Wireless Emergency Alert system.
Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is a good idea, let's all converge on the scene of a shootout... Or whatever.
On the one hand, with typical "police behavior", often we are lucky when there are "citizen" observers.
On ywt another hand, this presents a safety danger with unknown consistences many of which are not good.
Another aspect that comes to mind is that this is just one more step in the direction of a "Police State" where our Law Enforcement are seen as some holy religious order, our Priests in Blue... We've all seen these 200 car processions when a police officer is killed in the line of duty...
I don't think this is a well thought-out idea.
Re:Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think this is a well thought-out idea.
Ajit Pai is behind this. What more can you expect?
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Yeah, I can imagine it now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And:
https://twitchy.com/brettt-313... [twitchy.com]
"CNN is reporting is an 18-mile-long funeral procession for Officer Charles “Joe” Gliniewicz"
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The whole alert system was a poorly planned out. After the first alert jarring me while driving, almost causing collisions, and inciting a state of panic, I turned that feature off and no longer get any level of alerts. A softer, longer, tone which does not blast at me would have been much more welcomed.
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It's OK, I already think cops are way better than priests.
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All those good guys with a gun need to find a good way to use them.
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You're clearly unfamiliar with the Principles Of Pinochetian-Minarchism, explained in meme form here.
https://epeak.in/2017/11/06/th... [epeak.in]
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Here's a news flash: The US has been a fully operational police state since end of 2001. But if you want to get technical, I guess Nixson's 1960s would be just as valid a milestone. Read "Rise of the warrior cop" by Radley Balko if you want to know more.
The state, its branches of government, has lost all meaningful control over the domestic legal monopoly of violence. The federal and local police now operate semi-autonomously, with large incomes through civil forfeiture, sizable contributions from military
Re: Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to kill cops, but I also don't care about them any more than I care about people in general. This new program is a clear example of "mission creep", and the likely result will be more people opting out of the increasingly stupid and pointless alerts.
Re: Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
A million times this.
It's pretty baffling to me how anyone thinks this is a valuable thing to have. Cops have power and do a job knowing that they may occasionally be put into danger (although being a cop isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous professions, so there's that).
That's a world of difference from helpless and innocent children being abducted, or being alerted to some imminent public danger.
Although, I have to admit, I opted out once Amber alerts were brought on board. That was already too much mission creep for me.
Re: Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although, I have to admit, I opted out once Amber alerts were brought on board. That was already too much mission creep for me.
I thought Amber Alerts were a pretty good idea until I got one in the middle of the night for a little girl who had already been found. Then I shut them off.
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* Am I going to go out grocery shopping, or to a restaurant now, or wait till it blows through?
* I need to shut off the fresh air intake in the house, and make sure all the doors and windows are closed.
* Time to break out the beverage of choice and watch the wall of dust roll over the fields.
Things like that. Those alerts are imp
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"ALERT: Police are in danger... Never mind, other police on the SWAT force saved the day! Thanks to the armored vehicle and infrared technology, they caught the fugitive drug dealer who was armed with a knife!"
(For anyone upset that I'm not virtue signaling about police safety, I'll remind you it's never been safer to be a cop than now [newsweek.com] and
Re: Please, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
When cops feel threatened, they start randomly shooting at people.
This alert is very useful for letting you know that you may want to stay inside and away from windows. If the 'threat' is driving a blue pickup truck, you may want to not drive your blue pickup truck (or white pickup truck, or red car), lest it be turned into swiss cheese.
It's an alert that the police are off of their leash and won't be held accountable for any damage or injury that they cause.
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Bureau of Land Management?
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I am a supporter of BLM and no, I don't want to kill cops. I just want them to go to prison when they kill innocent people.
LK
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Oh, of course it won't provide any information; it'll just tell people, at most that police are being shot at in their neighborhood. They'll just turn it on every so often when they need to rile up the public or when there is an unwanted protest happening. Hell, maybe they'll even use it appropriately a few times, but even then, it might as well just flash "PANIC!" on the screen.
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run towards the gun fire
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They only rape hookers, "I'll do you a favor if you do me a favor..."
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Police represent the State.
Police/State under threat.
SMS invokes a well regulated militia to come to the State's aid.
In the event that our Law Enforcement ever needs a "well regulated" militia, they're not going to find it by alerting a bunch of fat red-necks in tactical vest with AR-15's and such. What is meant by "well regulated militia" is called the National Guard .
For example when Katrina went down and the National Guard was called out.
Or that big earth quake in California. The National Guard was called out.
Or the situation with wild fires. The National Guard is helping on that one, too.
Or massive flooding in
Re:Please, no... (Score:4, Informative)
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Actually, they're both the militia. The National Guard is the "organized militia" and the general body of citizens is the "unorganized militia". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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No, they're not. The National Guard reports to the governor of the state they're from, not the US Federal government.
You are so far beyond wrong, it's not funny. No, really. It is literally not funny, because it is so chilling. The National Guard is part of the Army, and the Army is under control of the president. That's why Bush was able to force literally thousands of national guard reservists to go fight (and sometimes die, but more commonly commit suicide) for oil in the desert, and then proceed to keep them there past their release date with a "stop-loss" program (also known as slavery.)
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This isn't a case of "so far beyond wrong." It's a case of confusing nomenclature. States can choose to have a state guard (and even state navy) in addition to the national guard. It get's murky because they are partially regulated by the National Guard but are not otherwise part of the National Guard Command Structure.
Furthermore, to quote wikipedia: As governors often use state defense forces to augment their state's Army National Guard and Air National Guard units, state defense forces have been both off
Re:Please, no... (Score:4)
The National Guard is a well-regulated armed body, but it sure isn't what the writers of the constitution meant by a well-regulated militia. They didn't trust the government. They may have meant a militia that was organized by the local government (as in town or village), but even that isn't clear.
Remember the founders didn't want there to be ANY standing army. 1812 probably changed a lot of minds, but when you say "well regulated militia" you are invoking the US Constitution Bill of Rights, and at that time most of the founders didn't trust the Federal government, and weren't too sure about the state governments. The constitution is almost entirely about what the government is NOT supposed to do. But there's no decent enforcement, so it tends to get ignored except when major fights come up between powerful groups with both (all?) sides haven't lots of governmental support. If it were really enforced there's no way they could have stretched the clause about interstate commerce to cover a farmer growing something for personal use.
Re: Please, no... (Score:5, Interesting)
Further the Militia Act clearly states that the National Guard is NOT the militia, it is part of the formal US Military. While nominally under control of the local state, it is funded and equipped by the Federal Government and can be called up over a Governor's objection. We the people are the Militia, and if we are not armed we are not a functional or "Well Regulated" militia.
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And you're assuming that they want to assist the officer. In a lot of areas that's not a safe assumption.
What the fuck are we supposed to do with that? (Score:4, Insightful)
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No future to that.
But of course it is the future! It's the police moving to the Über gig independent contractor model.
An app hails Über cops when the police need backup assistance. The Über cops grab their guns and race to the location to overwhelm the bad guys with shear numbers.
A Facebook app can take pictures, and tell you from Facebook's faces database who is a good guy, and who is a bad guy, so you don't shoot at the wrong folks.
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I would have guessed clear or shelter in place as presumably this indicates some imminent risk to the area. However, keying that off of policemen under threat would seem to be a pretty indirect way to say that as opposed to a more general, but more localized emergency broadcast system message..
Re: What the fuck are we supposed to do with that? (Score:2)
When *police* are in danger? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about an app that warns us when police are nearby and can be set to automatically record and stream to chosen sites if they get within ten feet? Cops nowadays are little more than sociopaths in military gear, and I'd rather not I (or possibly even my husband) get raped, killed, and our car arrested on suspicion of resisting.
Just passing one by is quickly becoming a coin-toss as to whether or not we end up beaten and arrested on trumped-up charges especially if we're black. Police are not the ones that need protecting from anyone.
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Just passing one by is quickly becoming a coin-toss as to whether or not we end up beaten and arrested on trumped-up charges especially if we're black.
OK, I'll touch the third rail -- I have plenty of karma.
Coin-toss, eh? Like, 50-50 odds. Guess you're pretty much hosed if you pass 5-6 every day like I do. How am I still alive?
Oh, because the real numbers are somewhere around 1.5% of encounters [bjs.gov] where force is used or threatened . (Pro tip: that means the percentage of encounters where force was actually used is less than 1.5% -- about half that, according to the report.)
This sort of fanciful swill is what passes for "insightful" on Slashdot these
Victim blaming? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
You're saying that all those unarmed black men killed by cops brought it on themselves?
Re:When *police* are in danger? (Score:5, Funny)
... PC education/brainwashing system ...
And for Mac?
Re:When *police* are in danger? (Score:4, Funny)
Apple brains come out of the womb pre-washed and knowing all the lyrics to that new U2 album everyone loves so much.
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(Score:+5 Funny)
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Re:When *police* are in danger? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever wondered about *why* white people from the suburbs are successful? It's not the "white power structure" or racism. It's that we aren't programmed to fail by being told nonsense about how the world actually works.
Serious question - how would you know you weren't programmed with nonsense about how the world actually works if you've never had to leave the bubble of your white-centric upper-middle class neighborhood?
Re:When *police* are in danger? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a clue from a responsible adult - if you go into the world and treat the police like an enemy, or teach your kids the same - you are going to be in for a very rough time. Not because of the police - because of your own actions and statements.
Many people have good reason to believe the police are not there to help them whenever they show up, and that at best they'll be thought of as suspects before victims, and not just suspects but guilty suspects. Trust must be earned. If the police do not have the public's (or any non-empty subset thereof) trust, that is the fault of the police and the criminal justice system as a whole and not that of the public.
You may be responsible for yourself but you've also been tricked into thinking a police state is a good thing and trying to convince others of the same. But it's a cop's job to protect me, not the other way around. They're public servants and I'm the public so I don't owe the police anywhere near what they owe me. They should smile if I flip them off. Otherwise why am I paying for them?
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Or, you know, both extremes are bad and you're a shitty person for wanting anyone, for any reason, to smile if you flip them off. If you treat people like shit, expect them to react in shitty fashion. Public to cop, or cop to public.
Do you have any idea how moronic people sound when they cry about being lumped together and negatively stereotyped...and then do that exact same fucking thing do another group?
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But it's a cop's job to protect me
I thought it actually wasn't? [wikipedia.org]
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The fact is that in the U.S. we have a drastically ineffective training system and requirements. IIRC police in the EU get three times as much t
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Great, Now we'll know when to commit robberies. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't underestimate the stupidity of people wearing uniform.
Yes, your subject is spot on. When there's a blue alert, crooks know that their odds of pulling off a heist went way up, because the fuzz will be busy rushing elsewhere. What a gift!
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Yeah, I can see the supposed positives (informed public, safety in avoiding) but what I can't see is the gains outweighing the negatives. Also, for those positives to function it would leave open a pretty slippery slope to "Well, he had the alert, he should have stayed inside!"
I think body cams that are on 100% of the time an officer is on the clock are a better idea. Management on the police side just has to be humane about what they do with it. Right now, in my area they aren't even being humane about
A Clear Political Move (Score:2)
Most police would advise against entering a hostile situation, thereby creating another potential victim or hostage.
Morbid sense of hurmor here... (Score:3)
All I imagine is a group of gang-bangers laughing as their phones go off while they are the cause of the threat.
Umm, OK, whatever (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have the foggiest notion what this is supposed to accomplish, really. If a situation is such that a cop is seriously endangered, what in the world could I do about it?
It looks to me like all this does is to further decrease the signal-to-noise ratio in these sorts of things.
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If a situation is such that a cop is seriously endangered, what in the world could I do about it?
If you were a criminal, you could take advantage of the situation by committing a crime somewhere else. Or just steal their squad car.
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It's like Policeman Go, but for criminals.
The Blue alert keeps track of your score and how many cops are locked into your car trunk. [imdb.com]
Because police lives... (Score:5, Insightful)
...matter so much more than yours or mine.
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No, I did not see anything. No, I did not hear anything. Sorry, wish I could help you, Officer.
Why Would Ordinary People Need This? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see this being useful for off-duty police officers, as there have been cases of them being accosted. However, ordinary people don't need to know every time a police officer gets hurt in a traffic collision (statistically, by far, the leading cause of unnatural serious injury or death to on-duty police.) I could maybe see this as some kind of active shooter alert system... but it's so overbroad it's almost never going to be such a scenario, and people will turn it off/tune it out and never get the message. Furthermore, if I'm hiding from a shooter and my phone starts a siren that can be heard a block away, I'm not gonna be hidden any longer.
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Of course no way to know how it will be employee, but I could see some active threat alert, but shouldn't require a policemen to be injured prior to such an alert being issued.
*Maybe* if an officer is missing, but I can't imagine that's one of the more likely threat scenarios.
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A bit like the old police scanner codes but with a real time map and only the riot, looting information presented.
Riots that emerge out of the bad areas of a city and town.
An active riot alert system allows good people to close up their business and get ready for a lot of looters.
Good people can get their security, friends, family, kin ready for looters and riots.
A nice GUI that shows more alerts in real time. Project that loss
DO. NOT. WANT! (Score:2, Insightful)
How about an app for when real people are in trouble?
Yawn... (Score:2)
Another set of alerts to disable.
Ajit Pai is a disaster (Score:2)
This strikes me as propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
I just got one of these (Score:5, Insightful)
BLUE ALERT: Officer has spotted a black man failing to indicate a right turn for at least 3 seconds before starting the maneuver. All residents are advised to remain indoors and definitely do not come out and record the shooting and post to social media.
This should be fun (Score:5, Insightful)
'Blue Alerts' To Warn You When Local Police Are In Danger
Now we'll all get pestered whenever someone points a camera at the police.
Amazingly stupid (Score:2)
2) It seems like a way to crowd source mobs to attack the police.
3) It's the kind of feedback criminals can use to infer where the police are focused.
4) It's also a method by which criminals can cause an event to distract the police or upset the systemic responses of police.
5) It provides a signal for people to come an watch / video - actually attracting innocent by-standers.
6) If the system is
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Wait for the daily party political messages. Good news about local law changes. Good news on how local government is helping people in the community.
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Or just a ticker at the bottom of your screen like every single time cable companies renegotiate with content providers....for every partisan issue.
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It's pretty obvious what the people are supposed to do with this information. People should feel fear. They should also empathize with the police officer(s) in danger and be reminded of the police force's dedication to protecting and serving. There is no "actionable item" for a civilian beyond feeling these emotions.
At best, the potential abuses you outlined exist out of ignorance. At worst, they are features of the platform meant to put police officers in harm's way to justify the ongoing deterioration of
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you should come to Chicago, and watch the police beat up random businessmen and bar maids for jollies, or grab an attractive woman and search her thouroughly and slap her around a bit and then claim she was suspected of being a whore, deal some drugs pilfered from the evidence room (grab some cash from there too), maybe empty a gun magazine into an unarmed darkie or two ....yeah serve and protect and living the cop life.
#2A folks ... (Score:2)
... will take this as authorization to shoot on site.
I am licensed to carry in Texas and I'm always armed (concealed) because I am a wildlife photographer.
I have trained to use only while peeing down both legs from fear of dying.
OTOH, I train with Ramboweenies who are looking for any excuse to kill someone.
Here's their chance.
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I'll bite.
You're carrying concealed because you are a wildlife photographer? Are you really that worried about the wildlife seeing you're armed and shooting first?
Where I live, if you want to take photos of wildlife and feel the need to pack heat, you just do open carry. Usually of a rifle....
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I'll see your bite and raise you some common sense.
The wildlife I photograph lives on a river running through a populated area.
Homeless people and transits and tourists are part of the landscape.
I'm loaded (see what I did there) down with equipment already and a rifle doesn't add value like a CM9 does.
Thanks for playing.
FOIA and create an app from that data (Score:4, Interesting)
Buy up an entire towns worth of data on every person, home, crime and layer it.
Not just the open free city data, all the pay to view private sector data that is collected on crime.
Get all the data on crime, generations of criminals, insurance costs, rent costs, number of people sharing a home. All the hidden statistics that really show what a part of the USA is really like over the decades.
Layer the numbers, crimes over an interactive real time map.
Then FOIA the Blue Alert event code and layer that on top.
Sell a demographics app to warn people from outside the city, the better parts of a town that they are entering a bad part of the town.
A nice friendly bright normal map GUI in the safe areas.
The more darker, gloomy colors with voice and GUI when entering an area that should always be avoided. A final apex predator warning for the no-go area parts of a city.
Red and Blue alerts ... (Score:2)
,,, when Republicans or Democrats (respectively) are alleged to have grabbed a pussy.
Amber, silver and blue (Score:2)
Amber and silver alerts involve people who pose little or no threat to the general population. Blue alerts involve people who have already proven to be a danger to law enforcement. Stare at that creepy guy in the next car who matches the description in the text message and he will think nothing of blowing your head off if he feels threatened.
Yeah. Great idea.
What about "Black & Blue" Alerts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Will they send "Black & Blue" Alerts whenever the police are beating the shit out of someone who is subdued? Will they send "Black & Red" Alerts whenever the cops unload their magazines into unarmed suspects? Will they send "Yellow & Blue" Alerts when they Tazer grandmothers? Will they send "Spotted Alerts" whenever they shoot someones dog? Will they send "White" Alerts when they shoot babies in their crib during SWAT home invasions? Just wondering.
No scanners? (Score:2)
This from the same police that wanted apco 25 encrypted audio so we couldnâ(TM)t know what was going on in their world? Really?
Bad idea in many ways (Score:3)
First, sending alerts to people who do not need to take immediate specific action will cause many to turn off alerts entirely. I was woken by one of the large scale Amber alerts - about a child kidnapped 300 MILES from my house. So I've turned off all the alerts that I can.
Secondly, there is no specific action for people to take when police are in distress. I can't imagine that the police want a bunch of armed citizens with no situational awareness converging on the site of some emergency. Seems like that will make almost any situation worse.
Finally, while I believe that most police do a good service to the community, I do not seem them as being unusually noble or risk-taking. Firemen, pilots, and roofers and many others are also exposed to danger while serving the community. Why not an "asphalt alert" when a roofer falls and is injured?
Alerts? (Score:2)
I feel like I'm being trolled (Score:3)
Policeman doesn't even crack the top 10 most dangerous jobs in the USA. What's next, Tree Service worker in danger alerts?
For you and me (Score:2)
People, this warning system is for you and me.
What do police do when protecting their own?
Pretty much anything. Think mama bear and her cubs.
This is common in the mammalian family.
Do you want to be anywhere near mama bear?
No. Be thankful for the warning.
Why is this my problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Since the police have no legal duty to protect my ass, why should I care if they are in danger? Am I supposed to grab a gun and run to their rescue - probably getting shot by cops in the process since they such scared little girls who like to shoot people?
If any common sense still exists (Score:2)
people will avoid " blue alert " areas like the plague.
Because, like the plague, Death awaits you there.
Police are trigger happy at their best, shoot-first-ask-questions-later types at their worst. Can you guess which personality type you're likely to run into when they're under duress ?
Sorry you're in trouble, but due to the behavior of some ( as you call it ) " bad apples ", you are on your own.
You want my help ? Start treating non-LE types as human beings and we'll talk about it.
Until then, good luck.
Mutual Aid. Use THAT. Not amateurs (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to listen to a police scanner a lot. I mean, a LOT lot. Had radios at home, in my car, and even a handheld to keep me tuned in even on the toilet. No I didn't have a girlfriend at the time, how did you possibly guess? Geez. Mindreaders.
Anyway, the thing with scanners is you know what the hell is happening, to an extent, as soon as the police do. It can drive spikes in blood pressure listening to a traffic stop turn into a shootout, etc etc. And I had issues with that and the fact the the number one rule, as such, about listening to scanner stuff is never ever never ever never go to the scenes of what you hear. Stay the hell out of it.
Eventually, the local PD moved to a trunked radio system and none of my radios could hear them. A girlfriend model was acquired and it didn't like listening to police radios either. So I quit. I have no clue what my local PD is doing and I don't care.
I do not need or want shit alerts showing up to tell me they ran out of dougnuts or some bullshit deemed a police emergency. If they have an emergency, fuck it, they have mutual aid agreements with ALL the adjacent police agencies. They can call up those folks and get trained, real cops to come help. Do that thing. Don't try to get amateurs into the act. The Pros are bad enough,
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Black Alert? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a Black Alert to tell the public when unarmed black men are endangered by the police?
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Perhaps a Black Alert to tell the public when unarmed black men are endangered by the police?
Wouldn't it be more efficient to have a Black Non-Alert for when unarmed black men aren't endangered by the police? Then you'd only have to send it out once, maybe twice a year.
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Perhaps a Black Alert to tell the public when unarmed black men are endangered by the police?
If that's implemented, it'll just result in everyone's phones loudly buzzing continuously until the batteries run out.
Re:Who do we call? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the cops ARE the danger?
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When the cops ARE the danger?
How often does that happen? What's the odds that a citizen will die at the hands of a police officer? According to this source [washingtonpost.com], 937 people were killed by police officers in 2017.
The odds of the cops being a danger to you are miniscule, and those odds drop further if you aren't engaged in a violent crime.
You're being hysterical, making a mountain out of a molehill.
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And there's something strange in the neighborhood?
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Is one of us confused about what "SJW"s want? Or are you just blaming anything you don't agree with on some "SJW cabal" that you've made up in your head?
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Or are you just blaming anything you don't agree with on some "SJW cabal" that you've made up in your head?
Serious question: do you think there is no group of people who self-identify as SJW and who want to force a particular ideology on the majority? Because I'm pretty certain that that qualifies as a "SJW Cabal", and they're most certainly not made-up.
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Reassuring daily messages from a local government that illegal migrants are welcome in the city?
Pushed gov updates on what a SJW city council wants to do.
Daily lists of city services that are free for illegal migrants?
Once one part of gov gets to push out messages, every part of gov will find a need to send out free party political propaganda.
Protected by a gov/telco partnership so the messages have to be viewed in the GUI.
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The volume of amber alerts is low, I'm perfectly willing to receive and at least check out a few license plates if that info is provided.
Sometimes the alert is uselessly vague, a picture could at least help, but describing a fairly common vehicle and/or person in text format doesn't give me anything I could use to help identify. If there is an off chance that it clicks that something looks a bit off and matches the description, ok.
The silver alerts seem to bit a bit more half-assed. I only know that one e
Re:Amber alerts, lol... (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. This one would be switched off immediately.
I mean, Emergency Alerts? Yeah, definitely. If there's a tornado or wildfire or something bearing down on me, it'd be nice to be notified (and not necessarily have to sit there with a TV/Radio on, just in case). AMBER alerts? Well, okay, I suppose that's helpful in certain situations and, besides, I turn it off anyway for much the same reason. I'd leave it on if it could be made smarter. I don't need this alert at 4:00AM when I'm sleeping, but it might be nice if it would store it so that when I start driving to work, it'll pop-up and say, "Hey, keep an eye out for a blue chevy..."
I might understand something like this for a very narrow area--for example, if police are looking for a suspect hiding in your area, an alert to the people the, say, 12 block cordoned-off area saying that they should lock their doors and be on the lookout for a guy in a green hoodie might be useful. But I think this already exists.
Again, this system is supposed to be useful for me. How is this proposed system helpful for me?
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No one makes a person risk their life, unless there's a cop draft I'm not familiar with.
National Security Letter.
We're interested in this guy who is wearing an Allah-u Akbar vest. We want you to spy on him for us. There's nothing you can do about it. Nobody you can complain to. You must comply.
Oh, by the way. Don't act nervous or anything when he walks in the front door to pay his broadband bill. Or he might push the button.
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