IS IT TRUE June 4, 2013
IS IT TRUE it seems as though the urban surveillance vehicles that the Evansville Police Department purchased to keep an eye on crime are doing their job quite well?…these former armored cash delivery vehicles were the subject of some joking during the campaign that was for the most part well intentioned?…for those with a thick skin the caricature of then candidate Winnecke riding a tank should have been seen as the cartoon that it was meant to be?…the naysayers on the effectiveness of placing these vehicles in high crime areas as a deterrent should eat their words now as the very presence of these urban assault vehicles have established a record for keeping crime to near zero in their immediate vicinity?…at $10 each plus $10,000 to rig them up to do surveillance this have been a bargain and we should be ordering about a hundred more of them?…the real test would be in placing many of these things block by block to see if crime is really stopped or just moved a block or two away?…thus far they are working but crime is not statistically much different so the crimes are just being moved?…this purchase was a good decision made by Mayor Winnecke and Police Chief Billy Bolin?
IS IT TRUE that there has been an absolute mess of uncertainty and incompetence in the administration of the ISTEP tests this year?…it has been such a carnival of errors that school corporations across the state are seizing on the opportunity to preemptively dispute the results of the tests?…we bet that if the results show improvement that the school administrators will cease their dispute and embrace the results?…if they show static or falling results of course the school administrators will keep up the drum beat to ignore the test results due to incompetence?…if there is one thing that can be learned from this fiasco it is that to manage the ISTEP one must pass the ISTEP?
IS IT TRUE that this week has brought a relatively rare phenomena to Evansville in the number of dead bodies that have been discovered in homes?…no one at the CCO can remember the last time a dead body was simply discovered and this week there were 3 found?…there does not seem to be foul play involved so maybe this is just the beginning of a trend in a world that is increasingly disconnected on a day to day basis?
IS IT TRUE that turning to our nation the scandal of selective enforcement continues to get worse over at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)?…reports are starting to surface that state the “low level†rouge employees who were set up to take the blame are not only angry but they are starting to sing?…the recently fired Director of the IRS has already been exposed for flat out lying to Congress, another high ranking IRS official (Lois Lerner) asserted innocence and then took the fifth, and it is now obvious this selective scrutiny was widespread and systematic?…some of the “low level†scapegoats are now flipping and telling reporters that the orders to harass conservatives groups and particularly financial supporters of Republican candidates CAME FROM WASHINGTON DC?…no one has pointed the finger at President Obama yet and maybe he really knew nothing about it but he did create the atmosphere that promoted going after enemies with wise little quips?…in public speeches President Obama did indeed joke about using the IRS to badger his enemies and even advocated jokingly to take a gun to a knife fight?…this is all funny until his starry eyed underlings start to take him seriously and selectively enforce rules and regulations?
IS IT TRUE that the banana republic nature of what has happened at the IRS is a serious threat to our nation’s ability to maintain the public trust?…the same goes on the violation of the 1st amendment rights of what are now multiple reporters from big news organizations?…in any sane organization public or private heads would roll over this comedy of arrogance?…sanity can no longer be expected from our federal government?
They’re probably going around the corner to do whatever crimes they’re committing. A hundred more? Sounds ridiculous. We’re already a police state, but surveillance vehicles on every block? You see that in movies.
How about some neon T-Shirts with “Big Brother is Watching” across the front.
They parked it at Covert and Vann after a shooting so this stopped What!!!!!!!!
I would caution the good people of Evansville or any other city thinking the answer to combating crime is to simply create a surveillance grid like they now have in London, England and many other cities around the world.
Anyone valuing freedom and understanding its tenuous nature should be up in arms against this sort of thing. Trusting police or public officials implicitly with the power to surveil us is just as dangerous as the criminals we seek to foil.
If private property owners want to put up cameras, that I can understand and support, but the municipality doing it is a different story. How long until this is used to attack political enemies? Or spy on the law abiding? Anyone who read Orwell’s “1984” in high school should be recalling how the society in that fictitious world had allowed INGSOC to actually put cameras inside their homes and train their children to rat out their parents, all in the name of making everyone “safe”.
To borrow from Gordon Gekko: Freedom is messy. Freedom is good. Freedom works. Also, freedom requires privacy from the all-seeing eye of Big Brother. We shouldn’t be so cavalier about throwing that away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YvAYIJSSZY
Anyone see how ridiculous Mayor Winnecke looked on yesterday’s news at the bike event with a bike helmet on wearing a suit?
Winnecke and Police Chief Billy Bolin?
“IS IT TRUE that there has been an absolute mess of uncertainty and incompetence in the administration of the ISTEP tests this year?…
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I would suggest that one way to handle the mess is for the EVSC to REFUSE to pay the administrator for the testing. It has been reported in The Evansville Courier & Press that the administrator has admitted that one of the problems is that they had inadequate server capacity available to fulfill their commitment.
The simple solution is that they should not be paid. I will be willing to chip in my share for defending a lawsuit against the contract holder.
“(Is It True that) at $10 each plus $10,000 to rig them up to do surveillance this have been a bargain and we should be ordering about a hundred more of them?” [The Editor]
I cannot imagine the uproar we would hear from the IIT Editor if the city administration had initiated the idea of spending a $1 million on 100 more of these Brinks conversion tanks :::smile:::
It is best to prove a concept before taking the bait hook, line, and sinker. It looks like the concept has been proven to be successful.
I’d argue that “success” is still very much a subjective thing here. Besides the encroachment of liberty argument, there is the argument that this approach will just tend to drive crime to other areas. Even if we blanketed the city with cameras, we still wouldn’t eradicate crime, we’d just breed a more savvy criminal. Has overall crime gone down since the implementation of this concept city-wide? If not, then the assertion that the crime has just gone around the corner is valid. Plus, if we’re hell bent on creating a surveillance state in Evansville, there are much cheaper ways of doing that than installing cameras in armored cars. Why not just install small, armored camera boxes on metal poles?
Still, I reject the idea of a surveillance state, whether the camera is on a pole, car, or nose of a drone.
It has just gone around the corner. The crime stats for the city have not changed materially. The scarecrows however seem to have done their job to drive the crime to the next block. The question is, will more scarecrows drive the crime out of town. A surveillance state is not something to strive for but safe streets are. Of course many of our citizens have private security systems that in a way keep crime out by locking themselves into a crime free cell that they call home.
Yes, but there is a fundamental philosophical line between a private property owner locking himself in a crime free zone that is his personal surveiled home and elected officials and police officers usurping the authority to do it city-wide, state-wide, or country-wide. They are two different considerations each with different implications for personal liberty.
This is a slippery slope, in my opinion, and one we should avoid at all costs. I mean, honestly Joe, what you’re advocating ultimately is giving the same police force that knocked down a granny’s screen door and threw concussion grenades in her living room MORE power. You’re also giving city officials who can’t even balance the books and do the job they already have on their plate MORE power. I do not see the sense in granting MORE power to anyone, particularly fallible human beings who through history have proven they cannot handle MORE power without abusing it at some stage.
I’m with Thomas Jefferson on this one…give me messy freedom over perfect slavery any day.
If safe streets are your #1 objective, why aren’t you for the robo traffic cop idea?
We did state that there are appropriate places for robocops where there are high probabilities for accidents that result in damage to innocense. We do not advocate the robocop as a tax collector for minor traffic offenses. The are appropriate for school zones etc. Similarly for the tank. High violent crime areas where innocent people get injured or murdered are an appropriate use of them. General spying on the public is not an appropriate use unless of course you are in prison or some Gulag.
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