I lived in Howard County for a year. With the combination of county income tax and affluent property taxes, every service was exceptionally well funded.
Having lived in Mountain View & Sunnyvale, CA as well for a decade my experience was Howard County itself had quicker and better services than those cities.
It doesn't surprise me at all that their police department is competent and helpful.
Exactly this. Since there's less crime in affluent areas, the police actually have time to investigate what get's ignored in other areas. By also solving these crimes, it tells the criminals to avoid those areas, it's kind of a feedback loop.
It's also this way in smaller towns. I live in a small north GA town and you can ask the cops to come by your house during the holidays to see if anyone has broke in. Cops here are much more useful than when I'm in SoCal where I could even get cops to show up within an hour when a hit and run caused me to crash into someones back yard and total my car.
I'll offer a counterpoint - I live in a nice building in a bit of a rougher part of a major city. I've learned that the police do show up thankfully, but it takes a very long time unless there's literally a life on the line. (Which, I know, is better than some other major cities.)
The couple of times I've interacted with them, it's been painfully obvious to me that they feel like they need to put on a performance for me, even if it's clear that it's an unsolvable crime. (In both cases, it was a property crime worth reporting, but also one with literally no evidence to follow up on.) I honestly wonder if some of the less well resourced people in my neighborhood even get a similar time of day from the police - my impression is that they probably don't.
Given that 99% of the crimes are committed by repeat offenders, a simple dusting for fingerprints (costs pennies) could likely identify the culprit. But they don't bother. And they act like we've seen too many movies/tv shows. But when an "interesting" crime happens they do in fact dust for fingerprints (cheap!) and do all sorts of swabbing and testing (expensive). The police are lazy in CA especially. And yet they are also extremely well paid in CA. Someday, hopefully, this will change.
If a cop is making $30/hr, and we allow "pennies" to be as much as $0.25, they would have to complete the entire dusting for fingerprints process in 30 seconds.
Remember the DA is part of the equation. For low priority crime, there’s a lot of risk with using fingerprints. They won’t take a case they may not win.
Or different departments pushing responsibility to each other...
I had a break in. Thieves took my check books, and tried to cash one in at a payday loan place at a neighbouring city. The payday place called me, and of course, I told them not to.
I called my police department with additional information, and they told me to file a report in the neighbouring city instead... And of course, the other police department told me to file with my police department as the original crime did not take place in their city...
And oh, I also had airtags that were taken so I knew which building the thieves took my stuff to. But because it is a multi-tenant building, the police wouldn't do anything. I offered to trigger the sound to narrow it down, but they didn't allow that either... Eventually, the thieves found the airtags and threw them out.
Anyway, I contacted my representatives to give police more help to help in cases like mine, but crickets is what I heard back. Not even an acknowledgement.
Yeah, search warrants require probable cause to search a specific place. Air tags and the like are simply not accurate enough to pinpoint a specific unit in dense areas. I think the real answer here is to change how search warrants work: Allow a judge to approve a warrant for wherever the tag is--the police show up with equipment that can localize the tag. They do so in the least invasive manner they can, but the warrant gives them the power to go wherever the tag leads them.
There is a very simple hack to that: tell the police that you think you saw the perpetrator and are going to beat the hell out of them.
The same thing works with stolen goods tracked via AirTags: the police will almost laugh in your face when you request their help with retrieving the gear, but if you call the police (not 911) and tell them you are about to confront the thief in a physical altercation, they’ll be there within five minutes.
Is there a map of police response times somewhere? Sounds like this would make a good proxy for a map of affluent areas and would be useful for getting directions and stuff that avoid bad areas when you’re in unfamiliar places.
Just think of it: I say a car getting a parking ticket, while thieves were removing its catalytic converter. The dystopian future of having to pay cash for police services is closer than you consider, or even think. The "Community liaison" who showed up simply said "That is not their job."
Useful for criminals too. Come to think of it, a serious large sized criminal org would probably have such a map internally. And since there are more orgs like that, there is probably such a map-as-a-service somewhere for those in the know.
Are we still talking about the police in the OP? Who needed someone to give them GPS coordinates to find the stolen goods after at least 14,999 previous tool thefts went unsolved?
Not exactly batman level detective work here, this case was cracked because it was handed to them on a silver platter.
Oh I have which I why I'm surprised that everyone is reading this as the police doing a good job. This is a story of the police failing to do their job 14,999 times and only getting it right on try 15,000 because one of the victims solved the case for them.
It helps if there are less affluent areas nearby where police are more overworked, as it easily shifts the problem to those areas instead. For example, King county in the Seattle area is notorious for not locking criminals up, but as long as Bellevue police send a bunch of cops to each incident, no longer how small, detain people and even send them to jail (even if they are quickly released), it’s enough of a disincentive to send the problem back to Seattle or to southern suburbs where police don’t have time for that.
My buddy got his bike stolen in Mountain View. Not only did the police find his bike they also arrested the thief.
Another buddy was woken up one night by a drunken stranger pounding on his door. He called the MVPD and within 5 minutes 3 squad cars showed up.
I used to live in Dallas. One night an entire floor of cars parked in my apartment garage was broken into. I called the police and reported it. Then I asked when they're coming and if I should stick around to wait for them. They told me they're not coming. The next night, the thieves returned and broke into all the cars on the next garage level.
Funding really matters. Mountain View is one of the handful of cities in the country with a triple-A municipal bond rating.
We're down hundreds of officers though. And we don't and haven't had a mayor interested in bringing up a new system to replace the completely corrupt one we have.
(The latter part reinforcing your argument that we didn't try "depolicing" so much as, uh, "unpolicing"?)
The very next sentence highlights that the same problem existed before the Pandemic and police protests from 2020;
> Covid may have accelerated this trend, but attrition and hiring issues predate the pandemic. In the 2019 budget, Council approved over $700,000 for hiring incentives, citing the police department's difficulty filling positions.
Actually the very first sentence in the article immediately refutes your claim -- what a bizarre source to 'back up' the argument that Seattle defunded the police;
> "Why has Seattle lost so many police officers?" The answer is not that the Seattle Police Department was defunded.
Yes, I misremembered it and I was wrong about it which I discovered by googling it. But the number of police is way down, so it had the same effect as defunding. Part of the reason for the reduction is the Seattle City Council abused them by calling them murderers. The cops felt unsupported by the Council and unwanted, and they left.
I'm sure your anecdotal experience is true for you, but funding is not linked to clearance rates. Counter to copaganda, police are worse at solving cases compared to 30 years ago, even as crime rates have fallen dramatically and funding has increased.
If you think preventing and solving crimes, then American police are objectively bad at their jobs. If you think of police as revenue generators, then they're good at it. Because the police spend all their time on things like traffic citations. Even the police unions occasionally say the quite part out loud, like when the NYPD union famously said that they would not arrest anyone "unless absolutely necessary". Unsurprisingly to people that have looked into policing, crime doesn't increase during police work slowdowns.
I mean, if you weren't smugly comfortable in your biases, you could always just do a search, say for "FBI crime rate by year", or "police clearance rates by year", or "police funding per year", but I guess not.
(if only real cops could get that kind of response time/clearance rate!)
like that’s just a shitty argument yourself, you lost the argument on the facts so you’re complaining about how the presentation. Lazy argumentation, it’s a way to attack the messenger(‘s presentation) instead of addressing the argument.
It’s the highbrow version of “minor spelling mistake!!!!”.
we are talking about someone getting mad because they didn't like the word "copaganda" getting used in a discussion lol, how is this anything other than a total distraction from the point?
sealioning is right, bringing it up in the first place was a distraction, by design. if you don't want to discuss copaganda, get mad about the fact someone used the word copaganda rather than contradicting its existence or usage.
that's why tone arguments are a logical fallacy - they're an ad-hominem, you're attacking the speaker rather than the argument. it's far too easy to let this all slide into "well I would have agreed with you but now you've gone and offended me with your tone!!!" as a way to slam the door on a discussion you're losing.
as difficult as it is, the mature thing is to simply accept that this is a way that people legitimately feel about cops and their marketing/relations with the public, and that they feel there's very good evidence and backing for it. It's unfortunate that you feel offended, but you can't derail the discussion because of that.
(moreover, the idea that we have to inherently respect the cops as social guardians and blah blah is very much a neoliberal perspective to begin with. minority communities tend not to have such rose-colored perspectives on the issue etc. People who have their property stolen at gunpoint at the roadside by cops tend to have a different perspective too. This is not some universal norm that is violated here.)
I didn’t say it to be distracting. Indeed, I said it because the use of the word is distracting.
I am ambivalent on the topics in question. I could be persuaded either way by facts. But once someone reveals strong emotion motivates their argument, I am distrustful of their “facts.”
Sure, that might be quintessentially ad hominem, but we aren’t talking about mathematical proofs here. There is no indisputable proof. It’s just hearts and minds.
I’m not offended nor immature. I’m not tone policing. Speak and believe whatever you want. I was just commenting that I find that tone unpersuasive.
Just like I find the hypocrisy of calling me immature in the same comment that you lambast me for an ad hominem attack unpersuasive.
Bro. Don't literally admit to engaging in ad hominem attacks, and then get all pissy and try to gaslight and then condemn calling out your behavior as an illegitimate ad hominem attack.
Gaslighting. “You keep using that word. I’m not sure it means what you think it means.” - Enigo Montoya
I admit to an ad hominem argument. Then I point out that my critic is themselves using one. That’s not gaslighting. Gaslighting would be if I denied it.
And yes, I say that is hypocritical and unpersuasive. But it is unpersuasive because it is hypocritical not because it is ad hominem.
I doubt this is persuasive to you. It sounds like you are emotionally invested in this. But hopefully you can at least see my intention was not to deceive or manipulate.
It's the cops who said that. I assume that's why the phrase is in quotes. Apparently they themselves believed they performed some arrests that weren't "absolutely necessary". They said this as a threat to influence negotiations. You should take this question up with them.
Why be combative? I was curious about a statement and wanted to learn.
But seriously, why he combative? People used to be able to ask questions without being told to take it up with the NYPD. The entire world wants to fight and frankly, it’s embarrassing.
The Atherton police reports are hilarious. I can't find the site readily, but I remember reading some of them when I worked in Mountain View. Things like calling the police because landscapers are mowing the lawn loudly, or because there's someone dressed as Santa Claus walking down a sidewalk.
Kensington Police (near Berkeley) knew me, my car, and my two motorcycles just on a semi friendly basis. I didn't live there. I was just dating a girl who lived there her whole life.
Small town life exists even in major metro areas if you're wealthy.
Howard county has roughly half the population of San Mateo county and roughly half the budget. Attributing the difference solely to government funding seems challenging.
> 5) A determination by the Service that the equivalent of the degree required by the specialty occupation has been acquired through a combination of education, specialized training, and/or work experience in areas related to the specialty and that the alien has achieved recognition of expertise in the specialty occupation as a result of such training and experience. For purposes of determining equivalency to a baccalaureate degree in the specialty, three years of specialized training and/or work experience must be demonstrated for each year of college-level training the alien lacks. For equivalence to an advanced (or Masters) degree, the alien must have a baccalaureate degree followed by at least five years of experience in the specialty
This is ridiculous in both directions. In one direction, someone can have 12 months of tech industry experience with more knowledge than a Masters degree holder. In the other direction, it's also possible to have 30 years of real experience in the tech industry without being particularly skilled labor (the apocryphal "three months of experience, repeated a hundred times").
This was my path, so it's possible. I dropped out after year two of my degree to join a startup and worked for 10 years in industry.
I converted 8 years of that experience to 2 years of a bachelor's degree to make the full 4 required, and had a University professor provide a letter of endorsement.
I was applying from Europe, and even then it was apparently a fairly expensive process for my sponsor.
Absolutely correct. The requirement is a four-year U.S. bachelor's degree or it's equivalent which can be a foreign degree or a combination of education and experience (or even just experience) evaluated to be the equivalent of a U.S. bachelor's degree. The rule of thumb is that 3 years of professional experience is the equivalent of 1 year of college education.
Thanks for the clear answer! is proving the years of experience usually difficult? e.g. references from 12 years ago can be hard to get (although I have those 11 years ago myself).
Apologies if not the right place for this feedback, but the careers page does not work properly on Firefox 100/Linux - clicking any opening does nothing.
I work heavily with enterprise products. In my experience, when you're selling an enterprise-ready product it's a good idea to QA all public-facing code, even sections of a public website.
This is because I have found many enterprise customers are more interested in maintenance (which can be pre-assessed by looking at support and QA experiences) than they are the actual product.
Location: San Jose, CA
Remote: Only for a good offer (office preferred)
Willing to relocate: Only for an outstanding offer (Bay Area preferred. Canadian citizen, green card holder)
Technologies: Architecture, Java, Typescript, Python, C, Qt/C++, Linux, named on multiple patents (also a complete myriad of related web and cloud technologies)
Résumé/CV: By request
Email: desert_canine@pm.me
Having lived in Mountain View & Sunnyvale, CA as well for a decade my experience was Howard County itself had quicker and better services than those cities.
It doesn't surprise me at all that their police department is competent and helpful.