Steaming Turd

This report indicates that Cleveland’s growing homicide rate is not simply a reflection on a national trend. More likely, the problems in Cleveland are largely due to the mismanagement during Jane Campbell’s mayorship, when numerous police officers were cut from the force due to budget considerations. (It seems obvious to me that police officers should be just under water and sanitation in the priority list of things to keep, but what do I know?)

I’m not particularly impressed with Frank Jackson’s tenure either, but at least he’s tried to reallocate police resources to the places they’re needed. Unfortunately, the police union is now fighting tooth and nail to keep police officers patrolling the notoriously dangerous Cleveland Hopkins International Airport rather than putting those officers in Slavic Village, Glenville, Hough, Detroit, or other neighborhoods where increased police protection is actually desperately needed. Baltimore’s efforts to put more police in the most crime-stricken areas had a dramatic impact on the crime rate there, especially for homicides - their own little “surge”, if you will.

That reminds me - I’ve been wondering for some time whether law enforcement in the U.S. can learn something from our military’s current strategy in Iraq. Supposedly, Iraqis hate us, but our forces are actually receiving cooperation from locals who want us to leave as soon as their nation is secure. If you can get that sort of cooperation from the Iraqis that are supposed to hate us, aren’t there elements of those strategies that can be converted into strategies for law enforcement at home, too?

On another side note, another thing I found interesting from the above-linked article is the mention of a gang that relocated from New Orleans to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina. I guess I don’t really have a comment on that, though - I just found it interesting.

Ars Technica reports that Merriam-Webster conducted an online poll in which we-teh-Intarweb picked “w00t” as the word of the year. For whatever reason, Ars makes the (paraphrased) claim that the usage of “w00t” will die off like dogs at Michael Vick’s house.

How wrong they could be, as proven by the anecdotal evidence of me saying “w00t” (or, more commonly, just “woot”) since I started playing EverQuest in 1999 - and I picked it up from other folks playing the game, replacing “woo woo” from BatMUD and “woo hoo” from Homer Simpson. If I’ve stuck with it for well over eight years, I’m sure the rest of us crotchety Intarweb old-timers will keep the dream alive as well.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has an interactive map of homicides in Cuyahoga County, and another showing crime rates throughout Northeast Ohio.

By the way, we’re at 128 homicides now. I wonder what we win if the city hits 130 by year’s end.