Browsing Posts tagged Los Angeles
Red light cameras have been controversial throughout their lifetime. Besides angering motorists, there isn’t much evidence that they work as intended. Los Angeles is now considering getting rid of the cameras as more and more evidence shows that accidents increase at intersections with red light cameras.
An audit last year questioned the effectiveness of the program, finding that a majority of citations have gone uncollected. Commissioner Alan Skobin says that since the courts don’t pursue drivers who refuse to pay the tickets, the camera program lacks enforcement power.
The board’s decision could shut down the cameras in days unless the City Council decides to strip the commission of its authority on the issue and decide whether to continue the program.
I suspect if the city of Los Angeles had a way to enforce these cameras and collect the fines, they might not be taken down as a waste of money.
Guards at the Los Angeles County jail complex in Castaic will start using a newfangled weapon that produces a deep burning sensation — which is not to be confused with a “warm fuzzy feeling” — in whomever it is aimed at.
The 7 1/ More..2-foot-tall “Assault Intervention Device,” which sheriff’s deputies demonstrated Friday at the Pitchess Detention Center, emits an invisible beam that causes an unbearable sensation, reported the Daily News.
The device will be mounted near the ceiling in a unit housing about 65 inmates, sheriff’s Cmdr. Bob Osborne of the sheriff’ Technology Exploration Program told the newspaper.
“We hope that this type of technology will either cause an inmate to stop an assault or lessen the severity of an assault by them being distracted by the pain as a result of the beam,” said Osborne. “So that we have fewer injuries, fewer assaults, those kinds of things.”
Deputies have tested the device on themselves and say the invisible beam is painful — especially when it’s not expected.“I equate it to opening an oven door and feeling that blast of hot air, except instead of being all over me, it’s more focused,” said Osborne.
The pain stops when you move out of the beam’s path, which people do instinctively.
The device, developed by Raytheon, is controlled by a joystick and computer monitor and emits a beam about the size of a CD up to distances of about 100 feet.
The energy traveling at the speed of light penetrates the skin up to 1/64 of an inch deep. No one can stand being in the beam’s path for more than about three seconds, Mike Booen of Raytheon told the Daily News.
The device is being evaluated for a period of six months by the National Institute of Justice for use in jails nationwide.
Sheriff’s deputies are getting to try it out for free.
About 3,700 inmates are housed at Pitchess, where 257 inmate-on-inmate assaults occurred in the first half of the year
A new set of posters at LAX is being dubbed “terror-veillance” as they were made to invoke terror in people instead of preventing it.
See something. Say something. Imprison innocents. Terrorize travelers.
The police want you to iWatchLA, but I won’t be. Put these posters together with the anti-terror citizen watch groups and the iwatch videos from last year, and you’re got scared citizens everywhere.
