I think the SF map is mostly down to the fact that there's fuck-all to do in the Outer Sunset and the Outer Richmond.

The tenderloin, which used to be a lot worse but is gentrifying, makes sense. Josh is right in 1. Do you spend a lot of time in Bayview and Hunter's Point, ogged? Because those seem like the residential neighborhoods that are bearing the brunt of it.

It's not that there aren't pockets of concentration, but that lots of other neighborhoods also have their share.

Perhaps Ogged hangs out with all the cool Mission kids around 16th Street?

I've always been astounded by the tenderloin's resistance to gentrification. There are basically no real slums left in Manhattan.

Perhaps Ogged hangs out with all the cool Mission kids around 16th Street?

Yeah, that's one area I was thinking of. I used to swim there with the Swede, and still go there (doesn't everyone) for some things.

The area around Japantown (and just south of it) also surprised me.

There are basically no real slums left in Manhattan.

Manhattan seems to have a working police force.

7: That's key, all right.

Perhaps there's some other connection between Ogged's hangouts and the murder locations. Hmmm.

You say "strange," I say "suspicious," Shi'a.

If there is violence in San Francisco, it must be due to covert Iranian influence.

Fargo homicide map (click drop-down box)

It's definitely something to do with smallness, I think. In the Lower Haight, for example, I used to be able to walk three blocks east from my house (which was pretty safe) to my friend's house (where they woke up one morning to a murder victim on their front porch). That part of town it's largely gang-related, though, and the projects are on the east side.

Tim pwned by B: what are the odds?

13: I lived in that neighborhood. Very strange, the proximity of gentrified and thoroughly ungentrified.

Which actually is true of a lot of SF, contra my 2.

15: Apparently it's even true of places like Hunter's Point, which, when I lived there, were so thoroughly ungentrified as not to count as "residential" at all. Unlike the gentrification-resistant pockets in the city, though, the more industrial/less developed parts like Hunter's Point seem more susceptible to wide-spread leveling and condo-raising.

Manhattan seems to have a working police force.

San Fran. PD is hiring. Starting wage 73k.

And once you're a cop, you're exempt from pesky local restrictions on concealed carry! You could show up to DC and NY meetups packing heat.

Re: the Chicago map, the high crime rates on the South Side are hardly a surprise, but what's up with that cluster of crime in the part of the city adjacent to Oak Park? Is that area renowned for being a bad neighborhood(s)? I've never heard anyone say "Dude, don't go to Austin if you're on the north side." And yet it seems nearly as dangerous as most of the South Side and more dangerous than a few parts.

17 was me

There was a homicide about a block and a half from my front door in 2007, it seems.

During my sojourn in Warm Minneapolis (ha!), when I lived right on the borderline between the central neighborhoods and bad, bad North Omaha, there were four murders and a couple of awfully suspicious deaths within half-a-mile of my house over the course of one year. And the neighborhoods right around there were not considered particularly dangerous. Just goes to show how much "crime" is really "perception of crime".

what's up with that cluster of crime in the part of the city adjacent to Oak Park?

That's the far west side, which is indeed one of the most dangerous places in the city. There used to (still are?) projects there. Basically from the United Center on out is no go for all the honkies I know.

San Fran. PD is hiring. Starting wage 73k.

Being a cop in a progressive city could be a great career for an educated person starting in their 20s. If you were smart and tested well you could move up the ladder to being a police chief somewhere, which is a hugely important public service job with a fascinating policy aspect. And when you're young you would get to carry a gun, ride around in a fast car with sirens, etc. Plus if it didn't work out you might be able to retire early enough for a second career.

Too many educated liberal types flock into low-paid artsy internships or notorious horror shows like corporate law instead of showing some career creativity. I do not exempt myself from this.

These crime maps lead to people being oblivious to white-collar crime.

There should be a map showing the locations where financial chicanery and fraud take place. Presumably with indications of which storefront businesses coincidentally share the addresses found to be hotbeds of crime.

Sadly, I don't think I'd pass the physical test.

Not many people are adrenalin junkies, and it helps to be comfortable with being physical with other people in order to be a cop, to say nothing of qualms about enforcing various stupid laws and herding the destitute. That said, I kind of agree with you.

Basically from the United Center on out is no go for all the honkies I know.

The far west side is really dangerous but the United Center and UIC West Campus area is gentrifying at an astonishing rate.

Let's train Ben for the SFPD! Orange post titles, there we come!

Some of the stuff near Japantown is Western Addition stuff, which is still surprisingly rough. I would have been more nervous walking down Turk just west of Van Ness than I would have been in the Tenderloin, probably just because the Western Addition was darker and quieter.

Basically from the United Center on out is no go for all the honkies I know.

Heh. It's starting. There's a lot of the artist scene west along the green line these days, and has been for the past several years. It's one of the few places out there with a lot of empty industrial space which is difficult to upgrade and can't find commercial occupants, so the owners switch it to (possibly illegal) loft usage. But yeah, the couple times I've run into cops in those neighborhoods, they were pretty pissed/concerned that I was even out there.

Per 23, there was a big drive in the late 60s (on the part of Ginsberg, I believe?) to get hippies and other countercultural types to join the Berkeley PD and SFPD, on the assumption that this would help the forces in general to be more friendly to the freaks. This largely seems to have worked.

One benefit of being on the SFPD is that you wouldn't have to bust people for smoking pot and then feel all bad about it. Besides, you could totally still take their pot and smoke it yourself.

I used to live in the lower haight for 10+ years. I always felt safe but it was very close to risky areas.

The strange thing about mission and 16th is how scary mission street is compared to valencia street which is a block away.

Also, being a (good) cop requires charisma, 'emotional intelligence,' and confidence. It's not like our educational system intentionally destroys these attributes, but neither is it exactly selecting for it.

23: Why settle for being a boring flatfoot when you could have some real excitement as an agent provocateur? Dye your hair pink, get some skull tatoos and buy a bullet belt and you can infiltrate any leftwing group you want by showing up at a meeting and saying "I'm not really cool with the gender-balance here tonight." With the RNC and DNC coming up those jobs are hot right now! Don't delay, bust hippies for molotovs today!

And you can't really be surprised by the Mission, are you? Have you been there late at night?

I remember passing a lot of scary looking deserted neighborhoods on the El out to Oak Park.... Chicago is great, but it's ridiculous how segregated it is.

Also, being a (good) cop requires charisma, 'emotional intelligence,' and confidence.

It's not like recruitment is particularly effective along these lines as it stands. A bigger pool couldn't hurt.

And you can't really be surprised by the Mission, are you? Have you been there late at night?

From what I can gather of the Mission (and indeed SF in general), most of the homicides are gang or drug-related. So if you aren't buying or selling something, and don't look like you'd be in either of the big Latino gangs, you have nothing to worry about.

On reflection, this doesn't help Ogged...

I don't know why the Chicago map has "census area" as the default -- it's much more readable by ward or community area.

I quietly note that I know for a fact that there have been homicides in what I consider Hyde Park in the last year, but they must've been gerrymandered into Woodlawn or Kenwood.

29: I would have been more nervous walking down Turk just west of Van Ness

And with good reason! There's some pretty crazy shit goes down over there.

So can anyone figure out what those big red dots (or stop signs, it seems, when I zoom in) actually represent on the Chicago map? They're certainly not individual murders and they don't seem to match up with the region lables. Couldn't find anything like a legend on the site that explained them either.

How awesome would it be to start an ad campaign designed to sow distrust in the police?

"Join The LAPD: Learn To Kill!" with a picture of a badass looking dude in riot gear or "I Am A Force For Order!" with a cop looking all badass pointing a gun at the camera. Make some billboards, put the recruitment blurb at the bottom right; make things look all official.

Awesome!

I live thankfully in safer than safe Manhattan, but my sister who lives in the Mission apparently had four or five murders happen right on her block in the last ear. Fun, Fun, Fun!

38 is correct.

I've never had real problems on Mission, other than getting harassed more or less constantly. Probably my least favorite parts of SF would be 6th Street and the intersection at 17th and Capp. Walking, biking, or driving around there can be iffy for pretty much anyone.

So can anyone figure out what those big red dots (or stop signs, it seems, when I zoom in) actually represent on the Chicago map? They're certainly not individual murders and they don't seem to match up with the region lables. Couldn't find anything like a legend on the site that explained them either.

Feature, not a bug

So if you aren't buying or selling something, and don't look like you'd be in either of the big Latino gangs, you have nothing to worry about.

On reflection, this doesn't help Ogged...

especially if he shaves his head for swimming...but at least he won't have a handlebar moustache.

shaving will also reveal his prison tattoos.

We used to have a basement space on 6th and Market that we'd use for, you know, nerd shit. We had many a hilarious interaction for the people who would use the doorway for, various crack and blowjob related transactions, but nothing that ever seemed violent. On the other hand I did notice that I was more likely in SF than anywhere I've ever lived to see a fistfight just break out for no reason, like in Golden Gate Park or on MUNI or something. People get edgy when you fuck with their self-actualization.

Let's train Ben for the SFPD!

The part of the physical that the most people failed? Sit ups. SLC physical requires 35 in a minute. It was far and away was the part the caught a lot of guys off guard.

On a more serious note though, the link in 34 is messed up. Not just that the Fibbies use provocateurs to ruin the lives of non-serious kids, but the article is so absurdly biased against eco-anarchists that it might as well be clipped from the Chicago Tribune the day after Haymarket. Corporate media sucks.

at least he won't have a handlebar moustache

Assumes buzzkill not in evidence.

17th and Capp

Yep, I always thought the few blocks just east of Mission were scarier than Mission and west, probably for the same reason as the Western Addition: quiet and dark.

but nothing that ever seemed violent

You probably have to pay a little more for that, Sifu.

I just looked at the Philadelphia homicide map. Temple University, where I start working next month, is as bad as people say. There are some decent looking neighborhoods not too far away, but it's going to be an interesting commute.

The best part of living in SOMA? If you own a car, you don't have to worry about whether it'll be broken into; it's just a matter of when.

biased against eco-anarchists

Living in Earth First and ELF country, I'm inclined to share this bias.

52: the hilarity was free, though.

SLC physical requires 35 in a minute. It was far and away was the part the caught a lot of guys off guard.

Work it, Ben. Let us know how you're coming along.

I discovered recently that we get something called the Military Channel (Time Warner cable) and when I couldn't sleep the other night I found a show called "San Francisco Cops" where it was an hour of following patrols in the Mission. Their Mission is not my Mission. Mine is one of Andalu, Dalva, the Pork Store, etc. Theirs is 12 Guatemaltecos living in a 2br, a naked stabbing victim howling at a bus stop, a mugging victim at the 24th BART. Scary, depressing stuff.

The GF did a ride-along with the SFPD last year and said she couldn't believe what a masterful job the supes have done in hiding how dangerous the City is.

A non-obese male in his mid-20s should certainly be able to pass a reasonable physical, given a sufficiently brutal training regimen. I'm sure many Unfogged-ites in the Bay Area would be willing to help Ben with that.

The most likely scenario if Ben joins the police force is a "friendly fire" incident caused by too many grammatical corrections helpfully given to his fellow officers.

My best friends little brother is a SF cop.

55: Living in Earth First and ELF country, I'm inclined to share this bias.

Aww shut up, you old troll.

"Waaah, the Firsters don't like capitalism, waaah! They don't want me to drive around in my Escalade like Jebus told me to. They don't like the lumberjacks and they worship trees! Boo-hoo, boo-hoo!"

Just keep on whining and lying, whiny little baby.

The local weekly profiled Salt Lake's "Black Monday Society", which is a group of self styled superheroes who fancy themselves some kind of citizen patrol. Apparently this is a widespread trend.

http://www.worldsuperheroregistry.com/world_superhero_registry_gallery.htm

Dedicated to justice and safety of the streets!

The Salt Lake group doesn't patrol in the winter though, 'cause it's cold out there.

Oh, and my friend who lives at Haight & Fillmore said he'd regularly find people smoking or buying crack in his doorway, and then, one memorable evening, he literally stumbled out upon hobo sex.

Don't blame him/her, 61, he/she only knows from the corporate media.

a group of self styled superheroes

Holy crap, that link is hilarious.

how dangerous the City is

Murder rate is 10 per 100,000. Below the national average for big cities, and about one tenth that of DC.

Holy crap, that link is hilarious.

I can just see the future headline: "Superhero beaten into coma by street person"

Is there a great deal of street crime in SLC for the Black Monday Society to swoop down upon? When I have visited the place has seemed pretty quiet, apart from the aesthetic crime of throwing down car dealerships, chain restaurants and rabbit-multiplying cheek-by-jowl "townhomes" every damned where.

Also, being a (good) cop requires charisma, 'emotional intelligence,' and confidence. It's not like our educational system intentionally destroys these attributes, but neither is it exactly selecting for it.

This is most likely true but apparently IQ helps too. Page 87 of the bell curve has an anecdote about IQ and police. (I can't find any independent confirmation):

In April 1939, after a decade of economic depression, New York City attracted almost 30,000 men to a written and physical examination for 300 openings in the city's police force. The written test was similar to the intelligence test then being given to the federal civil service. Positions were offered top down for a composite score on the mental and physical tests, with the mental test more heavily weighted by more than two to one. Times being what they were, the 300 slots were filled by the men who earned the top 350 scores. They attained far higher than average rank as police officers. Of the entire group, four have been police chiefs, four deputy commissioners, two chiefs of personnel, one a chief inspector, and one became commissioner of the New York Police Department. They suffered far fewer disciplinary penalties, and they contributed significantly to the study of teaching of policing and law enforcement. Many also had successful careers as lawyers, businessmen, and academics after leaving the police department.

Well, I don't much like cutting down trees, capitalism or Escalades, either, but make whatever assumptions you feel are necessary.

Is there a great deal of street crime in SLC for the Black Monday Society to swoop down upon?

If there were, do you think they'd exist?

So Mormon LARPers are going around harassing the homeless. Sweet.

69: okay, I sort of buy the idea behind that intuitively, but did you really just quote The Bell Curve as authoritative?

Hey how'd they get that picture of me?

Also, totally not how I imagined Standpipe.

Is the Mormon superhero in 62 wearing a single batting glove?

Once in San Francisco I left a party and returned to my car parked down the block to find a shiny new bullet hole in the rear quarter panel. It only went through one layer of paneling, though, so it looked like those decals people have on their cars now. I didn't hear any gunshots.

A non-obese male in his mid-20s should certainly be able to pass a reasonable physical, given a sufficiently brutal training regimen.

I looked up some of the police requirements, wondering about this stuff. Better than 11:30 for a 1.5 mile run tends to get top possible marks? 17.5 seconds for a 75-yard sprint with a few turns and a couple 6-inch hurdles? Only 35-40 pushups in 2 minutes? Really?

okay, I sort of buy the idea behind that intuitively, but did you really just quote The Bell Curve as authoritative?

I looked for a non-disreputable source, but there really isn't any.

When I was looking at Bay Area job listings last year there were a couple of craiglist posts from the San Francisco Police Department looking for people to do analytical things like GIS mapping of crime. Paid quite well and looked pretty interesting. It didn't look like you'd have to become a cop; they were looking for people with quantitative social science backgrounds.

I think I needed to use the word "looking" more often in 80.

We used to have a basement space on 6th and Market

Ah, one block up from 6th and Mission, aka The Sketchiest Goddamn Intersection in The City. There used to be a video game bar on the southeast corner there, which (naturally) attracted lots of dot-commers. Boy did that make for an uneasy coexistence.

The Eye apparently sees you with the photoshop filter he has on his wrist. Or maybe he uses his Fedora? Chalk one up for hats totally not looking toolish, anyhow.

83: Shame he can't see the need for a longer tie.

82: yeah, I remember that bar. It was annoying. I would argue that our corner was even sketchier. There was a fun nightclub about halfway between the two, on 6th, that had a basement dance floor that was originally improved only by a giant sound system and sparse candles.

It was back in 1979, but Pirsig's son Chris (the one from Zen and the Art ... was killed in a mugging outside of the Zen Center, which I guess is close-in Haight.

You are usually pretty much ok if it's a `sketchy' area that actually has commercial & daytime use. Things look bad but for the most part violence & risk is highly targeted even if it is prevalent, and you-the-typical-unfoggeder isn't likely to be on target. Economics dictates this. If you wander into a residential-only neighborhood and start seeing burnt out husks of cars and houses, etc., it's not so good.

Only 35-40 pushups in 2 minutes? Really?

Oh, please.

Also, didn't the SFPD used to have a height requirement, rumored to have been an anti-Chinese recruitment device?

87: cont. (hit enter somehow). The primary exception to all this is muggings, but visibility correlates against that too, so it's a bit of a wash.

Only 35-40 pushups in 2 minutes? Really?

Oh, please.

That's not a high bar for anyone who's been training, B.

But lowish physical standards for police forces is understandable, particularly with recruitment problems.

It's not (obviously) like they hold existing officers to it, either.

35-40 pushups in 2 minutes seems high. 35-40 situps seems low.

88: oh thank you.

I am with PMP on this one - there's some pretty gwenny physical tests.

I wish most police departments spent less time demanding push-ups and more time and money training their officers to use and not use their firearms.

There was something in the SF Chron a few years back where some social scientists tried to figure out a correlation between various socioeconomic factors and murder rates, to come up with a sort of corrected murder rate. On whatever scale they ended up with, SF did really poorly. For how rich and highly educated it is, it has a pretty high amount of crime.

I'm not sure if I could do the push-ups now (probably not), but it strikes me as a realistic requirement for someone training to be a cop.

I am with PMP on this one - there's some pretty gwenny physical tests.

Yeah, and a lot of them are just pass/fail. The minimum standards for the one I took were

16'' vertical jump
1.5 mile run in 15:54
25 pushups in 1 minute
35 situps in one minute

I guess it's just because I have weak arms or something, but the requirements in 97 seem really easy, except the push-ups.

(And I don't mean that the push-ups are hard, especially to someone who did some basic training. Just relatively harder than the other requirements. I can walk a mile in under 15 minutes. Do a little running and it's not hard to fit in the extra half-mile.)

Same for me, but I'm female and have a stereotypically female upper body/lower body strength distribution.

97 look like fitness requirements that I could very nearly meet, which is troubling.

Everybody test themselves! We'll see if the pattern of high fail rates for the situps holds true for the commentariat.

Christ, I need to quit screwing around on the internet and go work out so I can get a nap before the kids get out of school.

Apologies for coming in late to the thread, but couldn't it just be that murders happen more often in places people go regularly? I'd imagine most of the places I go to regularly in London, apart from my work, are murder hotspots. I know for a fact two of them are, because I lived there.

It depends on what you mean by "situps". Everything I have ever heard referred to as a "situp" makes my back hurt an incredible amount if I try to do more than 10, unless I am lying on a machine made specifically for the doing of situps.

The pushups don't sound hard, though. 40 in five minutes would be super easy, so it would only take a bit of training to get to 40 in one minute.

If people are getting murdered there regularly, it's not a "bad" neighborhood, it's just a bad neighborhood.

It depends on what you mean by "situps".

For the test I took:

Hands had to be at minimum cupped behind ears. So hands laced behind head is ok, but fingers could not be any farther forward than back of ears. A partner holds your feet, butt has to stay on ground, and elbows have to break the vertical plane passing through your knees.

They mean full sit-ups with someone holding your feet. I figure that's a little harder than doing them on an incline board, but I am surprised that that's the stumbling block for many wannabe cops.

Why situps and not crunches? In my experience the only functional difference between the two is that the latter do not hurt your back.

I'm pretty sure crunches are easier.

The push-ups sound like more of a pain in the ass to me than the sit-ups, which is a reflection of my body type more than anything else.

1. These are tests for becoming a policeman, not some some manner of superhero or what have you.
2. Have any of you ever looked closely at the actual policemen in you town?

a group of self styled superheroes who fancy themselves some kind of citizen patrol

Sweet. I like the guy who lists Osama Bin Laden as his arch-enemy.

111.2: surprisingly fit, actually.

I could definitely do the list in 97, and I sit on my ass all day. I'm in the worse shape I've been in in years. As minimum standards for a job with occasionally very physical requirements, they seem pretty low.

Have any of you ever looked closely at the actual policemen in you town?

This is key. I doubt these sort of requirements are what any police force would *like* to be able to assume, so much as what they think they can keep to without dropping recruitment too much.

actually, worst shape in years should probably be worst shape ever. sigh.

surprisingly fit, actually.

Police often seem to be bimodal. There's a group who seem reasonable fit (i.e., like many people with outside jobs that involve daily exercise of some sort), and another group who obviously aren't chasing anyone by foot.

not murders, but slightly on topic b/c of deaths?
22 thousands are dead, what a disaster, scary scale
i think it's a chance for Myanmans to overthrow the junta
i knew a Myanman student who participated in the student's uprisings, met her at some kind of the International students' gathering
it was exciting to meet someone who actually participated in something real exciting

117: not to worry, read. The US is kicking in $250,000. a whole $3 million!

That's $3 per lost home: not bad!

God, the situation in Myanmar does sound completely devastating. Definitely makes me feel helpless.

118: And the ungrateful wretches will probably just spend it all in one stupid go.

Is Myanmar some sort of neutral country that refuses to use either "hurricane" or "typhoon" to describe its cyclones?

Terrifica patrols New York City's bars, clubs, and streets by night looking for women who have had a little too much to drink and are in danger of being taken advantage of by men.

If he can't make the SFPD, w-lfs-n could maybe try this.

Cyclone is the Indian Ocean version.

122: Do they get costumes like the Utah folks?

124:

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/columns/intelligencer/10359/

122: "The Nice Guy"! In a uniform of striped, untucked shirt, furrowed brow, receding hairline and a none-too-clean American Apparel T-shirt!Powered by seething rivers of "issues" with women!

123: I see.

In a hundred years we're going to have to whip up brand new words for when the North Sea and the Antarctic Ocean start generating cyclones.

127: Then again, maybe we won't.

Mother Nature is a motherfucker. 22,000 dead? Fucking cyclones.

126: good stuff. You forgot the Dockers, though.

Terifica's arch-nemesis is actually a PUA named Mr. Fantastico:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91072&page=1

I think the Terrifica model might have some strong superhero possibilities for Emerson, though. Here is our hero on relationships:

"My inspiration is the need people have in the city to be protected from themselves. That is my inspiration," the heroine says. "I have to act in the most extreme situations. I'm on the front lines, in the danger zone, in the wee hours of the night. There's nothing happening here right now; it's way early. But if I come back here at 2:30, 3 o'clock in the morning, there are people drunk, making out with other people, going home with other people. They don't know what they're doing. They're drunk.

"To feel like you have to go to a bar, to put yourself out there, feeling like you have worth only when you're married, engaged, or have a boyfriend, that's weakness," Terrifica says. "People are happiest when they're alone and living their solitary lives."

I think I'm most uncertain about the vertical leap part, since I haven't measured my leap or ever trained at doing anything that would obviously improve it. Is the test just that they set a bar 16" off the ground and tell you to clear it?

22,000 dead?

Every time I glance at google news, the number is larger.

Also, didn't the SFPD used to have a height requirement, rumored to have been an anti-Chinese recruitment device?

Fools. They should have based it on girthiness.

I remember that during the tsunami. I was on vacation and not really around a newspaper, so the first headline I saw said something like 10,000 dead. Two days later I catch the TV and it says 90,000. The fuck?

41,000 people are still counted as missing. Fucking cyclone.

Is the test just that they set a bar 16" off the ground and tell you to clear it?

The way I learned was to stand against a wall with height markings painted on it with one arm extended above you, then jump with your arm still extended and tap as high as you can. The difference between the two is your vertical jump.

130: When young super-heroines venture into the douchebagtastic depths of the LES or wherever, does Terrifica show up and give them a Batman-style "This is my city. There's no room for amateurs"? Because that would be cool.

Every time I glance at google news, the number is larger.

In a place staring off with this sort resources & infrastructure, it's incredibly likely that the aftermath of something like this is worse (fatality-wise) than the initial event.

Heebie's right.

In the wake of tragedy, I like to obsess over trivia.

#136. A Terrifica/Splendiferous team-up that took the pair deep into the sleazy heart of Williamsburg to cockblock hipsters would be awesome, too.

Cruel, but funny: not all of the RLSHs are as emotionally stable as Terrifica.

139: I would like to subscribe to your crossover series with the Sienkiewicz variant covers, please.

139: with a special jeans-tightening hot water castration "beam"?

I would like to see some of these homicide maps broken down by whether or not the victim knew the murderer. I bet you see more family murders (proportionately) in higher-income neighborhoods.

And Brian, take a look at the time-of-day on the map you linked to. If you're wandering around North Philadelphia at 1 a.m. you have a lot more to worry about than at 4 p.m.

Living in Oakland has not been nearly as bad as I thought it might. Granted, there are still a ton of murders, esp. for a city its size, but I've yet to have a problem -- and I live in a dicey neighborhood. The closest I've come was a cop shooting a guy dead about a 2/10-mile from my apartment.

Hm, the LA map shows 22/252 murders as "suspected domestic incidents." Can it really be that fewer than 10% of all murders are committed by the nearest and dearest? That seems absurdly low.

Can it really be that fewer than 10% of all murders are committed by the nearest and dearest? That seems absurdly low.

Based on what? "The victim knew the killer" also includes a lot of gang-related and drug-related crimes. If the level of domestic murders is more or less constant, it's reasonable to expect the domestic fraction to be much lower in a place (LA) with a higher overall crime rate.

Based on what?

Uh, my vague and unscientific memories of FBI Uniform Crime Report data.

But seriously, I would think that domestic (defined broadly as blood relative, step relative, romantic partner, or other live-in) cases would be roughly the same rate in the population in any part of the country, and then on top of that in a big urban environment you'd have a lot of, e.g., drug-trade-related homicides. I'm just surprised that the latter are apparently plentiful enough to push the former down to only 10% of the homicide rate.

Maybe they're using "domestic" to mean "romantic partner" only.

From this page.

In 2000, intimate partner homicides accounted for 33.5 percent of the murders of women and less than four percent of the murders of men.

So if the LA Times also means "intimate partner" when they say "domestic" (I thought that was the common understanding, actually), then 10% is in line with these numbers, given how many more men are murdered.

Maybe they're using "domestic" to mean "romantic partner" only.

I think we can safely assume that that's what it means. I never heard it to mean anything else.

I dunno. Surely "domestic incident" includes stuff like "grandpa lives with us and he lost it and stabbed his son with a steak knife" or "daddy started smacking mother-in-law around again." That kind of thing has to happen sometimes.

That said, I'm sure 147 is pretty much right.

Or fights between, say, 18-year old boys and their fathers.

Yeah, I think 147 has to be right.

Sorry, forgot the link in 147.

Is the test just that they set a bar 16" off the ground and tell you to clear it?

They had an adjustable device with a series of markers. You stand under it with one hand raised straight over your head, and the zero it by lowering it to your fingertips. The jump had to be a stationary two foot take off. You could swing your arms, but no running, taking a step, etc.

"they zero it"

Hey, Elmofucker, you could go see Carl Ludwig Hübsch at 21 grand tonight!

153, 154: So are you seriously in the police hiring process? Cool. I don't know if I ever mentioned that I thought about the NYPD in idealistic moments when I was younger -- if one of those moments had hit in 1995, I might be a cop now.

Oakland has a bakery that seems to be aiming to be the center of a sequel to The Wire.

Yeah, I started the process a couple months ago. The kiddies are getting older, wife's been done with her BS for a bit now, and I don't need a grave shift anymore. The bloodbath that has been biotech layoffs the last couple years didn't make finishing off my biochem BS look too appealing. My brother has been a cop now in an Atlanta suburb for about a year now, and loves it.

More liberal types should check it out. The written tests are ridiculously easy if you're used to intensive prep for SAT/ACT/GRE type tests, and departments nationwide are having trouble getting enough good candidates.

I could be a philosopher cop. Freeze or I remove you from my ontology, bitches.

Heh. My background investigator has over 20 years in. Told my wife she signed on after doing a ride along with her husband.

"THIS is what you get paid to do all day? I could do this."

158: Very jurisdiction-dependent. This morning I watched as two suburban police officers and five firefighters attended to a mulch fire caused (I believe) by careless smoking.) This afternoon I spent in a neighborhood that has far more than its share of the little red flags from the maps linked on this thread. Police work is pretty different.

Also, kinda depends on the culture of the department and your tolerance for racism. There are just two non-white officers in an entire department near me. A few years ago a memo went out, prompted by the Confederate-flag sticker on the truck of one of the (white) officers.

More liberal types should check it out.

There are similar arguments in favor of joining the military, although leaving that position is a bit harder, and with the current administration running things, it's less appealing.

To the extent that I'm interested in crime investigation, it's in white-collar stuff - fraud, that sort of thing; the police must do that, but I always associate it with federal agencies.

Treasury!

Your enthusiasm makes me wonder if you have some treasury connection. (There's also the GAO. They make some good Chinese-style chicken in the cafeteria, I hear.)

Change has to come from somewhere, and too many liberals shun this type of work. Salt Lake City mayor, county mayor (Howard Dean's cousin), and Salt Lake Sheriff are all Dems. If it can happen here, it can heppen in a lot more places.

but I always associate it with federal agencies.

Bigger cities have units that do financial crimes and fraud, as well as state police agencies.

165: I'm not disagreeing with you; from the police I've known I think you're absolutely right. I'm just saying that for an individual, the day-to-day culture of your workplace has a big impact on quality of life, and some police departments are going to be a lot more energy-sapping than others.

Society would do well to have more liberal-ish folks in law enforcement. It's not necessarily a fun idea for every individual liberalish person.

Yeah, easiest for a white guy.

w-lfs-n, Ogged, your duty is clear.

The homicide maps - especially the Chicago edition - could do with some more imagination presentation - the Google 'teardrops' just don't convey what it's all about.

How about body silhouettes - or would the Chicago homicide map get too crowded?

Body silhouettes would work in our city - 6 million of us and only about 70 murders per year. Who says Gun Control Laws aren't effective?

Can it really be that fewer than 10% of all murders are committed by the nearest and dearest? That seems absurdly low.

Depends on the jurisdiction, I suppose. Where I grew up in Deep Redstatia, spousal murders would have accounted for a vastly higher proportion. As my brother once astutely observed, "The only way you're going to get murdered around here is if you have a crazy boyfriend, or if you fuck somebody who does."

16'' vertical jump
1.5 mile run in 15:54
25 pushups in 1 minute
35 situps in one minute

Tried the gswift Pigidential Fitness Challenge this morning. Verdict? The push-ups were the biggest pain in the ass, no surprise for my fat-ass self. The sit-ups weren't a huge deal, although I didn't push myself and didn't make the cutoff, and the run seems like it would be dirt easy -- I could basically walk it.