Police Cars Research Articles

Emergency vehicle maneuvers and control laws for automated highway systems

The operation and transit of emergency vehicles (EVs) on an automated highway system (AHS) designed under the control architecture proposed in the California PATH (Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways) program is described. The term is used in a general sense to describe vehicles such as police cars, ambulances and tow trucks, that may service faults inside or outside the AHS. The transit of EVs requires intensive participation of the coordination layer, which directs the interactions of neighboring vehicles, and the link layer, which regulates traffic flow along stretches of highway. Various strategies for these two hierarchical layers that are needed to assign high-priority transit to EVs on the AHS are described. These coordination- and link-layer maneuvers circulate other vehicles around the EV in both free-flowing and stopped traffic.

An analysis of 'looked but failed to see' accidents involving parked police vehicles

Drivers who collide with a vehicle that is parked on the hard shoulder of a motorway or dual-carriageway sometimes claim not to have seen it before the collision. Previous research into vehicle conspicuity has taken such ‘looked but failed to see’ claims at face value, and concentrated on attempting to remedy the problem by making vehicles more conspicuous in sensory terms. However, the present study describes investigations into accidents of this kind which have involved stationary police cars, vehicles which are objectively highly conspicuous. Two laboratory studies showed that experienced drivers viewing a film of dual-carriageway driving were slower to respond to a parked police car as a ‘hazard’ if it was parked directly in the direction of travel than if it was parked at an angle; this effect was more pronounced when the driver's attention was distracted with a secondary reasoning task. Taken together with the accident reports, these results suggest that ‘looked but failed to see’ accidents may arise not because the parked vehicle is difficult to see, but for more cognitive reasons, such as vigilance failure, or possession by the driver of a ‘false hypothesis’ about the road conditions ahead. An emergency vehicle parked in the direction of travel, with only its blue lights flashing, may encourage drivers to believe that the vehicle is moving rather than stationary. Parking at an angle in the road, and avoiding the use of blue lights alone while parked, are two steps that drivers of parked emergency vehicles should consider taking in order to alert approaching drivers to the fact that a stationary vehicle is ahead.

Public Sector Operations Research: A Personal Journey

It all started at an MIT fraternity mixer party in September 1965. Another brother and I, noting the need for additional female attendees—to balance the gender ratio—fulfilled our brotherly duties by bringing over from Boston’s Back Bay an additional six partygoers. The problem was that two of the recruits—whom we had not known previously— turned out to be professional thieves. Before we knew it, they had left the party, but not before ransacking the ladies’ powder room, taking from purses cash, credit cards, and IDs. That fact did not become apparent until 1:00 a.m., when all the trusting young women went to pick up their purses that they had innocently left in the powder room. When I heard of this, I felt terrible, personally responsible. Grand larceny. Little did I know that this one event would change my life and shape my future career. During the following weeks in an attempt to catch the thieves, I played the role of private detective. I followed up every lead they had given us. One said she went to a secretarial college in the Back Bay of Boston. I talked my way into the president’s office, claiming that one of their students had lost a valuable gold watch at that party; as a result I was able to see the photographs of each of the students registered at that college—but no luck. Similarly, I followed all other leads to no avail. Soon in my “Detective Larson” zeal I found myself carrying a half a dozen books in criminology and forensic sciences checked out from the MIT libraries. I became fascinated, for instance, with the potential for computers to automatically recognize latent fingerprints. The following semester I registered in one of MIT’s first courses in artificial intelligence to undertake the fingerprint project. One day MIT’s Professor Alvin W. Drake noticed me carrying seemingly random library books and asked me what they were. I related to him the story, and he urged me to register with him under a special research project focusing on operations research problems in urban policing. Stunned that I could do such a thing at MIT, I leapt at the opportunity. Professor Drake soon arranged a high-level meeting involving executives at Arthur D. Little, commanders of the Boston Police Department, and yours truly. Thus began my manyyear odyssey of riding in the back seats of police cars in Boston, St. Louis, Wilmington (Delaware), Worcester (Massachusetts), and elsewhere. Soon I realized that the police emergency response system was a priority-oriented tandem queueing system. At that time, in the mid-1960s, no one had studied urban policing from an operations research point of view. Wow, there was my master’s thesis topic!

An Unmitigated Disaster?

TUESDAY, 20 April 1999, was the date of the infamous Columbine massacre. On Friday of that week, a teacher found a threatening letter in the computer room of Brazosport High School, which is in Freeport, Texas.1 School officials suspected that a particular student had left the letter. They also knew that the suspect spent idle time at a group of picnic tables in the school courtyard, where 14 other students tended to congregate. Although these students hung there for lunch and traveled in the same social circles, most of them were casual acquaintances rather than close friends. On Monday, April 26, after an investigation, the school officials had the primary suspect arrested and charged with making terrorist threats. On Tuesday, April 27, as a continuation of the investigation, officers from the local police department entered the high school, at the behest of the school administration. The police officers rounded up the 14 students, frisked them, handcuffed them, and led them out of the building. They placed the students in police cars and transported them to the municipal courthouse. Neither the police officers nor the school officials gave any reason for the action, but the officers allegedly directed profane language at the students on the way to the court. Moreover, they threatened to place the students in the municipal jail, where they would suffer mightily at the hands of the inmates. On arrival at the municipal building, the police ordered the students to remain in the empty courtroom, under threat of five-year prison terms if they left. These confrontations and the detention took place without a warrant. After the students spent more than an hour in the courtroom, the police told them to telephone their parents and have them come to the municipal building. Once they had all arrived, the police and the school's principal hastily lectured the parents and the students, who were then allowed to depart. There was one exception. The mother of one of the students, Jeremy D., insisted that she could not wait any longer in the courtroom and had to leave with her son. Before allowing them to leave, a detective interrogated Jeremy as to whether he knew how to make a bomb. Jeremy said no, whereupon the detective proceeded to explain how to do so. The detective went on to say that he knew Jeremy had done nothing wrong and that the entire exercise had been a show of force, intended to impress upon the students that the authorities were monitoring them. The next morning, the principal convened a schoolwide assembly to explain the prior day's happenings. At the assembly, he pronounced the school free of terrorists and assured the students that they were all safe. He further informed the student body that no one should bother the students who had been arrested the previous day, as they had done nothing wrong. This admonition apparently had little effect. Some of the detained students complained of harassment by other students, such as accusations that they were planning a Columbine-style incident at the school. Jeremy twice received in-school suspensions as a result of his efforts to exonerate himself before the students in his geometry class. Having experienced several sleepless nights, like his fellow detainees, Jeremy fell asleep in class, only to be aroused by a glass of water thrown at him by his teacher. This led to riotous laughter, causing him further humiliation and embarrassment. When his mother met with the principal to complain about this incident, he urged her to have him transferred to another school or to home school him. Although Jeremy stayed the course, one of his fellow detainees opted for home schooling rather than face the daily pressures brought on by her unrelenting peers. On 15 February 2000, Jeremy and two others from the detained group filed suit in federal court. They claimed, in their amended complaint, that the school and police officials had violated their Fourth and 14th Amendment rights. …

Public Sector Operations Research

It all started at an MIT fraternity mixer party in September 1965. Another brother and I, noting the need for additional female attendees-to balance the gender ratio-fulfilled our brotherly duties by bringing over from Boston's Back Bay an additional six partygoers. The problem was that two of the recruits-whom we had not known previouslyturned out to be professional thieves. Before we knew it, they had left the party, but not before ransacking the ladies' powder room, taking from purses cash, credit cards, and IDs. That fact did not become apparent until 1:00 A.M., when all the trusting young women went to pick up their purses that they had innocently left in the powder room. When I heard of this, I felt terrible, personally responsible. Grand larceny. Little did I know that this one event would change my life and shape my future career. During the following weeks in an attempt to catch the thieves, I played the role of private detective. I followed up every lead they had given us. One said she went to a secretarial college in the Back Bay of Boston. I talked my way into the president's office, claiming that one of their students had lost a valuable gold watch at that party; as a result I was able to see the photographs of each of the students registered at that college-but no luck. Similarly, I followed all other leads to no avail. Soon in my Detective Larson zeal I found myself carrying a half a dozen books in criminology and forensic sciences checked out from the MIT libraries. I became fascinated, for instance, with the potential for computers to automatically recognize latent fingerprints. The following semester I registered in one of MIT's first courses in artificial intelligence to undertake the fingerprint project. One day MIT's Professor Alvin W. Drake noticed me carrying seemingly random library books and asked me what they were. I related to him the story, and he urged me to register with him under a special research project focusing on operations research problems in urban policing. Stunned that I could do such a thing at MIT, I leapt at the opportunity. Professor Drake soon arranged a high-level meeting involving executives at Arthur D. Little, commanders of the Boston Police Department, and yours truly. Thus began my manyyear odyssey of riding in the back seats of police cars in Boston, St. Louis, Wilmington (Delaware), Worcester (Massachusetts), and elsewhere. Soon I realized that the police emergency response system was a priority-oriented tandem queueing system. At that time, in the mid-1960s, no one had studied urban policing from an operations research point of view. Wow, there was my master's thesis topic!

Saving Time Saves Lives

Consider the following 3 patient stories: Reluctantly, A.B. heaved his bulk out of the air-conditioned car and into the hot, bright afternoon sun. The walk across the steaming macadam parking lot left him breathless, and his hand shook as he buried the cigarette butt into the sand on top of the shining brass receptacle guarding the entrance to the casino. His head pounded with the exertion, and he realized he forgot to take his blood pressure pill. Once he adjusted to the dimly lit interior and breathed the cool air, he caught his breath and cashed in $500 worth of chips. He quickly gravitated to the blackjack table, but in 30 minutes was cleaned out. His chest now ached with a soreness that had been waking him up at night for the last 2 weeks. As A.B. massaged his left breast, he began to feel lightheaded, and then the room went black. When C.D. heard the overhead page announcing that his flight was finally ready for boarding, he gulped down his wine and hurried out of the VIP lounge, lugging the distended briefcase over his shoulder. After showing his passport for what seemed the tenth time, he boarded the DC 10 and headed for the business section. The plane was already 2 hours late, and he was angry that he would miss his connection at Heathrow. But that seemed unimportant now as the fluttering in his chest started again. The doctor had told him it was ventricular tachycardia because of his enlarged heart and suggested a new medication, but he didn’t want to take it. The fluttering increased as the plane took off and continued through dinner. As C.D. settled back with his cognac, he looked down on the Atlantic, making out a few diamonds of light sparkling on the …

Technologic advances and program initiatives in public access defibrillation using automated external defibrillators.

Widespread provision of early defibrillation following cardiac arrest holds major promise for improved survival from ventricular fibrillation. The critical element in predicting a successful outcome is the rapidity with which defibrillation is achieved. A worldwide awareness of this potential and its advocacy by such organizations as the American Heart Association have been pivotal in the evolution of initiatives to make defibrillation more widely and more rapidly available. The feasibility of this initiative, known as public access defibrillation, is in large measure a direct consequence of major technologic advances in automated external defibrillators (AEDs). New low-energy waveforms with biphasic morphology have been shown to be more effective in terminating ventricular fibrillation and may do so with less myocardial injury. Placement of AEDs in a variety of nontraditional settings such as police cars, aircraft and airport terminals, and gambling casinos has been shown to yield an impressive number of survivors of cardiac arrest in ventricular fibrillation. Questions yet to be answered center on the appropriate disposition of AEDs in public access defibrillation settings, training and retraining issues, device maintenance, and collection of accurate data to document benefit and to identify areas of needed improvement or expansion of AED availability.

“Shanghai-Japan”: The Japanese Residents' Association of Shanghai

At noon on december 3, 1937, a Japanese military parade—perhaps in ironic imitation of other processions by foreigners in Shanghai—began marching down Nanjing Road through the foreign concessions in Shanghai and along the Bund. In the lead was a military police (kenpeitai) car escorted by mounted troops bearing sabers at the hilt. They were followed by a large infantry detachment, machine-gunners, and finally by artillerymen. Japanese aircraft flew by overhead, and Japanese civilians lined the route along the way and shouted out choruses of banzai. When they arrived at Jessfield Park, they were met by a contingent of Italian ladies—allies in the anti-Comintern pact—waving Japanese flags. The event lasted until 3 p.m. and involved all 6000 Japanese troops stationed in the city. The next day a smaller contingent of troops marched in orderly fashion from Garden Bridge south to the Bund and through the concessions (Tokyo asahi shinbun, December 4, 1937, and December 5, 1937; cited in Muramatsu 1991, 308–9). Lest there be any doubt about it, this was clearly intended as a victory march, an effort to demonstrate the new reality of Japan's preeminence in Shanghai. However much this display may have been directed at the Chinese, with whom Japan had now been at war for five months, the Western residents of the concessions—with whom the resident Japanese had been at loggerheads for many years—were the primary targets. No such event ever took place in any of the other centers of Japanese residence in China, only in Shanghai, where all the Western powers were present in full force.

Ballard's Crash-Body

Ballard’s Crash-Body Paul Youngquist When I heard the crash on the hiway I knew what it was from the start I went down to the scene of destruction And a picture was stamped on my heart. I didn’t hear nobody pray, dear brother, I didn’t hear nobody pray; I heard the crash on the hiway But I didn’t hear nobody pray. —Roy Acuff I Crash! One catastrophic instant can change your life forever. J. G. Ballard’s Crash reveals the destiny of the human body in a world of automotive disaster: a new crash-body, ungodly offspring of cars and signs. Set in the concrete landscape of late industrial culture, the novel views the world through a wide-angle lens that deprives it of depth, rendering it an interminable surface. Ballard’s prose is that of the camera—flat, mechanical, omni-detailed, “hyperreal”—and shows that to write in a technological culture is to represent its technologies of perception. The hyper-reality of Ballard’s style is the representational effect of photography, the after-image in another medium of a pervasive perception technology. That’s why Vaughan, the sinister hero of Crash, is not a writer but a camera-monkey; the writer in the narrative, auspiciously named Ballard, takes up a position subordinate to the photographer, who becomes the subject of writing, the condition of narration: “Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash” (1). From its first sentence to its last, Crash pursues the image of Vaughan, its narrative alpha and omega. And that image is photographic, both product and producer of other images. Vaughan is defined by the technologies of photography that condition his perception, as in the following moment of recognition: The tall man with the camera sauntered across the roof. I looked through the rear window of his car. The passenger seat was loaded with photographic equipment—cameras, a tripod, a carton packed with flashbulbs. A cine-camera was fastened to a dashboard clamp. He walked back to his car, camera held like a weapon by its pistol grip. As he reached the balcony his face was lit by the headlamps of the police car. I realized that I had seen his pock-marked face many times before, projected from a dozen forgotten magazine profiles—this was Vaughan, Dr Robert Vaughan. (63) Handsome is as handsome does; technologies of photography become the condition of all that Vaughan does and is. Identity is an effect of the photographic image, which is always already a technological representation, capable of being reproduced and disseminated. Photography is thus the a priori of (re)cognition in the technological culture of Crash. Ballard’s prose double-exposes this cultural function. With the disinterestedness of a camera, it reveals the operation of the lens in the language of the hyperreal. Stylistically and analytically, Ballard ‘s book is photo-Kantian. And its world becomes a surface. One of the effects of the lens upon representation is to flatten it out, reconfiguring the image in a space of two dimensions, a surface without depth. Contiguity, mark of the metonym, regulates relations in such a space. As a result things lose substance. Boundaries lapse and features merge. Where difference once distinguished, contiguity now associates, deferring the substantive identity of things. Where a boundary once ruled, as between humanity and machine, a blur now occurs, creating unprecedented relations and new possibilities. Consider the effects of Vaughan’s camera upon the all too human act of love: Vaughan stood at my shoulder, like an instructor ready to help a promising pupil. As I stared down at the photograph of myself at Renata’s breast, Vaughan leaned across me, his real attention elsewhere. With a broken thumbnail, its rim caked with engine oil, he pointed to the chromium window-sill and its junction with the overstretched strap of the young woman’s brassiere. By some freak of photography these two formed a sling of metal and nylon from which the distorted nipple seemed to extrude itself into my mouth. (102) Photography breeds freaks by reconfiguring things. Boundaries that would assert substantive differences, as between metal and flesh, fall to new associations through the intervention...

Use of an unmanned police car to reduce traffic speed.

Motor vehicle collisions are the most common mechanism of traumatic death. Speeding is often implicated as a causal factor in motor vehicle crashes. One potential intervention, to prevent speeding, is the placement of a roadside unmanned police car. This study sought to answer the following questions: is speeding reduced by this intervention, does this intervention lose effectiveness over time, and when the car is removed, do motorists resume speeding? A radarless speed detector was placed on a roadway that had a history of speed-related collisions. Baseline speeds were recorded for 12 days. Thereafter, an unmanned police cruiser was parked near the road, and speeds were recorded for 10 days. The police car was removed, and data collection continued 1 more week. The difference between the proportion of motorists exceeding 45-mph in the baseline period and the decoy intervention period was tested by using a chi2 test. During the baseline surveillance, 72.0% of vehicles (186,578 of 259,074 motorists) had speeds greater than 45 mph. After placement of the unmanned police car, 41.0% of motorists (92,272 of 225,026 motorists) exceeded 45 mph (p < .0001). Over the 10-day study period, when the decoy police car was in place, the percentage of motorists exceeding 45 mph gradually increased from 27.2% to 47.4%. Upon removal of the police car, speeding returned approximately to baseline, with 67.5% of motorists (120,640 of 178,752 motorists) exceeding 45-mph. Parking an unmanned police car beside a road was associated with a large reduction in speeding over a 10-day period. Removal of the unmanned police car resulted in a return to preintervention speeding.

Optimal Spatial Deployment of Police Patrol Cars

The spatial deployment of a scarce municipal resource, police cars, is examined with respect to four criteria: response time, workload balance, patrol frequency, and interdistrict dispatches. Standard results from queuing theory are supplemented by the addition of spatial concepts to provide the basis for a computer implementation called The Desktop Hypercube. This software allows police planners to draw patrol districts on a map of their city and to evaluate performance according to these criteria. By repeatedly redrawing districts and reevaluating, they should be able to improve performance. Using data on police calls in New Britain, Connecticut, The Desktop Hypercube is used to measure performance while varying the number of cars, the number of patrol districts, and the way the districts are drawn. Certain basic trade-offs become evident, some of which are especially important to cities in which community policing is a high priority.

Driving whilst unfit through drugs

Forensic medical examiners (police surgeons) are often asked to conduct an examination and provide an opinion as to whether the ability of a detained person to drive a motor vehicle properly was impaired through drugs (section 4, Road Traffic Act 1988). Debates in medico-legal fora have demonstrated that some forensic medical examiners are unclear as to whether a blood sample for drugs analysis can be lawfully requested if there is no demonstrable evidence of impairment at the time of the examination. Correspondence in the Medico-Legal Journal 1 regarding this dilemma received responses from two eminent lawyers 2,3 to the effect that the condition (of impairment) referred to in the Road Traffic Act 1988 related to when the offence was allegedly being committed, i.e. when the person was driving, attempting to drive or in charge of a vehicle. Therefore, if there is sufficient evidence from other sources (e.g. police officers, eye witnesses) of impairment at the time of the offence, regardless of whether there is evidence of impairment at the time of the examination, then it is lawful to obtain a blood sample for drugs analysis; this allows for the fact that the effects of certain substances (e.g. cannabis, solvents) are short-lived. The following report describes a case recently heard in the Court of Appeal 4 which concurs with the views of these lawyers. The case involved the appellant (L), who was stopped having apparently just avoided a head on collision with a police car. The arresting police officers noted red eyes, slurred speech and a slow response to questions. L did not smell of 'intoxicating liquor' but admitted that he had recently smoked a cannabis cigarette; he produced some cannabis resin. He was arrested for driving under the influence of drink or drugs.

Study of the Impact of Police Enforcement on Motorists’ Speeds

One method to enforce speed limits on U.S. highways is through the use of police enforcement. One major problem with this approach is the high cost associated with the employment of police officers for patrolling purposes. Thus, the effectiveness of police presence in controlling highway speeds should be carefully assessed prior to making a decision on increasing police patrolling operations on the transportation network. A study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of police presence on the speed of vehicles in a recently increased speed-limit zone and to determine the “halo” effects of police presence (lasting effects when police are gone) on vehicular speeds. Data were collected on Interstate 96 in Ionia County, Michigan. Marked police cars circulated in both directions on the study segment, which was approximately 45 km (29 mi) long. Net speed reductions at a distance of 1.6, 3.2, and 4.8 km (1, 2, and 3 mi) upstream and downstream of each counter were used in the data analysis. Two methods were applied to study the effects of police presence. First, the average speed in the area without the police presence was compared to the average speed after the police presence. Second, the difference between the speed at the place where the police vehicle was positioned and the speed downstream was calculated. It was found that the average speed just upstream of the police car’s location was reduced, but as soon as vehicles passed the patrol car, drivers accelerated to their normal speeds or more. Moreover, no “halo” effects on the vehicles at the increased speed zone under study were observed.

A trial in Germany

In the early morning of April 1, 1997, the police in Cologne beat up a young Turkish woman who called seeking help in the middle of the night. Identified in the German press simply as Oeykue, she reported to journalists that she and her sister Irem had called the police hotline a half dozen times in response to an ominous banging on the shutters of her first-floor apartment. The police came once at about 2:30 a.m. and found nothing suspicious. After additional calls, two officers showed up in a patrol car and, by her own admission, Oeykue started screaming at them, Why are you so late? Aren't you here to help people? According to her story, one of the officers called the slightly-built 108-pound Oeykue a little foreign asshole, hit her twice in the face, and then threw her to the ground, stepped on her back, and handcuffed her. Her sister Irem was there to note it all, but that did not inhibit the violence. They told Irem to keep quiet or the same would happen to her. With Oeykue still screaming in the back seat of the patrol car, they drove off. The cop who assaulted her initially was at the wheel, but he managed to turn and slap her a few more times, she claims, apparently to shut her up. What happened at the police station is, according to Oeykue's report, even more remarkable. Sometime between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m., the police locked her in a toiletless cell without booking her. Urine covered the floor and the only refuge was a cement shelf that passed as a bed. Her left wrist was bleeding from the overly tight handcuff. Screaming from other prisoners surrounded her. She could not speak to anyone and she had no way of making a phone call. The remarkable fact is that Irem was able to locate her. And this she could do only because she had the number of a retired German police officer they had met at a New Year's Eve party in a local Turkish restaurant. He made a few calls and let Irem know that Oeykue was locked up at the Waidmark station and would be released the next day at 11:00 a.m. As soon as she could, Oeykue sought medical assistance. At the emergency room of the local hospital, the attending physicians decided that her wounds were sufficiently serious to have her treated as an in-patient. She ended up spending five days in a hospital bed. On April 4, the local Cologne paper ran a story about the incident along with a picture of Oeykue in the hospital.(1) The picture revealed the scar forming on Oeykue's left hand and also showed Irem standing behind her. A curious thing about the story, however, is that it mixed up the two sisters' names. It identified the injured sister as Irem. It also ran the version of the incident that the police spokesman related to them from the police report. When they encountered Oeykue and Irem in the courtyard outside their door, the officers reported, they saw Oeykue carrying a vacuum cleaner and, at the outset, she took the tube and swung it at one of the officers hitting him in the upper right cheek. It was only after being hit, supposedly, that the officer threw Oeykue to the ground and handcuffed her. If you believe the police and you do not ask too many questions about the slaps in the police car, the story looks like a fairly routine case of using force to effectuate an arrest. Like the journalist who wrote the story in the local press, however, the police were not sure until seven days after the incident which sister was which. On April 7, a note on the police blotter indicates that the picture in the local paper was shown to the officer in charge and he identified the woman in the bed as Oeykue rather than Irem. How he was able to do this is entirely unclear, for so far as we know the police had not taken a photograph when they detained her. But clearly, the Cologne police pay attention to the press that they receive. Had they read the Turkish press serving the three million Turks in Germany, they would have been dismayed by the headlines of brutality and terror. …

Millimeter wave safety warning system for in-vehicle signing

Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has developed a millimeter wave safety warning system for in vehicle signing that is soon to be tested for applicability for use in the nation's Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) (formerly IVHS). The Safety Warning System/sup TM/ (SWS) utilizes a homodyne radar that operates at 24.1 GHz as both a radar and a system to transmit highway safety messages. The warning message is received by a police radar detector or stand-alone safety warning receiver without radar detector capability. When the message is received, it is displayed to the driver via an alphanumeric light emitting diode (LED) display. The message can also be announced by a voice synthesizer internal to the receiver or by a flashing LED labeled SWS. The system is designed to inform the driver that he or she is being overtaken by a police car or emergency vehicle in motion. When the police car or emergency vehicle stops, the radar transmitter senses that the platform is no longer moving and the system automatically changes its message to warn approaching drivers of a stationary hazard ahead. A second safety warning transmitter deployment concept is to mount the unit near the highway at a fixed location. The fixed location SWS is designed to be programmable and transmit any one of 64 fixed text messages.

Musculoskeletal problems and driving in police officers.

The Occupational Health Department of a rural police force in the UK had concerns regarding sickness absence levels due to musculoskeletal problems, particularly in officers who drove as part of their job. It was decided to conduct an interview survey comparing two groups of police officers with differing levels of exposure to driving, recording sickness absence and prevalence data related due to musculoskeletal troubles. The results indicate that exposure to car driving, both in terms of distance and hours driven, had a significant effect on self-reported low back trouble. Officers whose job mainly involved driving also experienced more low back trouble over the last 12 months than those whose job primarily involved sitting (not driving), standing and lifting tasks. Police motorcyclists had significantly higher prevalence figures for reported shoulder trouble than police car drivers.

Protective accompaniment

It's 1989, in San Salvador, El Salvador. In the weeks preceding national elections, FENASTRAS (FederaciOn Nacional de Trabajadores Salvadoreñas—The National Federation of Salvadoran Workers) leaders have been “disappeared” by security forces. A protest demonstration is planned in the Central Square, across from the Cathedral. Workers from the Union Nacional de Trabajadores Salvadoreñas (National Union of Salvadoran Workers—UNTS) are anxious about attending this event. They gather in the UNTS building beforehand, debating whether to go. For many of them, the turning‐point comes from knowing that they will be “accompanied” to the demonstration by a member of Peace Brigades International (PBI), an international non‐governmental organization (NGO) committed to being a non‐violent third party witness in violent situations. On this occasion, the accompaniment initially seems to have limited effectiveness. The PBI volunteer (and another foreigner with her) is stopped by military agents and questioned shortly after leaving the UNTS office. When finally released, she can see that something has gone wrong up ahead. Several police cars have pulled up to the unionists, and agents are grabbing and detaining the activists. It seems painfully ironic: on the way to protest political disappearances, the protesters themselves risk being “disappeared”. The foreigners run toward the scene, snapping photos to try to prevent disappearances, by documenting any abductions. The police, when they notice the foreign presence, are visibly startled. For a moment they freeze. Then they release the men who have been captured. The police scurry for their cars, and drive away. This is accompaniment in action. What role can protective accompaniment play in creating and maintaining “zones of peace?” Such accompaniment helps establish a rather unique kind of peace zone. Unlike those that are territorially based, the “zone” created by protective accompaniment is personally based. The “zone” actually consists of an individual or group of individuals; it allows that individual or group to act safely within many territories, particularly those most threatened by violence.

Market structure and incomplete information: Price formation in a real-world repeated English auction

This paper examines the effect of buyer size on price formation in an English auction of used state police cars. While open auctions generally favor competitive pricing, Bikhchandani (1988) develops a model of a second-price, common value auction in which bidders can use strategic behavior based on repeated sales to develop an aggressive reputation and, as a result, pay lower prices in equilibrium. The paper tests this hypothesis by examining sales of 340 used automobiles sold at 13 public auctions conditional on the volume of purchases made by the three largest buyers at the auctions. The empirical results show that the number of buyers plays a stronger role in price formation than does buyer size.

Errol Morris' Construction of Innocence in The Thin Blue Line

Errol Morris' Construction of Innocence in The Thin Blue Line Renée R. Curry California State University, San Marcos The Home Box Office video promotional campaign for Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988) calls the film a "new movie mystery" and aligns it in the tradition of The Executioner's Song and In Cold Blood [in that it depicts] a chilling investigation and reconstruction of a brutal, cold-blooded murder. This reallife drama impartially sifts fact and fiction, bluntly controlling the evidence. The result will take you to the boundaries ofjustice and beyond. This promotion fails to point out, however, that unlike either of the two feature films in the comparison, The Thin Blue Line is a documentary and as a documentary, it explodes the concept of real-life drama by employing the actual convicted criminals, David Harris and Randall Adams, as the two key actors. Some scholarly attention has already been devoted to the phenomenological attributes of The Thin Blue Line (Mcllroy), its particular documentary style (Michaels), and the post-structuralist relationship between history and memory (Williams). My argument differs from these in that, while I explore some of the phenomena of the film and while I also discuss Morris' unique participation in post-structuralist film-making, I house these explorations within an interrogation of the technical and verbal paradigms of innocence constructed throughout the film. The "true" story upon which director Errol Morris bases this film tells a tale of Randall Dale Adams who spent an evening with a young man named David Harris. Late in the evening, one of these two men killed a Dallas police officer. Randall Adams claims that he was asleep in a hotel room with his brother at the time of the killing. David Harris asserts that Adams killed the police officer while he, Harris, sat as a passenger in the car. The Dallas police weigh the evidence and decide that Randall Adams pulled the trigger . They try him, convict him, and sentence him to Death Row. Randall Adams still maintains his innocence. This paper argues that Errol Morris' film reopens consideration of the facts of the case regarding the murder of Dallas policeman Robert Wood by aurally and visually constructing innocence, 153 154Rocky Mountain Review Randall Adams' innocence, on the screen. To construct this innocence , Morris relies on ordinary "telling" techniques such as verbal monologues and newspaper graphics. However, he also employs cinematic techniques to construct Adams' innocence. He replays key reenactment scenes (such "settings" do not occur in documentaries). He surrealistically displays key psychological images and sound effects such as the twirling crisis light of the police car, the clicking "sound" of the ever-blinking red and blue light, and the slow-motion flying milk shake released by the partner of the cop being shot (such fantasy elements of filmmaking are not in the domain of the documentary). Upon release of The Thin Blue Line, the "real-life" investigation reopened. Neither The Executioner's Song nor In Cold Blood had such impact; they both remained in the domain of attempting to explore criminal psychology with a film audience after the fact of the crime. The Thin Blue Line changes perceptions about the facts of the murder case just as traditional documentaries frequently do. However, this documentary privileges the fantastical elements of cinema to make its case and thereby drags elements of the feature film into the domain of art as political praxis. Errol Morris claims, "There's no reason why documentaries can't be as personal as fiction filmmaking and bear the imprint of those who made them. Truth isn't guaranteed by style or expression. It isn't guaranteed by anything " (Bates 17). Previous to this film, Errol Morris directed two other documentaries : Gates of Heaven (1978) and Vernon, Florida (1981). These films remain distinctive for their "non-linear, anecdotal style and their dead-on shots of ordinary people talking plainly to the camera, with no intervening interlocutor to be seen or heard" (Dieckmann 33). The Thin Blue Line takes detours with a deliberate linearity by interjecting anecdotes, fantastical images, and dead-on shots. Morris also forays into obtrusive interviewing in the ultimate scene of the film when...

The Fifth Column: On Underground Storage Tanks, Cops, Nameless Departments, and City Politics

An essay about a study that compares supplying police cars with fuel from scattered underground fuel tanks owned by the city with the supply coming from a commercial vendor.