Gunshot Sensors in D.C. – Buy These Instead of Cameras

The Post has an article talking about gunshot sensors that have been installed in the District to help combat the most violent of crimes. It’s a really cool idea – one that I had heard about in Chicago before Hedda and I moved here.

The idea is simple: With a few sensitive microphones and a little bit of digital signal processing, you can triangulate the location of gunshots to within – it used to be a block, but the article says things have improved – a few feet. Since even owning a handgun is illegal in The District, and all rifles and shotguns must be unloaded and have trigger locks, sending police to the triangulated location of a gunshot is a good bet.

These things are a far sight better than the cameras MPD has been hanging all over the city. I really dislike the idea of the police watching over my shoulder constantly, and quantifying the effectiveness of cameras has proven difficult. [1]

Still, here in DC, they have gone up with relatively little resistance. Councilmember Jim Graham sends out a little note to the MPD-3D list every time a camera goes up or he successfully pushes through some funding for them – but he always adds this little addendum, as if to deflect impending attacks from civil liberty nuts like me. Like from this message last week:

AS [sic] I have said many times, crime cameras have limited utility: they can record evidence of crimes, but, as important, they dislodge embedded crime. Of course–once imbedded crime has been scattered–MPD has got to be ready to give chase. Yet the very act of moving crime has advantages, since what are probably long standing patterns are disrupted. Blocks which have suffered for years due to drug markets and other crimes know what I am talking about.

Chief Ramsey has committed to an action plan for just that type of police work for the Third District.

Let’s hope MPD really is ready for this, and let’s hope these statements are not forgotten once they have served their purpose. I fear that the political will to remove them is as ephemeral as the electrons via which I received the email.

(CCTV Camera Sign modified from the original by jsmjr, used and re-released under a CC BY-SA license.)

1. See, for example, Public Video Surveillance:
   Is It An Effective Crime Prevention Tool?, and The Effect of Closed Circuit Television on Recorded Crime Rates
   and Public Concern about Crime in Glasgow.

Please Leave the Logan Circle Traffic Lights Off

After the manhole explosions in the neighborhood on Saturday, the power was out on 13th Street north of the park. That included the traffic lights around Logan Circle itself.

As is typical, I walked by the circle several times over the weekend to and fro my various errands. The lights were blinking red instead of their usual behavior, and I noted the unusual sight of drivers safely navigating the circle with intelligence, care, and respect.

If you are not familiar with the navigational disasters that are DC’s traffic circles, be thankful. In theory they are a beautiful and effective method of safely intersecting several streets at once. In actuality, they are a nightmare for residents and out-of-towners alike. Peppered with inscrutable lane markings and flanked by a forest of poles on which are hung traffic lights pointing in every direction but yours, travelling around a circle is an exercise in confusion, frustration, and angry, dangerous driving. Every attempt by DDOT to improve the situation with clearer lane markings and more lights have simply made things worse.

Paradoxically, it seems that removing the lights altogether allowed people to stop worrying about following the inane rules and just drive. Instead of fretting over whether that red light they just ran was actually for them or for the waiting motorists at Rhode Island Avenue, they could focus on merging into and out of the traffic travelling around the circle at a steady moderate speed. There were no honking horns and no screeching brakes, and cars stopped for pedestrians crossing the streeet.

So, DDOT, please leave the traffic lights at Logan Circle off. Traffic circles are self-organizing, chaordic systems. Messing with it just makes them worse.

I Am A Human Rights Violation

Once again, the United Nations has smacked down the United States for denying me and my fellow DC residents voting representation in Congress. This time, however, the statement from the U.N. committee on human rights puts our disenfranchisement on the level with torture, prisoner abuse, and Guantanamo Bay.

You see, the United States signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1992. From the article:

Article 25 [of the treaty] says “every citizen . . . without unreasonable restrictions” has the right to participate in public affairs directly or through “freely chosen representatives” and to vote and to be elected “at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage.”

In a letter accompanying the U.S. response, Warren Tichenor, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, denied that District residents are excluded from the nation’s political process: “The position of the District . . . is not a human rights violation; it is rather a justifiable and important aspect of the federal system of government freely chosen by citizens of the United States.”

Sure, Mr. Tichenor, freely chosen by the citizens of the United States – except for the 1/2 million citizens living in the District. Your words ring hollow as someone who does not suffer the burden of Federal income taxation without even the right to vote in exchange. Unless the United Nations has classified you as a human rights violation, please consider this my formal request to you to get bent.

My First Ever Letter to the Editor

Last week’s City Paper had a really good article entitled “A Line in the Sandbox” that discussed some of the trials and tribulations of a particular DC Public School principal at the hands of some wealthy, oppositional defiant Dupont residents.

Several pages into that article was an aside discussing a particular condominium association that was attempting to regulate playground time at the school across the street because of the noise of the children playing. That little adjunct incensed me and prompted me to write my first ever letter to the editor. It didn’t get printed in today’s edition, so I’m posting it here.

Editor

Washington City Paper

2390 Champlain St. NW

Washington, DC 20009

June 16, 2006

Dear Mr. Editor,

Buried seven pages into the excellent “A Line in the Sandbox” is a rare glimpse into the mind of the so-called “guilty liberal” that has become so commonplace in Northwest DC. The few paragraphs devoted to Jeff Wise, Scott Henrichsen, and the Pierre Condominium’s objection to the noise of children on the playground reminds me of a town neighboring the one in which I grew up. As is typical of Midwestern suburbia, a grove of cookie-cutter houses was springing up in a small field, although this one happened to be across the street from the local municipal airport. No more than a few years passed before the residents in those new neighborhoods began pushing to get the airport closed – or at least restricted – because of the noisy Cessnas approaching for landing over the homes. The gall and/or stupidity of those residents quite appropriately elicits at least a response of astonishment, if not anger.

As one of the so-called gentrifiers, who probably paid too much for his nine hundred square feet of Logan Circle, I am often baffled at why we are decried by our new neighbors despite the socio-political leanings that would seem to make us their best allies. The selfish and self-righteous attitude of Mr. Wise and his fellow Pierre residents at least partially allays my confusion. Wise’s incredulity at the parents’ powerful response to regulating their children’s playground – however inappropriate that response may have been – demonstrates a profound lack of real connection to the community in which he lives. It’s not because he’s gay, it’s because he’s an asshole – the modern-day urban equivalent of the stereotypical angry old geezer shaking his fist and hollering at “those dang kids” to keep off the lawn.

If peace and quiet are really what he and his fellow Pierre owners desire, perhaps they should not have chosen to live in the city. Sirens, traffic, car alarms, and other such urban noises are certainly at least as cacophonous as children playing. I would wager that the Virginia and Maryland exurbs could offer a quiet, idyllic street not only on the weekends, but all week long! For everyone’s sake, let’s hope they don’t buy near an airport.

With Best Regards,

Brian Vargas

D.C. Smoking Ban Almost Law

Well, Mayor WIlliams has decided to niether sign nor veto the smoking ban. In most jurisdictions, this would mean that the law would take effect. However, the District’s second-class citizens lack real self-government, and so now there is a 30-day review period during which Congress may decided to disallow the measure from becoming law.

But this isn’t a post about our city’s citizen’s lack of fundamental rights, it’s a post about the smoking ban.

So let’s clear up one thing first: I hate smoking. My dad died of lung cancer when I was a teenager, most likely attributable to his use of tobbacco fifteen years prior, so there is nothing positive about cigarettes.

However, I am totally against the smoking ban. It is not the place of the government to simply ban in privately owned establishments what has been a long-standing social practice.

Ostensibly, the ban is being put into place as a public health measure protecting workers who are exposed to second-hand smoke through the course of their jobs. Think about wait staff at a restaurant – many of them may not smoke, but they may suffer from the same health problems as smokers due to their constant exposure. That’s a worthy goal for legislation.

Except that almost every person for the ban with whom I’ve spoken wants it because they simply don’t like smoking. They want to eat smoke-free, and they want to go to smoke-free bars. Is it right to limit others’ personal freedom simply because we don’t like how they choose to exercise it?

I’m not going to lie. I will certainly enjoy the smoke-free restaurants and bars, but an outright ban is not the right solution. What is the right solution? Well, let’s take an amusing quote from the Post article I linked:

Matthew L. Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, called Williams’s decision a “historic victory for the public’s right to breathe clean air in the nation’s capital,” saying it “adds to the growing momentum to enact such laws across the country and around the world.”

This line of rhetoric is simply ridiculous. In fact, the DC smoking ban leaves public property as the only remaining place where smokers can induldge, other than their own homes. This ban, as before, still exposes me to smoke when I walk down the sidewalk behind a smoker. I still have to breath in their smoke when they light up on the Metro escalators legally (because we’ve passed the “No Smoking” signs). I’m still forced to endure their cancer cloud when I’m in the park, and worse, the smokers are free to continue littering butts up and down the street.

But this post isn’t about the callousness of smokers with regard to their discarded butts, it’s a post about the smoking ban.

When I walk into a smokey bar, it is my own choice – weighing the benefits against the costs – to do so. When I walk down the street behind a chimney, I am not given that option. I would fully support a public smoking ban, but not the current private smoking ban.

There are better ways to discourage smoking while still allowing personal freedom. Instead of a smoking ban, we should require employers to compensate workers in smokey environments with hazard pay. Thus, it becomes a personal and business decision for all parties involved. If a business owners decides his club’s ambiance requires a smokey haze, or even if they just feel it’s their fundamental right, then they can still exercise that right. Furthermore, workers will then be given the option to weigh the risks of present and future disease against the benefit of additional money.

To be sure, it is still not a perfect solution. In such a scenario, the low-income will be naturally driven to the more dangerous, higher-paying jobs; and while such a disparity in distribution of mortal risk between the rich and the poor has been a common theme throughout American history, it may not be something we should encourage with such an idea.

But this post isn’t about universal health care, it’s a post about the smoking ban.

Fix The Libraries and RFK Stadium

So here’s a great idea! Why not take the $535 million in public funds slated for the new baseball stadium, and instead of throwing it down the tubes, spend it on something useful. I’m sure we could come up with something that needs overhauling in DC…say the library system?

The best part is that fixing the disgrace that is our public libraries will only cost $450 million, and with $85 million left over, we’d have enough to fund a more thorough renovation of RFK Stadium, making it a suitable home for the Nationals.

Except that the representatives for Major League Baseball are acting like stubborn children, who won’t even consider a plan that doesn’t break the bank for the city. They have continually threatened to take their ball and go home, apparantly thinking that they have our city over a barrel. Our leaders need to realize, as was so eloquently stated in a City Paper spot last week, that in reality they can’t just go home. The District is too lucrative a place for baseball precisely because we have pined so long for its return. So let’s stop cowering in fear of the owners, fix up the stadium, and finally overhaul our libraries, too.

After all, I’m a Cubs fan.