Statics...some good some bad.

Statics ()=Source

It is estimated that 25% of Police Officers are alcoholics.  ( http://milestonegroupnj.com/?p=142)

 The rate for the population at large is 17.7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism

6% of criminals arrested suffer from severe mental illiness  (http://karisable.com/crmh.htm

The best estimate of suicide in the law enforcement profession is 18.1 per 100,000. This figure is 52% greater than that of the general population but 26% lower than that of the appropriate comparison group (white males between the ages of 25 and 55). (http://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/137133-Police-Officer-Suicide-Frequency-and-officer-profiles/)

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that officers were not wearing a seat belt in 42 percent of fatal car accidents. According to federal numbers,  car accidents are the leading cause of death for police officers throughout the country. (http://www.austinaccidentattorney.com/blog/2011/03/officers-unbelted-in-42-percent-of-fatal-police-car-wrecks.shtml)

Police and detectives held about 883,600 jobs in 2008. About 79 percent were employed by local governments. State police agencies employed about 11 percent. Various Federal agencies employ police and detectives.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, police and detectives employed by local governments worked primarily in cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants. Some cities have very large police forces, while thousands of small communities employ fewer than 25 officers each. (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm

Projections data from the National Employment Matrix

Occupational Title	SOC Code	Employment, 2008	Projected Employment, 2018	Change, 2008-18
				Number	Percent
Police and detectives	—	883,600	968,400	84,700	10
First-line supervisors/managers of police and detectives	33-1012	97,300	105,200	7,800	8
Detectives and criminal investigators	33-3021	112,200	130,900	18,700	17
Fish and game wardens	33-3031	8,300	9,000	700	8
Police officers	33-3050	665,700	723,300	57,500	9
Police and sheriff's patrol officers	33-3051	661,500	718,800	57,300	9
Transit and railroad police	33-3052	4,300	4,500	200	5
NOTE: Data in this table are rounded. See the discussion of the employment projections table in the Handbook introductory chapter on Occupational Information Included in the Handbook.

(http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos160.htm)

To date in 2007, 157 Law Enforcement Officers have been killed in the line of duty.

The statistics for the last 10 years are as follows:
2006 - 147
2005 - 159
2004 - 162
2003 - 147
2002 - 159
2001 - 242
2000 - 163
1999 - 151
1998 - 175
1997 - 176

Source - the Officer Down Memorial Page (http://www.odmp.org/index.php )

• In the last decade (since 2000) the homicide rate declined to levels last seen in the mid-1960s.
• Based on data from 1980 and 2008, males represented 77% of homicide victims and nearly 90% of offenders. The victimization rate for males (11.6 per 100,000) was 3 times higher than the rate for females (3.4 per 100,000). The offending rate for males (15.1 per 100,000) was almost 9 times higher than the rate for females (1.7 per 100,000).
• The average age of both offenders and victims increased slightly in recent years, yet remained lower than they were prior to the late 1980s.  (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2221)

• The percent of U.S. residents age 16 or older who had face-to-face contact with police declined from 2002 (21.0%) to 2005 (19.1%) and declined again in 2008 (16.9%).
• White (8.4%), black (8.8%), and Hispanic (9.1%) drivers were stopped by police at similar rates in 2008.
• Male drivers (9.9%) were stopped at higher rates than female drivers (7.0%). (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2229)

• The U.S. murder arrest rate in 2009 was about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Over the 30-year period ending in 2009, the adult arrest rate for murder fell 57%, while the juvenile arrest rate fell 44%.
• From 1980 to 2009, the black forcible rape arrest rate declined 70%, while the white arrest rate fell 31%.
• Between 1980 and 2009, while the adult arrest rate for drug possession or use grew 138%, the juvenile arrest rate increased 33%. Similarly, from 1980 to 2009, the increase in the arrest rate for drug sale or manufacture was greater for adults (77%) than for juveniles (31%). (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=2203)

• The estimated 12,575 local police departments operating in the United States during 2007 employed approximately 463,000 full-time sworn personnel.
• Operating budgets of local police departments totaled $55.4 billion for fiscal year 2007, 14% more than in 2003 after adjusting for inflation.
• In 2007, average starting salaries for entry-level local police officers ranged from $26,600 in the smallest jurisdictions to $49,500 in the largest. (http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1750)

PS:  I know that the table bled into my margins but I really liked it.  Go to the site to get the whole totally readable one or wait till this post get old enough that it slides down and does not mesh with the side bar.

Judges 8:14
He caught a young man of Sukkoth and questioned him, and the young man wrote down for him the names of the seventy-seven officials of Sukkoth, the elders of the town.

Any way they can get it

I have very low expectations about our ability to combat vice crimes.  It even has its own educational facility...jail.  Prisoners sit around all day scheming up ways to get drugs, sex and the means to improve their ability to successfully attack guards and their fellow prisoners.  The following is an example of a temporally successful scheme to provide sexual services and while funny, its just one example of all the illicit activities happening in each and every correctional facility in the U.S..

Article from the Miami New Times Riptide 2.0 Blog  Source Link

Stripteases, sexual favors, booze, porn mags, and fat stacks of cash would be run-of-the-mill in many Miami strip clubs. But at downtown's maximum security Federal Detention Center?
Multiple attorneys interviewed by Riptide say the FDC visitor rooms have been taken over by South American pole dancers posing as paralegals for wealthy drug lords inside. Lawyers hired by the accused narco dons allegedly list the scantily clad women as "legal assistants," and the FDC lets them in. Meanwhile, attorneys who refuse to go along risk losing their clients to lawyers with busty beauties on staff.

"They take off their tops and let the guys touch them," veteran defense attorney Hugo Rodriguez says. "The majority of these young, very attractive women are noncitizens brought in exclusively for the purposes of visiting the FDC. Any lawyer can sign a form and designate a legal assistant. There is no way of verifying it. The process is being abused."

The accusations are difficult to prove. An FDC spokeswoman declined to comment, and prison officials refused Riptide's requests for any incident reports on faux paralegals being tossed from the facility.

But attorneys swear the scam is ongoing. One "discovery room" normally used to discuss trial strategy was recently closed, they say, after guards caught an inmate and a paralegal "discovering" more than legal documents.

"Everyone knows about it," says a private investigator who is familiar with the FDC and asked not to be named. "We call them the 'little hoochie mamas'... They are making a mockery out of the prison system here."

Among the offenses allegedly committed by so-called paralegals: smuggling in a Playboy, feeding alcohol to an inmate by slipping a straw through a grate, and sneaking in $3,000 inside a purse.

In a scene straight out of a porno, one woman was caught on video stripping for an inmate in the jail's Special Housing Unit, attorneys say. The stripper was banned from the FDC.

Female lawyers say the phony paralegals are an embarrassment.

"I find it offensive," says an attorney who asked to remain anonymous. "This is still kind of a male-dominated profession. We try to be taken seriously, but these women aren't helping."

Not every lawyer is up in arms over the FDC fiasco, however.

"If you want some good people-watching, try the FDC," attorney Marc Seitles says. "It certainly beats paying a cover and waiting on lines to get into LIV."

Mark 7:21
For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder,

Some Surveillance yields results others yield nothing...

I was on surveillance the other day.  This was created as a result.  I will let you guess if we yielded positive results or not while we were out there.

Psalm 106:43
Many times he delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin.

Silliness...Fantasy Football

I set up my first fantasy football league this year.  I can only name maybe three officers, that I have ever known, that are not enrolled in one league or the other.

So, I am on the bubble.  I have to win last week's game and this week's game to make it into the playoffs of the league I created.

So it comes down to the Monday night football game (11-28-2011).  I only have Victor Cruz (WR, New York Giants) left and he is down to Drew Brees (QB, New Orleans Saints).  My points, 222.20 and his points, 222.50 and the game is in the fourth quarter.  Suddenly the back up quarterback for Eli Manning starts to warm up.  Its over.  I get mad.  Maybe some remotes are thrown and some words were said that should not have been said, it's all a little fuzzy.  So I change my team's name to "The 000's" (Police term for dead) and my team's slogan to "Screw it, I give up, whatever...whatever...let me know where and when I need to be at the winner's dinner."

And....

 Then Cruz catches a pass and runs it into the end zone and I win the week.  Which....launched a flood of texts, emails and calls pointing out I may have jumped to conclusions before it was truly all over.  Which caused me to change my team name again to "Captain Jumps to Conclusions".  I then drew this as my new mascot.

PS:  The birth of a new hero.  My son wants to know why one arm is bigger than the other and I just said it's his super power.  He shook his head sadly and just walked away.

What's with all the Grotto?

I was digging into the internet for the previous post about Castles that maybe i'll get to visit one day, when I kept running into Grottoes.  I had only heard that term once before when it was used to describe a room on Hefner's estate.

A grotto (Italian grotta and French "grotte") is any type of natural or artificial cave that is associated with modern, historic or prehistoric use by humans.

So on to some Grottoes...

The Blue Grotto

The Blue Grotto (Italian: Grotta Azzurra) is a noted  sea cave on the coast of the island of Capri, Italy. Sunlight, passing through an underwater cavity and shining through the seawater, creates a blue reflection that illuminates the cavern.

Venus Grotto

Venus Grotto

The building is wholly artificial and was built for the king as an illustration of the First Act of Wagner's "Tannhäuser". Ludwig liked to be rowed over the lake in his golden swan-boat but at the same time he wanted his own blue grotto of Capri. Therefore 24 dynamos had been installed and so already in the time of Ludwig II it was possible to illuminate the grotto in changing colours.

Fingal's Cave

Fingal's Cave is a sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, part of a National Nature Reserve owned by the National Trust for Scotland.  It is formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns.

Dickeyville Grotto

The Dickeyville Grotto is a series of grottos and shrines in Dickeyville, Wisconsin, in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Madison, in Grant County, Wisconsin, United States. The site is visited by 40,000 to 60,000 visitors per year. It is located at the intersection of  U.S. Highway 151 and Highway 35.

Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto

Our Lady of Lourdes is the name used to refer to the Marian apparition said to have appeared before various individuals on separate occasions around Lourdes, France. The apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes began on 11 February 1858, when Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl from Lourdes, told her mother, after being asked, that she had seen a "lady" in the cave of Massabielle, about a mile from the town, while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend.  Similar appearances of the "lady" were reported on seventeen further occasions that year.

The Grotto at the Playboy Mansion

Shell Grotto

The Shell Grotto is an ornate subterranean passageway in Margate, Kent. Almost all the surface area of the walls and roof is covered in mosaics created entirely of seashells, totalling about 2,000 square feet (190 m2) of mosaic, or 4.6 million shells. It was discovered in 1835 but its age remains unknown.

Pope's Grotto

Alexander Pope's villa has gone but the grotto, which formed part of the garden, survives in Twickenham, England . The grotto was formerly at the lower level of Pope's Villa and is now at the lower level of an Arts and Crafts building which is now a school. A passageway leads under Cross Deep road to what is now a girl's school. Apart from its association with the poet, the chief interest of the grotto is large collection of geological specimens which was used to line the brickwork of the vaults. 

 

Finally,

Naica Crystal Cave

Buried a thousand feet (300 meters) below Naica mountain in the Chihuahuan Desert, the cave was discovered by two miners in 2000. The cave contains some of the largest natural crystals ever found: translucent gypsum beams measuring up to 36 feet (11 meters) long and weighing up to 55 tons.

Here is a link for more information and photos for the cave-very worth while. Link

Genesis 19:30
[ Lot and His Daughters ] Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave.

Maybe deep down I feel under attack so that made me look up fortifications. Castles Anyone?

I don't know, maybe since my contract with the city is under attack, as well as my pension and our budgets, that why I feel under attack and that sent me to researching fortifications.  I could use a financial castle right now.

Neuschwanstein Castle

is a 19th-centuryBavarian palace on a rugged hill near Hohenschwangau and Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned byLudwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to Richard Wagner, the King’s personal favorite performer.

Throne Room

Grotto made to look like a cave with water fall and secrete glass door that slid into the "rock"

The Castle Tour

Hunyad Castle

The Huniad Castle is a Gothic-Renaissance castle in Hunedoara (Transylvania), present-day Romania.

The Potala Palace Castle

In 637 Emperor Songtsen Gampo decided to build this palaceon a hill, and the structure stood until the seventeenth century, when it was incorporated into the foundations of the greater buildings still standing today. Construction of the present palace began in 1645 during the reign of the fifth Dalai Lama and by 1648 the Potrang Karpo, or White Palace, was completed. The Potrang Marpo, or Red Palace, was added between 1690 and 1694; its construction required the labors of more than 7000 workers and 1500 artists and craftsman.

Malbork Castle

The castle was founded by the Teutonic Order after the conquest of Old Prussia. Its main purpose was to strengthen their own control of the area following the Order's 1274 suppression of the Great Prussian Uprising of the Baltic tribes. No contemporary documents survive relating to its construction, so instead the castle's phases have been worked out through the study of architecture and the Order's administrative records and later histories. The work lasted until around 1300, under the auspices of Commander Heinrich von Wilnowe.  The castle is located on the southeastern bank of the river Nogat. It was named Marienburg after Mary, patron saint of the religious Order. The Order had been created in Acre (present-day Israel). When this last stronghold of the western Crusades fell to Muslim Arabs, the Order moved its headquarters to Venice before arriving in Poland.  Malbork became more important in the aftermath of the Teutonic Knights' conquest of Gdańsk (Danzig) and Pomerania in 1308. The Order's administrative centre was moved to Malbork from Elbląg (Elbing). The Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, Siegfried von Feuchtwangen, who arrived in Malbork from Venice, undertook the next phase of the fortress' construction.[4] In 1309, in the wake of the papal persecution of the Knights Templar and the Teutonic takeover of Danzig, Feuchtwangen relocated his headquarters to the Prussian part of the Order's monastic state. He chose the site of Marienburg conveniently located on the Nogat in the Vistula Delta. As with most cities of the time, the new centre was dependent on water for transportation.  The castle was expanded several times to house the growing number of Knights. Soon, it became the largest fortified Gothic building in Europe, on an nearly 52-acre site. The castle has several subdivisions and numerous layers of defensive walls. It consists of three separate castles - the High, Middle and Lower Castles, separated by multiple dry moats and towers. The castle once housed approximately 3,000 "brothers in arms". The outermost castle walls enclose 52 acres, four times the acreage of the enclosed space of Windsor Castle.

Pena National Palace

The palace's history started in the Middle Ages when a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Pena was built on the top of the hill above Sintra. According to tradition, the construction occurred after an apparition of the Virgin Mary.  In 1493, King John II, accompanied by his wife Queen Leonor, made a pilgrimage to the site to fulfill a vow. His successor, King Manuel I, was also very fond of this sanctuary, and ordered the construction there of a monastery which was donated to the Order of Saint Jerome. For centuries Pena was a small, quiet place for meditation, housing a maximum of eighteen monks.  In the 18th century the monastery was severely damaged by lightning. However, it was the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755, occurring shortly afterwards, that took the heaviest toll on the monastery, reducing it to ruins. Nonetheless, the chapel (and its magnificent works of marble and alabaster attributed to Nicolau Chanterene) escaped without significant damage.  For many decades the ruins remained untouched, but they still astonished young prince Ferdinand. In 1838, as King consort Ferdinand II, he decided to acquire the old monastery, all of the surrounding lands, the nearby Castle of the Moors and a few other estates in the area. King Ferdinand then set out to transform the remains of the monastery into a palace that would serve as a summer residence for the Portuguese royal family. The commission for the Romantic style rebuilding was given to Lieutenant-General and mining engineer Baron Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege. Eschwege, a German amateur architect, was much traveled and likely had knowledge of several castles along the Rhine river. The construction took place between 1842–1854, although it was almost completed in 1847: King Ferdinand and Queen Maria II intervened decisively on matters of decoration and symbolism. Among others, the King suggested vault arches, Medieval and Islamic elements be included, and he also designed an exquisitely ornate window for the main façade (inspired by the chapter house window of the Convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar).

Entrance Gate

Hohensalzburg Castle

Hohensalzburg Castle (German: Festung Hohensalzburg, literally "High Salzburg Fortress") is a castle in the Austrian city of Salzburg, atop the Festungsberg mountain. Erected at the behest of the Prince-Archbishops of Salzburg, it today with a length of 250 m (820 ft) and a width of 150 m (490 ft), is one of the largest medieval castles in Europe.

Château de Blois

The Royal Château de Blois is located in the Loir-et-Cher département in the Loire Valley, in France, in the center of the city of Blois. The residence of several French kings, it is also the place where Joan of Arc went in 1429 to be blessed by the Archbishop of Reims before departing with her army to drive the English from Orléans.

Built in the middle of the town that it effectively controlled, the château of Blois comprises several buildings constructed from the 13th to the 17th century around the main courtyard.  It has 564 rooms and 75 staircases although only 23 were used frequently. There is a fireplace in each room. There are 100 bedrooms.

Château de Pierrefonds

The Château de Pierrefonds is a castle situated in the commune of Pierrefonds in the Oise département (Picardy) of France. It is on the southeast edge of the Forest of Compiègne, north of Paris, between Villers-Cotterêts and Compiègne.  The Château de Pierrefonds includes most of the characteristics of defensive military architecture from the Middle Ages, though it underwent a major restoration in the 19th century.

Egeskov Castle

Egeskov's history dates to the 14th century. The castle structure was erected by Frands Brockenhuus in 1554.  Due to the troubles caused by the civil war known as the Count's Feud (Danish: Grevens fejde), general civil unrest, and a civil war introducing the Protestant Reformation, most Danish noblemen built their homes as fortifications. The castle is constructed on oaken piles and located in a small lake with a maximum depth of 5 metres (16 ft). Originally, the only access was by means of a drawbridge. According to legend, it took an entire forest of oak trees to build the foundation, hence the name Egeskov (“oak forest”).

Psalm 31:3
Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me.