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davis_squareText of his resignation letter, sent to the Somerville Journal.
Since he is staying until the end of February, we may still get one or two more chances to hear his voice announcing a snow emergency.
Since he is staying until the end of February, we may still get one or two more chances to hear his voice announcing a snow emergency.
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Date: 2013-01-08 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 12:23 am (UTC)http://www.huboftheuniverseproductions.com/ He makes such an awesome Chtuloid minion!
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Date: 2013-01-09 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 02:53 am (UTC)As far as I can see, what you responded to is a blank comment. We've seen a few of these lately, and I don't understand their purpose at all. My response so far has been to report them as bots, ban them from
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Date: 2013-01-09 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 03:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 03:20 am (UTC)imgshine.com(I forget the exact URL), but when I tried to load that URL directly, it redirected to/imagess/images/dot.gifon the same server.My guess was that it is some kind of crapware browser add-on that claims to let you insert custom emoticons into your posts. But whatever it is, it's functionally indistinguishable from spam.
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Date: 2013-01-09 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 05:42 am (UTC)(Man, that's the most gracious resignation letter I've ever read. Well done, Tom. Well done.)
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Date: 2013-01-09 01:00 pm (UTC)Does this mean it's time for someone to do a techno remix of messages from Jackie and Carlene?
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Date: 2013-01-09 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-09 11:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-10 04:42 am (UTC)The use of the BBC system (formerly known as Connect CTY) to disseminate public safety information is governed by strict protocols. The Somerville Police have used the system on multiple occasions - and with great success - for such purposes as:
* Alerting specific neighborhoods to a pattern of sexual assaults or break-ins;
* Seeking information on missing (or wanted) persons or vehicles
* Canvassing neighborhoods for witnesses of, or information about, neighborhood crimes
Whenever the system is used, the decision is made by police command staff and, in almost every instance, the voice on the phone is a senior police officer.
In "hot pursuit" situations, our police are usually fully engaged and deployed. By the time they have accurate information on the whereabouts of suspects and the potential threat level, the event - as in this case - is often already resolved.
As I am sure you know, the initial reports from bystanders, media or even first responders to a crime or accident scene are frequently (and understandably) uncertain and/or inaccurate. A BBC call must be
neither of those things. When the police weigh whether or not to use the system, they must balance their desire to keep the public informed with their need to focus on (and resolve) the situation at hand and to make certain that the information delivered is accurate.
I wasn't in charge of deciding to make a call last night, but I agree with the way our police handled the entire operation.
And please don't toss around the term "lied" so casually in this context. Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and other online or social media are frequently full of misinformation passed along in good faith and subject to later correction. That's not lying. As it happens, there wasn't a fourth suspect in the area - only the suspicion that there might be one still in the vicinity. So was anyone lying, or were people just reporting what they saw or heard from different vantage points?
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Date: 2013-01-10 11:39 am (UTC)The BBC system needs to be used with great discretion-known and practiced well by the City.
With all that said, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors and hope to see you around town!
~Courtney
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Date: 2013-01-10 04:20 pm (UTC)It is extremely helpful to know there is a policy that prevented the communications office from sending out BBC alerts. I do still strongly feel it would have been much better for an alert to have been sent, and the police should have sent one. When a helicopter is hovering over your house and searchlights are playing through your yard, you want to know what is going on. Lots of people came out of their houses and were looking around, trying to find out what was happening. That placed them at *more risk* than if they had been told what was happening and to stay inside.
Yes, it was a "hot pursuit" situation, but there were police cars cordoning the neighborhood before 10 (according to multiple friends who saw them at Powderhouse Circle), and the copter didn't start til just after 10:15, then the copter presence continued for at least an hour. At some point during that time, ideally immediately before the helicopter or shortly after it started, there could have been some official communication from the city. I understand the reasoning that there didn't need to be, but as someone living less than a block away from it all, I would vastly have preferred if the city had given us more info rather than less. If there was any usefulness to putting out social media notices (to the whole city), then there would have been usefulness in an official targeted alert that would have reached more people in the immediate area than social media posts we had to actively seek out for ourselves.
I also want to apologize for the word "lied" - you're right, that's a heavy word to throw around. I was and still am upset about how the communication around this situation was handled, but I should have been more circumspect. It is hard to reconcile the reports of eyewitnesses (who were the only ones giving any real info during; had I received a BBC alert I doubt I would have bothered to dig as far as sources like Reddit for information) and the Patch saying there were reports of a fourth suspect, with the "all suspects" have been apprehended message. Could the message have said "Despite initial rumors of a possible fourth suspect, the three actual suspects have been apprehended" or "all three suspects have been apprehended"? Instead, communication from the city stopped, despite people continuing to wonder in online forums whether things were really over. At least one person asked if the copter had left because the hunt for the fourth suspect had been "given up." My bedroom window faces a backyard less than a block from the action, and I would really have liked some more solid information as I tried to relax enough to sleep.
My feeling is that when something so all-encompassingly obvious happens in a neighborhood, that residents are certain to be worried and curious about, the city owes us as much communication as possible without compromising the ongoing police action. We may have been in little danger because the suspects weren't setting out to harm us. That doesn't mean it was perfectly safe for people to be out on the streets in that small area, or that it was perfectly safe to be coming down to the street seeking information they weren't getting anywhere else. The safest place was in our houses, and the city - whoever had the authority given the situation - should have informed us of that in a more official and proactive way. I might feel differently if there hadn't been a copter - without the copter, most of us wouldn't have known anything was going on, and people wouldn't have been going outside to investigate. But the copter was impossible to ignore. Nobody was sleeping through it unless they have significant hearing impairment. Anyone looking out a window could see lights playing over their yards. Once something that big and scary is happening, we should hear something from the city. All it would need to say is "There is a developing situation involving use of a police helicopter in your neighborhood. Residents are advised to remain indoors until the helicopter leaves the area."
Thank you for listening.
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Date: 2013-01-10 06:12 pm (UTC)1. Police and other first responders do their jobs quickly but without sharing much, if any, information in the first minutes or hours of an incident.
2. Social media react immediately with a flurry of impressionistic chatter, some of which turns out to be correct, but much of which is inaccurate, speculative or misleading.
3. News media arrive on the scene and immediately begin to disseminate information, some of it wrong.
4. Once they are sure of their facts and have organized their information, public safety officials hold a press conference or issue a release, usually after the event.
Technology has changed the speed and mode of our communications, but has not changed the need for accurate, deliberate, mediated information. That part still takes time. It seems to me that you're focusing on the technology at the expense of the accuracy -- and you're ignoring the very real "fog of war" that affects every public safety emergency.
You may, in fact, believe that the City "owes" you something that it cannot, and should not attempt to, deliver.
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Date: 2013-01-10 07:01 pm (UTC)I think part of my reaction to this is colored by recent emergencies; the Christmas Eve fireman shootings were in my home town while I was there for the holidays. In that case, people who lived near the immediate area got alerts within minutes of the shots first being fired. The alerts they got didn't include a ton of information, just the message that something was going on, and they should stay indoors and away from windows. More information followed in further alerts as the authorities knew more. But the fact that they didn't have press-conference-ready full information didn't prevent their giving timely information to the neighborhood. Obviously there was an entirely different scale to what happened here, from level of overt malice of the suspects to the fact that nobody was actually shot here, nevermind killed, but my expectation has been set that "armed and possibly dangerous person on the loose" means "neighborhood is alerted."
If there is an immediate danger in a neighborhood, a press conference once all the facts are known is irrelevant to the safety of the residents during the event itself. That's the core issue I have with this: that communication during an event can have an effect on the safety of the people immediately nearby. I wouldn't have expected a press conference or an alert to the whole city. But I do think it is legitimate to expect some form of communication when you live within blocks of a major event that unfolds over a decent stretch of time, particularly when being informed could affect actions you might take that might affect your personal safety during the event.
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Date: 2013-01-11 04:05 pm (UTC)