TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2007
Monday Edition: Firearms Missing from Luggage
KIRO-TV in Seattle investigates how guns being stolen from luggage checked at airports around the country.
You can click here and see the theft claims, including how much was stolen and what was stolen at every commercial airport in the country. KIRO-TV says more than 44,000 passengers filed theft complaints from 2003 to 2006.
The story says airports in Newark, N.J.; Miami; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Los Angeles and Seattle are among the worst for baggage thefts.
An 'iCrime' Wave?
The Urban Institute forwards the notion that a rise in muggings may be connected to iPods.
Click here [PDF] to read the entire study. Note this excerpt:
Developed by the Apple Corporation, the iPod is a portable media
player and data storage device that lets users listen to music on the
go. A relatively expensive consumer electronics product, iPods retail
for up to $400. In spring of 2004, Apple had sold a relatively modest
3.7 million iPods. In the fall of 2004, a new generation of iPods was
introduced and consumer demand exploded. By the end of 2005, more than
42.3 million units had been sold, and by the end of 2006, the total was
almost 90 million.
In 2005, for the first time in 12 years, violent crime increased—a
trend that continued in 2006. This followed a relatively long period of
decline. From 1993 until 2004, the violent crime rate fell every year,
for a total decline of 38 percent. At the same time that violent crime
rates began to rise, America’s streets filled with millions of people
visibly wearing, and being distracted by, expensive electronic gear.
Thus, there was a marked increase in both the supply of potential
victims and opportunities for would-be offenders.
Past crime waves are thought to have occurred in a similar
way—triggered by the introduction of a new high-status and expensive
product. For instance, in the 1980s and 1990s, the proliferation of
such valuable products as expensive basketball shoes or North Face
jackets may have led to new crimes. However, in past instances where
the supply of crime creating products increased, the consumer
population purchasing these goods—and the would-be offenders coveting
those products—made up a relatively small part of the U.S. population.
By contrast, iPods are everywhere, and, unlike a jacket or a sneaker,
one size fits all.
There is actually some harder evidence in the report:
In the first three months of 2005, major felonies rose 18.3 percent on the New York City subway—however, if cell phone and iPod thefts are excluded, felonies actually declined by 3 percent, thus prompting the Metropolitan Transit Authority to post warnings to riders that “Earphones are a giveaway. Protect your device.” Thus far, in Washington, D.C., in 2007, robberies of iPods on the Metro alone account for approximately 4 percent of all robberies in the city, compared with well less than 1 percent of robberies in 2005. Likewise, in San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, there were 4 reported iPod robberies in 2004, 102 in 2005, and 193 in 2006. The increase in iPod robberies on the BART between 2004 and 2006 accounts for 23 percent of the increase in robbery in the entire city over that time.
The increase in iPod-related crime appears to be an international phenomenon. Britain’s Home Office reports a 10 percent rise in gunpoint robberies from 2005 to 2006. The BBC quotes British Home Secretary John Reid as identifying devices like iPods as the cause, stating that the increase in robberies “is largely driven by a rise in the numbers of young people carrying expensive goods, such as mobile phones and MP3 players.” Likewise, Ian Johnston, chief constable of the British Transport Police and spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said the rise had “a lot to do with the products that are available to be stolen these days. The mobile phone explosion is continuing. The iPod explosion is continuing. All of these gadgets that people carry around with them are very attractive to robbers, so that puts the opportunities up. We’ve obviously got to respond to that in a very positive way.”
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Here Come the Digital BillboardsCheck with your local outdoor advertising companies.
They just got the green light from the Federal Highway Administration to display digital billboards.
Gloria M. Shepherd, the Federal Highway Administration's associate
administrator for planning, environment and realty, penned a memo that said in part: "Proposed
laws, regulations, and procedures that would allow permitting CEVMS
(commercial electronic variable message signs) subject to acceptable
criteria do not violate a prohibition against ‘intermittent’ or
‘flashing’ or ‘moving’ lights as those terms are used in the various
FSAs (federal-state agreements) that have been entered into during the
1960s and 1970s."
The feds recommend that billboards not be "unreasonably bright for the safety of the motoring public."
The Des Moines (Iowa) Register says the first digital signs may appear along highways next year:
Such billboards can provide public safety benefits, such as publicizing
Amber Alerts when children are abducted, Klein said. In Minneapolis,
after a bridge collapsed on Interstate Highway 35W in August, digital
billboards began carrying emergency messages within 15 minutes to alert
motorists, he added.
Because of the high cost of digital
billboards - between $250,000 and $500,000 each - it's wrong to
conclude there will be an overnight proliferation of the devices, Klein
said.
Nationally, there are about 450,000 billboards, and only about 700 are digital billboards.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning
Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other
materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and
analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it
will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The
column is fact-checked, but depends on the accuracy and integrity of
the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be
corrected.
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