Results tagged “police” from DesMoinesIst

The City of Des Moines is considering adding red-light cameras to intersections and Interstate 235 off-ramps. Clive already has them in six locations, so the horse is already out of the barn around here, in a sense. But that doesn't mean Des Moines should roll over and follow suit. Red-light cameras are not only creepy symptoms of a surveillance state, they're not even especially good at reducing collisions (in fact, they tend to increase rear-end collisions). If you want safer roads, you have engineers design them to be safer -- and you don't complain when those designs seem strange or unusual. Roundabouts, for instance, are remarkably safe: They've been measured to reduce injury crashes by 50% to 75%. But Americans aren't used to them, and that's gotten in the way of their widespread acceptance. Red-light cameras, though, are intrusive and more than a little Big Brother-ish. A civilized society relies on accommodation and judgment, not always-on surveillance. As it's been put elsewhere, if a police officer follows you for 500 miles, you're going to get a ticket. Red-light cameras are like that ultra-persistent cop: They don't blink. That's because red-light cameras aren't really about traffic safety: They're about revenue generation.

A Minneapolitan (because that's what we should take to calling people from the Twin Cities) named Jen Scott ought to get a free pass to the Iowa State Fair or some other state honorific for sharing these words about Des Moines:

Stopped by the most ghetto QT in Des Moines, to find it sparkly clean and filled with cops.

Based on the rest of her narrative, she was undoubtedly referring to the QuikTrip on Grand Avenue near Iowa Methodist, which isn't really in the highest-crime portion of town, but definitely wouldn't show up on a local real estate tour. And she's right: The place is always clean and there are always police nearby. We should thank Jen for noticing how we do things in the Des Moines area.

To an outsider, the shooting in West Des Moines probably doesn't sound like much of a big deal. But to locals, it's a big story. Police-involved shootings seem like a DC thing. (That's not for lack of good reason: In Washington, they measure police-involved shootings in percentage terms.) The official report on crime statistics for West Des Moines reads with an almost Disney-esque lack of trouble. A city of 56,000 people reported just 32 robberies for the entire year. So here's the interesting part: The shooting, which was reportedly based on a warrant executed in connection to a series of home invasions and rapes, involved three police officers, each of whom fired his weapon. So in one incident, West Des Moines police firearms saw more active-duty, non-practice use than in a normal year.

A story in USA Today says that the worst speed traps in Iowa are to be found in Des Moines. That's probably meant as a metro-wide recognition, rather than one of the city of Des Moines proper. Each town within the metro area has its own personality -- and so does every police department. Some are known for their rigid enforcement of speed limits (Windsor Heights, for instance), while others are considerably more relaxed. One unwelcome development of late has been the "traffic safety checkpoint", most recently attempted on Hickman Road back in September. The problem with these checkpoints -- in which a certain number of cars passing through are either randomly or specifically picked out to be pulled over and inspected -- is that they erode people's trust in the law. News of the checkpoint spread rapidly, and anyone in the know most likely took pains to avoid going through...not because they wanted to break the law, but because they didn't want to take the risk of a needless detention or delay, nor did they want to risk punishment for some minor infraction. There's a reason we have Constitutional limits on search and seizure; citizens should expect that their first reaction to the sight of police would be relief, not anxiety. "Checkpoints" like the one on Hickman may be legal in Iowa, but that doesn't mean they're the right thing to do.

(Note: Take a look at the results of the checkpoint operation)