Garda Inspector Kathleen O’Toole is recommending the deployment of “less than lethal weapons.”

Uniformed gardai could be using pepper spray devices within the next two months, and highly controversial “less than lethal” weapons… The recommendations for these weapons, which are widely used by other police forces, were made in the report by Garda Inspector Kathleen O’Toole last year.

Why do the gardai need these weapons?

the decision some years ago to remove height restrictions for entry into the Garda has meant there are a considerable number of gardai who just don’t have the physical capability to restrain many violent young men.

Couldn’t they just put the height restrictions back in place? I’m guessing Brussels would come down like a ton of bricks on Dublin for discriminating against members of a sex who tend to be shorter than members of another sex.

In my lifetime, upping the arsenal of police officers have been a total red herring, seemingly (and perhaps actually) necessary only because of failed policies in other areas. Arming gardai with pepper spray isn’t going to roll back Ireland’s growing gang culture or deter street thugs. A quarter century ago Swedish police officers carried pitiful little 7.65 mm handguns and in extreme situations they could turn to an out dated Swedish-made submachinegun. Nowadays they have 9 mm pistols, pepper spray, telescopic nightsticks, MP5 guns and high grade body armor. But the more heavily armed cops haven’t made much of a dent on the many more or less foreign gangs that have put down roots in the country over the past couple of decades, nor on free agent criminals like bank robbers.

Washington Post columnist Mr. Courtland Milloy has some much needed criticism of the expensive technophile policing that law enforcement in Washington, D.C., has become heavily vested in:

With all the high-tech crime-fighting gadgets and gizmos being deployed throughout the District in the past couple of years, you’d expect to see at least a dent in violent crime. Rob somebody, and you could be caught in the act by any of 48 surveillance cameras. Shoot somebody, and the noise could be picked up by a network of sensors that can pinpoint the location of gunfire.

And with the District’s new state-of-the-art unified communications command center, any of the 34 law enforcement agencies operating in the city — including D.C. police, Prince George’s County police, U.S. Park Police, FBI, ATF and DEA — could be dispatched to the scene in no time. Or so we were told.

Now, millions of dollars and hundreds of homicides later, you have to wonder if taxpayers have been had.

The District’s epidemic of homicides and assaults continues, with five more killings within 27 hours during the weekend. As of yesterday, the city had 131 homicides, compared with 119 at the same time last year.

It was while visiting “the District’s new state-of-the-art unified communications command center” that former Boston Globe metro columnist Mr. Brian McGrory was sold on the greatness of ShotSpotter, the sensors alluded to by Mr. Milloy. Yet ShotSpotter probably had little if anything to do with the suspect quickly being arrested after the shooting. As is Mr. Milloy’s main point, the sensors did nothing to prevent the murder.

ShotSpotter is in the process of being deployed in Boston at the request of the City Council. There were skeptical voices on the Council, but they were hounded into submission by a figurative wolfpack of journalists, including The Boston Herald’s police reporter Michele McPhee, who somehow had been lead to believe, by someone and exactly who is unclear, that ShotSpotter dramatically reduces crime.

Yes, I think tax payers have been had, and I think the people who live in crime infested neighborhoods have been let down by their representatives.

My previous posts on ShotSpotter:

The acoustic bodycounter

Call it SomeShotSpotter

ShotSpotter roll-out delayed in Boston

Hear this

Below: Photograph of an in-street roll-call for Washington, D.C., police in 2003.

Boston City Council’s precious and presumably soon-to-be-deployed ShotSpotter gunshot detection system is once again providing tragicomedy in Rochester, New York:

Shalonda Simpson, 25, of Rochester was killed about 2:15 a.m. outside School 29 at 88 Kirkland Road. Police believe she was the victim of robbery.

Simpson died in a particularly violent time span on city streets. She was one of six people shot between 2:50 p.m. Wednesday and 4:30 a.m. Thursday.

The article doesn’t mention any arrests having been made in connections with the shootings, but there is good news:

[Police chief David] Moore said the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire location system also alerted officers. The system employs a series of microphones set up around the city, which can triangulate the location of a gun shot.

He said there have been a lot of ShotSpotter alerts in recent days.

So the pile of bodies with gunshot wounds wasn’t lying, bullets really have been flying over Rochester. ShotSpotter is one underwhelming piece of technology. Let me rephrase that: It’s an impressive piece of technology that has yet to be impressively put to use.

TV station WHAM reports on a drive-by shooting that may or may not have taken place in Rochester, New York. The story includes this little nugget:

The police department’s ShotSpotter technology did not activate Saturday morning on Avenue A, although that’s common in drive-by shootings.

Swell. More on ShotSpotter here.

The Boston Globe’s Michael Levenson and Jonathan Saltzman report that Suffolk County (which is to say Boston and some neighboring towns) will “will run out of prospective jurors by October.”

That’s strange. My wife has been to jury duty a few times, and every time she’s been sent home without actually sitting in a jury. The same has been true for virtually all of the prospective jurors she’s spent time with in the court house.

What’s behind the lack the of jurors? Dead-beat students and a shortage of Americans:

The impending crisis is the result of Boston’s high murder rate, the city’s changing demographics, and the use of more investigative grand juries to help combat a rise in gang and gun violence. All of this, officials said, is exacerbated by a high rate of residents who fail to report for jury duty.

Last year, only a quarter of those summoned showed up for jury duty in Suffolk County, a rate far below other counties. Wood blamed the high number of students in Boston, who often skip jury duty, although they could face fines up to $2,000 and criminal charges. She also cited the influx of residents who are not US citizens or do not speak English, who are exempt from service.

(Although I must say I don’t think a college student has any business sitting on a jury.)

Short story: Young woman attacked, mugged on Commonwealth Avenue, between Kenmore Square and Charlesgate West at 3 am. I’m pretty sure the cops caught a suspect.

[Update: BPDnews.com has an account of the incident. The description of the suspect alters slightly from the one I recount below, which is as one can expect since I got a quick four second description before taking off (more on that at the end of this post). I am neither of the two samaritans mentioned in the post. I can't believe the suspect didn't make more of an effort to get away.]

Long, rambling story: I woke up at 3 a.m. thinking I should have turned the air-conditioner back on before I went to bed. Then I heard a woman screaming in desperation “get off me get off me.” My very first reaction was to wonder whether it was merely drunken horse play, as there occasionally is early in the morning around here, but her voice told a different story. I rather superflously told my wife, who’s awakened by the screaming, to call the cops as I bumbled into the living room to get a better view of what the heck was going on, as well as to get dressed and going. From our window I saw a white guy running across the street, roughly from Hotel Commonwealth, towards the spot where the woman was still yelling.

I put on clothes and shoes, raced down the stairs and across the street. There I saw a young white woman sitting down, being comforted by, I think, the guy I saw running across the street. Another young woman came out of building and I sensed a couple of more people approaching the scene. The suspect was gone. The guy comforting the woman filled us in on the details: The woman had been mugged by a tall man about 40 years old, shaved head, homeless looking white man. Me and another guy started running in the general direction in which the suspect had fled. We ran down Kenmore Street to Newbury Street, where the other guy headed left while I made a right towards Brookline Avenue, no suspect in sight.

I made a left on Brookline Avenue - towards Fenway Park - thinking that the cops who surely were on their way would backfill the area in case I had overshot the suspect.

And based on that rationale I ran, jogged and walked down Lansdowne Street, Ipswich Street and finally Boylston Street to Charlesgate West, from where I could see at least three police cars with flashing lights over by the intersection of Newbury Street and Brookline Avenue. I took that as a sign that the men and women of D-4 had caught a suspect (negative spin on self reflection: Nice running away from the hot spot, douchebag! Positive spin on self reflection: Backfill strategy worked as planned!).

I made my way back to the square, where the cops and an ambulance had congregated outside the nursing home building. I overheard a cop telling the first guy who made it to the scene something about suspect identification. Given that, and the general sense that no search for a suspect was taking place, I assumed the cops had gotten their man. Nice work, D-4, nice work!

I was already off and running by the time the cops made it to the scene, but my wife tells me they were very quick to get there, even driving down the wrong side of Commonwealth Avenue to get there post haste. I think there may have been as many as half-dozen cars responding, including a paddy-wagon. Again, nice work.

What I know very little about is how the young woman who was attacked is doing. I’ll say this much, though: She most certainly did the right thing in screaming bloody murder.

[Update: Originally I wrote that I was given the following description of the attacker: The woman had been mugged by a tall man in his forties, shaved head, homeless looking white man.

In fact, the man was said to be about 40, and was described as a man who lives in the streets or something similar. When I wrote this post at in the morning I wrote "in the forties" for some reason, and I condensed it to "homeless looking".]

Truly Jörg’s in Kenmore Square was held up today, according to Fox 25 News. Two weeks ago some scum held up the Cold Stone Creamery a couple of blocks south of here. And about two weekends ago D-4 ignored an hour-long disturbance incident outside a residence. Can somebody please put some police in the community policing around here?

The prosecution puts an end to the persecution:

The eyewitness identification procedures were faulty and unreliable. No DNA confirms the accuser’s story. No other witness confirms her story. Other evidence contradicts her story. She contradicts herself.

Here’s a widely held notion that Bostonians should free themselves from:

Boston still has one of the lowest crime and murder rates of major cities in the U.S.

Really now?

Murder rates and population estimates from the 2005 FBI Uniform Crime Report. I slanted the numbers in Boston’s favor by using the revised population estimate. The rates probably deviate marginally from the official rates.

Seriously.