2aHawaii
General Topics => General Discussion => Topic started by: punaperson on December 05, 2016, 09:33:36 AM
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I've written here recently about HPD testifying before a state legislative committee in response to testimony by John Lott in which HPD testified that 1. 50,000 person hours per year are required to register firearms at HPD (no known figures for the other counties), and 2. not one single crime has ever been solved using that registration information.
Here's another story about cops wasting taxpayer money:
Virginia State Police release cellphone surveillance logs
Since May 2015, the VSP have used their DRTbox unit 12 times - 5 of which appeared ineffective
https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/dec/02/virginia-state-police-release-cellphone-surveillan/
Excerpt:
Astonishingly unredacted, these documents detail their 2014 purchase, which upgraded their obsolete DRTbox model to the smaller and more powerful 1183C. This cost the VSP $585,265, and came complete with a whole bunch of accessories, including a Chevrolet Suburban outfitted specifically to run the device.
This log dates from May 2015 and details the 12 times that the VSP have used this equipment. Judging from the log and its specificity regarding the cases the DRTbox was used in, these are examples of cases that the VSP got a warrant for prior to DRTbox use.
A glance at the log seems to show that in at least 5 out of the 12 instances it was used, the device turned out to be ineffectual in locating the suspect.
To Claire Gastanaga, Executive Director of the ACLU of Virginia, the cost of all this is a little stunning. “If the log fully documents all usage of the device since it was acquired, each of the 12 uses cost almost $50,000, and only 4 of them resulted in an arrest,” she noted.
“The relative infrequency of the use documented in the log they shared with you raises a significant question whether the more than half million dollars spent on the device and the vehicle in which it was installed, was a wise investment of public funds.”
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That works out to $146,316 per arrest. And there is no indication that any of those arrests led to any actual convictions. There is apparently no end to how much taxpayer money law enforcement is willing to spend for policies that clearly have no relationship to "public safety" and removing criminals from the streets. I'm guessing that using that nearly $600,000 to put a few cops into high-crime areas would have resulted in much more effective "public safety" outcomes.
If there is no evidence that an extremely costly policy (such as firearm registration here in Hawaii) has any benefit in "public safety", what could possibly be the justification for continuing it?
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Cost benefit analyses. Hard to say exactly how much solving a crime is worth but definitely the line has to be drawn somewhere. That is why HPD had so many untested rape kits.
I would be surprised if a firearm registration never solved a single crimes. Certainly it can link a criminal to another crime. A stolen gun on a suspect can be tracked back to a burglary for example. A registered gun used by the owner and disposed could track back to the owner.