Warm weather is upon us and waking up an hour early for that 3-mile jog is a pleasure, right? We’ve been eating so many vegetables that we’ve started worrying about the stability of the fast food industry. What’s that you say? You haven’t got the Richard Simmons-like enthusiasm towards healthy living? That means only one thing — you’re a normal, over-worked American.
Let’s face it, healthy living is not ingrained into our culture — we have to make it so. The juggling act between work and family becomes more challenging with concerns of diet and exercise thrown into the mix. Making small changes in our everyday lives and picking up a few good habits can keep energy levels up and belt sizes down.
Move your body. When it comes to muscles the basic rule is: use them or lose them. Exert yourself. If possible, walk instead of drive and use stairs rather than an escalator. Plan activities with family and friends that require physical movement, like hiking or sports (playing, not watching). Make TV time productive by doing stretches during the commercials to keep you limber for those bedroom workouts. How many more ads for cell phones and drugs can you really stand to watch anyway?
Health-conscious people are keenly aware of what kind and how much food they consume. Portion size is important. Eating until we are no longer hungry, as opposed to eating until we’re stuffed, is one good rule of thumb. It’s healthier to eat five smaller meals a day than two or three big ones. So, cut that beef combo in two and save half for later.
At home, cooking with fresh food is a better option for your health than frozen dinners and usually tastier. Taming a sweet tooth can be a real struggle. There’s no way around it; avoid sugar and you’ll lose weight. Dairy products can quickly turn into fat but are also a source of calcium, so just keep them in check. The cows won’t mind.
Habits are tough to change. But any steps you take to keep your energy up will make your days and nights less grueling and more productive. Feeling good is what it’s all about!
Money Woes Ebb and Flow
• Cash-strapped Baltimore finds $44 million windfall — The June edition of the American Police Beat reported that Baltimore officials recently found $40 million just sitting in a forgotten account. Auditors discovered the windfall in an obscure account where tax payments had been accumulating for about a decade. The payments were supposed to have been transferred into the city’s operating budget, but apparently “staff turnover and poor communications” got in the way.
After auditors and others finished going over the details of the cash find and the city’s laws, it turns out that the city had lost track of $44 million. Still, that’s not such good news for the Baltimore public employees who are being laid off. By law, the cash windfall must be considered surplus, meaning the money goes toward reducing the city’s bond purchases, not to avoid layoffs.
• D.E.A. says “no thanks” to more dollars — While most local and state law enforcement agencies throughout the country are starved for cash, there are no such problems in well-funded federal law enforcement agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration. The D.E.A. doesn’t want or need additional resources, according to the acting administrator.
• Stimulus is too little, but not too late — Department of Justice officials report that it has received requests for 30,000 officers from law enforcement agencies for the 6,000 police positions granted in the federal stimulus program. States which requested the largest number of officers are among the hardest hit by the economy, including Illinois and Ohio, which are requesting more than 1,000 positions each.
• Property crimes surge — Hard times create surges in all kinds of crime. The New York Times recently reported that police officers in many cities are confronting escalating property crimes with fewer officers and resources, making a tough job tougher. One example is Columbia, South Carolina, the state with the nation’s second-highest unemployment rate. Property crimes in Columbia increased by 14% last year from the year before.
• Minnesota faces a 7% cut to public safety — Minnesota is looking at a 7% across-the-board cut to its public safety and corrections departments. Among other drastic measures designed to offset financial difficulties, state legislators are reducing the departments’ fleets of vehicles by 20%. “The debate in Minnesota is reflective of a large trend across the country where state legislatures are finding it hard to maintain policies, often referred to as ‘tough on crime,’ that come with heavy price tags in terms of enforcement and subsequent incarceration,” writes the American Police Beat.
• “It’s everyone’s fault but ours” — Across the country, that’s what many politicians say. But if Illinois is any example, the politicians are precisely who we can blame for many of the financial messes we are in. Even after the ouster of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Illinois legislators refused to enact substantial reform measures to remove the “grease” from legislative dealing making. So the show goes on in Springfield.
Priorities
and DNA evidence
[American Police Beat editorial, June 2009]
There are exciting new developments for law enforcement coming from the world of science and technology. Many law enforcement agencies are taking DNA samples from criminal suspects in the hopes of matching biometric indicators to unsolved crimes.
In addition, DNA has also proven extremely valuable to those serving time for crimes they did not commit.
But there’s one area where the availability of DNA evidence has done little improve the process of criminal justice: in the investigation and prosecution of rape.
Stunningly often rape kits don’t even get tested. If tested, the process is frequently slow and without a sense of urgency. It may be a year or more before there are results, in a process that should take about a week.
There aren’t any national numbers available to get a sense of how serious the problem is…. But that in itself is a clear sign that there’s a lack of urgency when it comes to rape. No one even bothers to count the number of rape kits sitting around untested.
Part of the problem is cost. Each kit can cost up to $1,500 to test. But the larger problem is the prosecutorial distaste for rape cases.
They’re frequently messy and hard to prosecute…
But despite the fact that convictions are harder to win and the evidence costs more to test, we owe it to the victims to see that justice is done ? as often as possible.
Fusion
leads to confusion
[American Police Beat editorial, May 2009]
…. The so-called “intelligence” that local law enforcement agencies are receiving from data warehouses known as “fusion centers” recently is raising all kinds of serious questions that demand answers.
When you manage to put conservative Republicans and the ACLU on the same page, you must have done something truly outrageous.
In this case, the outrage was advising peace officers that taxpaying American citizens who support certain congressional candidates by displaying bumper stickers should be treated as potential threats to national security and public safety.
Part of being smart about protecting Americans from those that would take innocent lives to further an agenda is focusing resources and attention on specific threats.
The intelligence advisory sent out in Missouri recently was nothing short of recycled web junk. But that’s to be expected when you have virtually no oversight, quality control or accountability in the homeland security industry.
The problem is that after a consensus emerged that intelligence failures played a role in the attacks of 9/11, we didn’t focus on sorting out what went wrong at the CIA, NSA and FBI. Instead, we added force multipliers to a system that was badly in need of overhaul and repair.
When thousands of people can get a master’s degree in Homeland Security from an online college without ever taking a class, the odds of these folks producing serious or actionable intelligence are slim to none.
The U.S. intelligence community has its fair share of problems, but turning national security over to a bunch of guys with a website and no training doesn’t seem like it will make Americans any safer.
• • • • •
For all the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on fusion centers and software solutions for the databases containing the names of some one million “possible” terrorists, most of us will take our chances with a much more inexpensive and low tech counter measure: the instincts of a police officer who sees something suspicious.
We’ll take the cop over the fusion center any day.
