What are they thinking?
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
My blog, languishing in suspended animation due to lack of interest, has been awakened today for a rant that has been brewing for a considerable time. It's a topic I have blogged about on several past occasions: the practice of leaving your loaded gun stored in your motor vehicle overnight--compounded by not locking the doors. Some follow-up investigation by the police department this week on a case earlier this summer is what caused my pot to boil over. Back on August 8, LPD was summoned to the parking lot of the Lancaster County Event Center on a juvenile disturbance. They arrived and spott ..read more
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The case for encryption and delay
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Lincoln is in the process of acquiring a new public safety radio system. The new system is from Motorola, and is a P25 trunked system, which is inherently digital. Since it is a digital radio system, encryption is easy to implement. It is our intention to use encryption to protect law enforcement-sensitive transmissions. We do not intend to encrypt Lincoln Fire & Rescue radio traffic. If we encrypt all of our law enforcement talk groups (colloquially, "channels"), this will essentially put scanners out of business. People have been using scanners to listen to police radio transmissions, w ..read more
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Unique dataset
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Open data is the rage in policing these days, spurred on by the White House Police Open Data Initiative, which sprang to life after the release of the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing  report. A handful of early adopters contributed some of their data to the portal, which is now hosted by the Police Foundation. With the launch of Lincoln's open data website, I thought we might offer up our data to the Police Foundation portal as well, and I have been in contact to do so. Since the early months of the initiative, the number of police departments providing open data in the ..read more
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Open data for Lincoln
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Today the Mayor is announcing our new Open Data and Performance Management website, opendata.lincoln.ne.gov. The site brings together some extensive data applications and resources that have been available on various City websites, but may have required some deep digging. Now, they are also available in this single portal where they may be more easily accessed. More importantly, though, the site also provides open data: license-free, machine-readable datasets that may be downloaded in such common formats as csv, kml, shp, and json. A bit over half of the 100+ resources on the site today are a ..read more
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Fifty years ago
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
It's Nebraska's 150th anniversary today. Nebraska became a state in 1867. I arrived here in 1967,  Nebraska's centennial year. I was reflecting on this today, and came upon an interesting statistic from 50 years ago. In 1967, there were 445 traffic fatalities in Nebraska. Last year, there were 194. This huge decline is even more dramatic when you consider the population increase over the past 50 years, and the increase in miles driven. Here's what the trend looks like since 1995: There are probably many factors that contribute to this decline, such as better roadway engineering, air b ..read more
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Getting the message?
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Yet another pistol has been stolen from a vehicle that was apparently left unlocked overnight from Friday to Saturday. The gun was in the console. As in many of the past cases I've chronicled here, this victim has a concealed carry permit. I continue to advise against leaving your pistol in the vehicle overnight, for just this reason. If you accidentally forget to lock up, the pilferer picks your pistol, rather than just the loose change in your cup holder and your Ray Bans. This is the first one in several weeks. Maybe, just maybe, people are getting the message ..read more
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Public safety at the Airbase
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Lincoln's Airpark West is getting a lot of public safety attention lately, as we've opened a new firearms range and training facility, and are about to break ground on a replacement for Fire Station 11, near NW 48th and West Adams Streets.  One of the most interesting periods in Lincoln’s history was from the early 1950s through the mid 1960s, when the Lincoln Air Force Base served as one of the largest and most important components of the nation’s nuclear shield. Not to forget the importance of the Lincoln Army Airfield’s role in World War II, but during the cold war the stakes wer ..read more
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LNKstat kick off
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Taking Charge, the City of Lincoln's performance management process, by which we set goals, develop performance indicators, and monitor progress, jumped up to a new level today with the inauguration of LNKstat: a meeting designed to collaboaratively focus the attention of the City's management staff on our municipal government's performance. LNKstat meetings are patterned after a practice that was originally developed in policing during the 1990s, COMPSTAT, which here in Lincoln our police department calls ACUDAT.  LNKstat is designed to serve the same purpose as ACUDAT, only by more bro ..read more
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What works?
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
What Works Cities is an initiative of the Bloomberg Philanthropies that helps cities enhance their use of data and evidence to improve their services. Lincoln was fortunate last year to be selected as one of the cities (57 so far) to receive technical assistance from the initiative. Part of that assistance is in the form of training, and today we are hosting Eric Reese, from the Johns Hopkins University Center for Government Excellence, GovEx. Eric is leading a training session on performance management for about 130 City of Lincoln staff: department directors, their assistants, and senior ma ..read more
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Preparation advice
The Director's Desk
by Tom Casady
3y ago
Yesterday, I received an email from a United States Marine, who will be leaving active duty in the near future, and is interested in a career in policing. He intends to continue his college education (he already has an Associate of Arts degree) to pursue a bachelor's degree, and was seeking my advice on the best majors for his career aspirations.  Here's what I suggested: Good to hear from you, and thank you for your service to the United States. I would strongly advise that you pursue your bachelor's degree and take full advantage of your GI bill benefits. If you can do that before seek ..read more
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