Entries in traffic safety (2)
AND NOW, IN THE “ANY PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY” DEPARTMENT….
In which the DLA Research staff feels unappreciated and misunderstood, but learns a valuable lesson about the power of printed word!
Things got a little heated last week here at the DrivingLikeAss Labs following the publication of Pete DeMarco’s otherwise laudatory column, Who Taught YOU to Drive? ,in the March 30 Boston Globe. The research staff grumbled through DeMarco’s description of their efforts to bring academic rigor to the study of Boston driving behavior as “tongue-in-cheek” and “under the guise of.” They were even willing to let the “you might actually believe them” crack slip. But what really got them steamed were the quotes attributed to DLA’s spokesperson, Jonathan Dower, in which he took single-handed and unabashed credit for everything from DLA’s inception and mission to the actual research itself.
“It’s bad enough that he makes himself look like the DLA braintrust,,” crabbed one researcher, “but you woulda thought he could throw the real workers a bone….you know, like mentioning the hours we spend doing exit interviews at the RMV, which, by the way, he made us do on our lunch breaks!”
JWD
in Police details, traffic safety, MassCop, Boston Globe, Peter Demarco, Who taught you to drive?
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HOW DOES THAT GO? WORKING HARD OR…..?
Only Massachusetts requires police details at road work sites. Boston drivers are from Massachusetts. Coincidence? Risking a lifetime of tickets for riding their bikes on the sidewalks and for missing license plate lights, DLA researchers take a look at paid police details.
A dream police detail: Ensuring public safety in front of Dunkin' Donuts!
Photo Credit: DLA Labs
On March 12, justanothertrooper posted this entry on the MassCops.Com blog (a web site for New England law enforcement professionals): “NECN is reporting on detail pay for BPD (Boston Police Department).....can always tell when spring is here!”
Can’t argue with him there. Local and state police salaries, swollen by overtime “detail” pay (directing traffic at street or highway construction, special crowd details, etc.), draw the focus of media and (much less frequently) politicians on a perennial basis. The issue is always simmering in the minds of the motoring public since virtually every trip to D’Angelos Marketbasket includes dodging an open manhole or a DPW backhoe digging up a storm sewer…always under the careful supervision of a state or local police office. But it moves to the front burner with the annual news story reading something like “Police Top State’s Highest Paid List”, or –in the case of the Boston Herald—“Cops Cop Top Take-home!”
And so it was earlier this month when the Globe and other news media....
JWD
in traffic monitoring, Police details, traffic safety, public safety, MassCop
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