Body Cameras Are Betraying Their Promise

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/09/body-cameras-are-just-making-police-departments-more-powerful/502421/

In case after case, police departments say officers did not have their body cameras activated when it counted. It can seem as though incidents where body-cam footage helped secure an indictment—such as in Marksville, Louisiana, last November, or as in Cincinnati last July—are more rare than the cases where they don’t.

These are breaches of protocol—incidents where events didn’t happen as the law would require. Often, these violations are never significantly punished. This is the second major threat to body-camera accountability: If there’s not significant discipline for officers who fail to follow local policies—as the officers failed in D.C., Chicago, and Charlotte—then it doesn’t matter what’s in the policy.

Will Raccoons Trump Rats as the Ultimate Urban Mammal?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/09/raccoons_are_taking_over_urban_environments.html

And I heard from a friend who works in the State Department about a raccoon that snuck into her building while it was under construction, and then walked across ceiling tiles until it got to her office and hung out above her desk, visible through the mesh-type ceiling panels, perhaps attracted by the scent of her sandwich.