PAX Centurion - January / February 2014

www.bppa.org PAX CENTURION • January/February 2014 • Page 27 Cyberyne Systems is here and SKYNET is now fully operational T his may not be the Terminator, but it might as well be. In what appears to be a classic case of tripping over quarters to pick up pennies the BPD has spent tens of millions to get tens of thousands in government grant money. Money that will probably end long before this monster dies the death it deserves. All because certain data wonks were tired of sifting through thousands of 1.1s to find the information they need for whatever foolish study they decided will be the answer to end all crime as we know it and also possibly make a decaf coffee that taste just as good as regular coffee. What a colossal waste of time and police resources this new report writing program is. Instead of streamlining the report writing process, it turns it into a night- mare. Officers will now spend more time at the keyboard, trying to figure out this stupid program, than doing anything else in their workday. We are now no longer law enforcement officers but data entry drones. The program itself is ridiculous. Its not user friendly, I think it actually HATES us.You have to answer YES or NO for every report to the question of is this a crime involving CARGO???? Now I know what some are thinking, so what, one question. However, if this task only adds an extra second, over the thousands of reports written every year by the BPD this starts to add up to real time. And this is just one of hundreds of extra steps in the matrix. This one question is for a crime we rarely have, who was the last person to do a 1.1 on a railroad car or merchant ship B&E???? Of course you will spend even more time on that one box if you forget to check it. Because you can not finish the report without it, and that is just one box out of the hundreds more we now have to add to our man hours. If Dr. Evil sat down to create a system that would lengthen an Of- ficers time off the street, out of service, bogged down with a diaboli- cal program designed to frustrate even the most computer savvy, he could not have created a better system than this. In training even the simple shoplifting report was over five pages long. Three differ- ent places all had to be checked answering the same question, YES THEREWASANARREST???? It is insane. There are so many tasks to be performed in this program to stop ac- tions from happening which we don’t want to happen, just to get a 1.1. It is like Glock gave us a pistol that HAD to be on safe before loading a magazine or it would fire. Would we accept that from the company? Make no mistake about it practice will NOT make this easier. This program is filled with boxes to click, the searching of menus, the tabbing of tabs, searching for dozens of data entry choices listed in no logical order. Crimes are listed, not by the logical category of larceny or receiving stolen, but under PROPERTY???? Then under that heading you can find larceny. However that pattern is not even followed in the subsequent section for associated charges. There it is listed by receiving, or larceny, etc. They do not even list crimes any- where close to MGL or the courts. They have larceny listed as $199 and UNDER or $200 and OVER???? In the box for listing how the suspect gained entry into a build- ing there is no listing for REAR DOOR however “Living Room” is listed as an entry area???????? In the section for VEHICLES, motorcycles are not even listed???? Not as a type of vehicle, nor by manufacturer. There are no Harley Davidson, Indian, Triumph or Vic- tory listed under the manufacturer’s box in the vehicles section. Mo- torcycles are not listed in the vehicles section, except under license type (why, what’s the point)??? When you get around to select the color of a vehicle you have all the major colors available. Black,White, Brown, Red, Red....yep that’s right they have Red listed twice, for when it’s REALLY Red I guess????? As most of us found out in training, under this program, shoplift- ing is a more important crime, as far as Big Brother is concerned, than receiving stolen motor vehicle and must be prioritized as such. We now must also be masters of the convoluted system that is the Federal Gov- ernment’s hierarchy of crime classification and prioritize accordingly. Another of the many faults in this system is the ability to make a supplemental report to a report that has NOT been written???? Or many supplemental reports if you like, and the system will allow it. It won’t even ask “are you sure you want to create a supplemental” when there is no initial report. I used to think it was annoying when Windows would second guess me at every turn. I would rather that, See SKYNET on page 29 281 Neponset Ave. Dorchester 617-265-2665 Full Day Pre-School – $37.00 Secure Play Area 4,000 sq. ft. 3 Classrooms 2 yrs. 8 mo to 6 yrs. Massachusetts Early Education License #291031 • Daughter of BPPA Retiree Neponset Preschool www.NeponsetPreschool.com By Dennis Murphy, D14 Representative