The species seems to have been susceptible to extinction from the get-go. Its not like humans wiped them out down to a last few flocks. People did over hunt them to be sure, but a species that required flock groups of tens to hundreds of thousands to propagate would seem to me to be living on borrowed time. Attempts to breed them in captivity failed because of the massive numbers that seem to be required. So this effort to reintroduce the population will require quite an effort, they will need a first generation in the tens of thousands at a minimum.

Your sarcasm tag makes things obvious so don't take this the wrong way, but that is one of the things that general society needs to realize, police work IS NOT very dangerous. There are I believe well over a dozen professions that make police work look safe (farmer, lumberjack, fisherman, etc.). It is a complete fallacy that police officers are in constant danger, most never have to even draw their gun. I think last year there were something like 100 on duty officer fatalities, 47 of those were accidental deaths (car/motorcycle/aircraft accidents, falls, etc).

"its value as an investigative tool would be severely compromised."

I'd be interested to see how these same police departments would respond if identical ALPRs were placed near police stations, government buildings & affluent neighborhoods by private individuals. I imagine it ending quite quickly in threats, arrests & even possibly injuries. Its funny how a surveillance tool is so great until the general public turns it on those in authority (tape recorders, video cameras, cell phone cameras, drones), then it miraculously needs "common sense" restrictions that those in authority are almost always exempt from.

I'm not suggesting that requiring officers/their vehicles/their guns having cameras is a bad idea, but just because you do it doesn't mean that you've gotten any closer to solving the problem of abuse of authority. Its going to take a whole lot more, streaming offsite backup to an independent party at the very least, probably an entire legal framework as well (or perhaps enforcement of the current framework).

Sadly you're completely right, a bag of flour thrown off a building or put a few Lite-Brite signs out and you throw a city into chaos. All at the cost of a few bucks and one or two nuts willing to do it. You don't have to look far to see how crazy things have gotten, there have been what, two aircraft diverted in the past week because of minor incidents on-board at least one of which "required" a fighter escort because of a few drunk women having a fight? I can't recall where it came from but there is one statement that pretty well sums it up "the terrorists said "boo" and our reaction was to shoot ourselves in the head". We simply can't sustain this idiocy, eventually we'll end up like Russia at the end of the Cold War, throwing so much money into buying bullets (security) that we can't afford bread (the economy).

While Texas is the most blatant example it is far from the only one, officers in Hollywood Florida willfully altered footage sent to a defense attorney to remove a plot by officers to frame a woman for vehicular assault of a police officer, no one was charged. CCTV operators in Denver Colorado willfully shifted a CCTV camera away from a police beating, no one charged. Half of the vehicle camera/mic equipment of the LAPD (installed BECAUSE of abuse) was found to be inoperable due to officer sabotage, no one charged. I could go on for quite some time but I trust my point is made.

"Every officer will be required to explain every missing second of video and audio."

Why? It doesn't happen now. In fact I think in Texas not long ago an appellate court ruled that police could destroy dash cam video footage despite specific requests from the defense that they preserve the footage. I agree wholeheartedly that officers SHOULD have to explain any missing footage, but every instance that I can think of suggests that the current justice system does have any perception that missing footage reflects poorly on law enforcement even when the officers go out of their way to destroy it.

We don't have to wait for "one day", it happens quite often right now. I can recall at least a dozen cases off the top of my head where footage from dash cams, personal phones/computers/cameras & CCTV systems was deleted, obscured, modified or "failed to record". Unfortunately I can't recall a single case of an officer being meaningfully punished for destruction of evidence, at most a few were fired.

http://www.today.com/id/322668...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.dailytech.com/Cops+...

So far SLS isn't setting itself far enough apart from the boondoggle which was Constellation for my tastes. Its budget has grown from 10 Billion to, by many estimates, $41 Billion by the time it has actually launched a few prototypes. And its per launch estimates are up in the air at the moment, NASA's "$500 Million" per launch is laughable. For the money we're burning on the development of SLS alone we could launch the mass of a Naval frigate into orbit on commercial launchers. Just think of what could be done with that kind of payload capacity.

Why would they want to brick your phone? For the same reason they'll hold you for a few hours and then release you without charge, for the same reason they will confiscate your property without arrest, for the same reason they'll rough you up and then not charge you with anything. They are ways to punish people who come into their field of view for real or perceived transgressions without going through that pesky process of proving that something illegal actually happened. If this capability is realized I wouldn't be surprised if phones within a block or so of a protest are bricked, if phones that were near a case of police misconduct suddenly don't work, all of course "for the safety of the public".

He's insane. Choreographing that kind of balance across a national power network would be prone to instability and likely vulnerable to attack/accidental cascade failures. Virtually every heavy load device and a lot of lower load devices would need to be remotely controllable, that communications system would need to be highly secure, extremely reliable and not too imposing on customers. Load balancing definitely has a place in both residential & industrial areas, but there needs to be a significant storage/load redundancy built into the system as well to handle unexpected peaks and valleys in demand inherent to a real world electrical grid.

No one with half a brain is suggesting that police shouldn't have a few high powered rifles, body armor and other items for dealing with extreme situations. But 99.9999% of police work involves minor theft, non violent drug use, traffic violations, domestic violence & scuffles. Most departments probably only need a few officers equipped and trained for use of such equipment, maybe 2% of on duty officers for large departments and 3 or 4 people for smaller departments. What we're seeing today however are entire police departments being outfitted with military gear. Departments with only a dozen or so officers are getting their own Armored personnel carriers, every squad car has ARs in the trunk, etc. It doesn't make any sense when most departments maybe have a single incident in a generation where those tools/tactics would be significantly needed (barricaded hostage situation, heavily armed bank robbery, sniper, etc) and even then you're likely only going to need a small tactical team with regular officers as support. It makes even less sense when you consider that the standard tactic these days is to "surround and hold" until a SWAT team is brought in.

Recent history has shown that even if you throw massive amounts of money at something (Constellation program, Healthcare.gov, F35, VA/DoD Health Database, etc) you don't necessarily get a decent product. One of the reasons why I mentioned "concrete milestones", which would be independently verified by government auditors & engineers. The biggest difficulty of course would be keeping the lobbyists & lawyers for the companies in question from getting the power to designate those auditors & engineers.

Oh wonderful, at least three of my area police departments are participating in the program. It would be nice to see what they're getting, I wouldn't complain about most of the stuff on the materials list (coats, hydration kits, rope, etc), even a few guns wouldn't be out of the question. But if your local PD begins equipping all of their officers with riot shields/assault rifles, body armor, & armored vehicles they've ceased to be "peace officers". If these records went back a few more years I could be sure of one thing, from what I understand one of the local departments received a treaded APC a few years back through this program. It was only brought out for parades and I think one or two minor incidents. It became a major boondoggle when it broke down several times, caused damage to a road, didn't have a trailer to transport it, and was burning through $10,000 a year in insurance. I don't think they have gotten rid of it yet but they've also kept it out of sight, probably because it's broken down again.

Arg..... a "cost plus" contract, they are always a bad idea when not dealing with bleeding edge tech or extremely critical projects. They give companies a significant incentive to milk a project for as long and for as much as possible. Bid projects out at a fixed price, companies don't get a dime until they reach concrete milestones. If they don't reach those milestones on time and on budget they eat the costs and that part of the project is rebid. It should also be noted that the bill giving them the extra taxing authority was rushed through with disturbing speed and with rather blatant palm greasing, $14,000 dollars was used to wine and dine government officials in the three months leading up to the vote in addition to copious amounts of lobbying.

http://www.troutmansandersstra...