Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ShabbyDoo 4988 days ago
Do union-required holiday pay rates cause the PD to only staff for minimum requirements? Perhaps the PD simply staffs at minimum levels because most officers want those days off? Do holidays cause so many "real" crimes that the police don't have time to write tickets?
2 comments
bigiain 4988 days ago
I'd guess that at least for the new years eve 31st, there's be more staff rostered on than usual, but probably fewer then normal doing regular traffic patrol. I suspect Halloween is similar. I've got no data or evidence to back that up (and even less for Halloween, since I'm not in the US), but I'd probably choose to remove those two days as "exceptions". Filtering out other known public holidays might improve the signal to noise ratio of the data too...
link
DrStalker 4988 days ago
In Australia long weekends usually trigger double demerits and an increase in visible police, especially roadside breath testing. I don't know what it does to the ticket rates but the effect on every driver I know personally is to be extra cautious, which would reduce ticket rates.
link
bigiain 4988 days ago
"which would reduce ticket rates"

Maybe, there's a possibility of increased ticket rates too due to the extra driving km done by people "going away for the long weekend", and by drivers being less experienced on the routes they're driving (compared to regular commuter traffic who know exactly where the speed/redlight cameras are, and are usually in heavy enough traffic to not be able to exceed the speed limit).

I wonder if there's local (NSW, Australia - for me) tickets-by-day day available to analyse?

link