It's militaristic, it's alienating, it's fetishistic, it's hostile, it insidiously portrays class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting, and it panders to the worst in Americans who already endorse the myriad excesses and injustices of an ever-growing quasi-private law and order machine that has ruined the lives of millions.
I live in Melbourne Australia and I have got to say, this is the first reaction I had as well. The imagery used on their website was frankly shocking. My first response was "WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police? Is their job to charge round shooting people?"
Compare and contrast the pictures used on the 'about' page of the Victoria police website:
What do the two different pictures say about how the police view themselves and their job? Looking at the images how do you think the two police departments relate to the community they serve? What type of potential recruits would be attracted to the Victoria police VS Milwaukee police?
"WTF! Is this really how Americans see their police?
I live in Wisconsin, in a small town of 20,000.
Our police department has an armored car, with a mount for a water cannon. We've got a TAC [1] team. Our cops carry rifles in the trunks of their patrol cars.
Elsewhere you can find comparable sized police departments that have .50 machine guns, armored personel carriers.
So .. yeah. That's not how we see the police.
It's how they are.
[1] A TAC team is not a SWAT team, although the only difference I can see is our TAC team is only a part-time deal for the officers.
I live in a small Pennsylvania borough with an operating budget of about $1 mil/year (this includes all services for the entire borough of 3-4 precincts).
Our police department is 8 full-time officers and 3 part-time officers with I believe 2 full-time admin/support staff in the office. We have 5 cruisers, 4 SUVs and at the last borough council meeting the council approved the purchase of a 6th brand new cruiser and a new fleet of AR-15 style rifles for the officers.
During all your years on sentry duty, how often did you find yourself in situations where you needed to shoot someone? Do the police find themselves in that situation more frequently (or are they significantly more likely to)?
Also, in the event that you did, how far away was your nearest armed support? Sixty seconds? Less?
Three times in 2 3/4 years I had a weapon drawn, round in the chamber.
Twice I did not have a target. Once, I did but he obligingly put his hands up when ordered.
how far away was your nearest armed support? Sixty seconds? Less?
Depended on the sentry post, other factors. Sometimes right behind me. Other times minutes away, at best.
If your point is that police are more likely to encounter bad guys than a Marine guarding strategic assets .. maybe.
How does the police department owning a armored personnel carrier help a patrol officer at a traffic stop? How often does your average Mayberry police department encounter bad guys who can only be overcome by a SWAT team?
"How does the police department owning a armored personnel carrier help a patrol officer at a traffic stop?"
And how does the USN carrying nuclear weapons help you check passes at the gate?
That aside, yes, my suggestion was that the police are more likely to need the firepower than you were, and were more likely to have to get by on their own for longer before support turned up.
It is not so much how Americans see their police. It is more a case of how America's local police forces see themselves. The militarization of local law enforcement is a long term trend which began in the 1970's. At the time it was portrayed in a popular TV drama, Los Angeles's Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team arose as a tool for a massive metropolitan area.
Today, even small towns have trained snipers.
The website is simply branding itself to potential recruits and marketing itself to those who fund it. A picture of an officer talking to an elderly lady isn't going to attract young adults nor support a training budget for automatic weapons marksmanship.
"A picture of an officer talking to an elderly lady isn't going to attract young adults"
I disagree. It wouldn't attract young adults with fantasies of paramilitary action and an urge to wear uniform and wave guns around. There are many other kinds of young adults who will be attracted by the idea of responsible public service and being a helpful part of the community. Clearly, the decision has been made about which kind of recruit to attract; ironically, exactly the kind of person I'd least like to have authority and weapons.
I'm also more comfortable with it as a ARG site for a fictional dystopian movie rather than a site for a real police department, which means it's obviously clearly a propaganda site, which I find disturbing and unsettling.
The Milwaukee police department has an ugly history. Some of its excesses are the result of institutional traditions dating back a century, when it was seen as a bastion of civil order against anarchists and, later, political progressives. Milwaukee had Socialist mayors from 1910 to 1960; unlike most American cities, the state legislature had authority over the city police and appointed police chiefs who often were hostile to the city Socialists. The police department had a reputation for harassment and intimidation of the political left, gay people, and the counterculture. Police officers were linked to a firebombing of The Bugle-American alternative newspaper in the early 1970s. In January 1981 Milwaukee police officers arrested and beat Wendy O. Williams, lead singer of The Plasmatics, when the punk rockers visited the city on tour. Some of the police department's institutionalized prejudices are tragic, like the two police officers (one who later became head of the police officers' union) who found serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer's victim 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone nude on the street, and returned him to Dahmer, later laughing about how they had reunited two gay lovers (Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone). It is also dangerous to be black in Milwaukee. In the 1970s, when I lived in Milwaukee, I remember repeated news stories about black men who were arrested and died in custody. I assumed by now that the police department's violent institutionalized racism had been cleaned up by improved training and diversity in hiring but I was surprised to learn that "black man dies in police custody" is still a common local news story (just google it: "dies in custody milwaukee").
Among US states, Wisconsin has a reputation for "good government" and efforts to eliminate cronyism and institutionalized corruption. The state is known for a history of Progressive politics from an era when Liberalism and Socialism were admired by many. At the same time, Milwaukee has long been one of the most racially divided cities in the US, more segregated than many cities in the South. The state has long been politically and culturally divided. Its divisions, fear and violence, reaction and repression are as much part of the state's history as is its reputation for liberalism, though not as well known.
What does this have to do with a website that promotes the Milwaukee Police Department? Maybe not much at all.
Ah yes, progressives. The folks whose vision of the future hasn't changed since the early 20th century, when they had their greatest political successes, such as "he kept us out of the war" Wilson, who pushed segregation at a national level after southern successes. Despite judicial approval ("three generations of imbiciles is enough" as their hero Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, in a case that didn't involve any imbiciles) they weren't as successful with their other big project, eugenics, and their great regret is that Nazis made it unfashionable.
I won't speak for the OP, but he/she is probably referring to the fact that Milwaukee consistently ranks as one of the most segregated cities in the US:
I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee. As a city, it is probably one of the most segregated in the country. While the city has been making great strides in improving itself, its still rare to see people of different ethnic backgrounds living next to each other.
Additionally, there have been some bad incidents involving racial prejudices in recent history. A few years ago, there was a small riot between blacks/whites after the state fair. Which was then followed up with a neo nazi march countered by an anti-protest. Tensions still seem a bit high when I talk to my parents.
> small riot between blacks/whites after the state fair
Uh, that's one way to describe it.
A large group of black teenagers/20-somes started fighting with each other and then just started jumping white people, beating on them, then moving on to the next victim.
A similar scene took place after July 4th fireworks were several white people were beaten and a convenience store trashed.
States are pretty large entities. My state, Washington, is coastal and unquestionably liberal, but we have huge groups of conservatives. When you actually squint, though, you'll notice that there's a political West versus East divide in the state itself that maps pretty well to Left versus Right... or urban versus rural.
Similarly, I grew up in California, which used to be famous for how liberal it was, until the Republicans got their act together and actually used their majority some uh.. 7 years ago? Ish? (I might also be mischaracterizing this; I'm basing this off memory rather than stats.)
California conservatism goes way back. Despite its liberal image, there are parts of that state that are legendarily, ferociously conservative; the most famous one has been Orange County (see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/us/politics/30orange.html), which was a seedbed of conservative activism for fifty years. The campaign to pass Proposition 13 in 1978 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_%2819...) became a model for 1980s anti-tax conservatism. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan both came out of California. Etc.
I grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee and diversity just isn't a thing here. As a white dude there are just some areas you are not allowed to go in the city.
Hell there was a race riot after the state fair last year. This segregation definitely contributes to negative stereotypes on all sides.
Now that I live in SF I understand what diversity really means. Poop everywhere...
> Now that I live in SF I understand what diversity really means. Poop everywhere...
The public urination/defecation problem SF has is connected to its large homeless population, many of whom are mentally disabled. The reason for SF's large homeless population is not only because of its liberal views, but also because of its year-round mild weather. If it were burning hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter (as it is in many parts of the Midwest), living on the streets simply would not be physically possible.
The division is segregation, not conservatism. That being said, I find Milwaukee to be more conservative than some Wisconsin cities, especially Madison (where I live now).
Of course, Madison is one of the most liberal cities in any state. I've lived in both Madison and Milwaukee. Now I live in San Francisco. I don't think Madison is any less liberal than SF. The big difference is that most of the areas immediately surrounding SF are pretty liberal as well, whereas rural Dane County certainly isn't.
As you and others have said, the segregation there is really shocking. I grew up during the heyday of personalities like Alderman Michael McGee (Sr; I was out of the state before his son was elected) when there was talk of the black areas seceding from the city entirely:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=yGcaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=o...
The MPD has a rather, uhm, spotty record with the minority community. I don't know the state of that these days, but the militaristic motif of this website definitely seems to hark back to the dark days of the Harold Brier years. Given their history I think they should be more careful about the tone they project.
Is there a single Republican/conservative in any elected position in Milwaukee?
I realize that the city elections are technically non-partisan, but there are clearly no conservatives in positions of power here.
The only cities Milwaukee would be more conservative than (in WI) would be Madison and possibly Racine. All you have to do is look at the results from the recall election to see that Madison and Milwaukee are the 2 centers of liberal votes.
That said, you are absolutely correct, the division is segregation, not conservatism. The overt racism against whites (by blacks) has gotten violent in the last decade. There is a large Hispanic population here too, while it does have Mexican gang problems, that part of the city is far far safer than the black parts. Lots of Hispanic business in Milwaukee are thriving, plenty of white people as customers. You won't see many whites on the north side unless they're cops.
Recently more so, for example they recently legalized concealed weapons, and the current VP candidate Ryan and also their current governor are both pretty extreme.
Historically Wisconsin has been a pretty progressive state, similar to its neighbors Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.
Milwaukee, like most big midwest cities, is highly segregated with some pretty frightening ghettos and areas of poverty, although not as bad as cities whose economies have done worse like Detroit, Cleveland, etc.
jpxxxx, how does it "insidiously portray class and ethnic conflict as an everyday battle worth fighting"? And "fetishistic"? I don't know.
It's fair to criticize where criticism is due, but aren't you going a little overboard? Seems like they did a pretty nice job on the visuals here in my opinion.
Yes I went full barrel, yes I'm being hyperbolic, no I don't care, and no it's not interesting to me that they did a good job keying their full-bleeds.
"Overboard" is a municipal website that has potent imagery of fully armored police officers pointing semi-automatic weapons at ten mugshots of wretched looking "Most Wanted" minorities. This force-glorifying, hostile, divisive, and stakes-raising imagery is being used to portray and shape the role of police in America. It's not acceptable.
The site was cool but I found it funny how every person on the most wanted list was hispanic or black. But at least only one was because of drugs, the others committed legitimate crimes.
That list is actually supposed to show the people they're looking for as far as I can tell (since you can expand the photos for more info and ways to contact the police). If you have a list of most wanted and 90% of them are minorities, what do you do? Do you propose a politically correct list where you can only list an equal number of people of each ethnicity and each gender?
Kudos for breaking the mold and I love the design from a "this is new and fun" perspective, but I completely disagree from a functional perspective. It looks really neat (if a little over-testosteroned), but if I'm visiting the police's web page then I might want to do one of the following (there are plenty more, these are just an example):
- Find the non-emergency number for the police;
- Report a crime;
- Find my car that has been towed;
- Pay a fine, citation, traffic ticket, etc;
- Find the nearest police station (to get fingerprints, etc);
- Apply for a job;
- View a map or statistics about crime.
To do any of those, I have to start at the picture of cops, scroll all the way to the bottom of the page (past lots of press releases), click on "about" and then start navigating. Or notice the tiny box on the far right side of the screen, click "about" (why click "about" if I want to find my car? I dunno), then start navigating. Some of these links are also in a PDF [1] just in case I haven't gotten my "Acrobat Reader wants to update itself" message for the day.
I'd say this is at least 25% less functional than some other (probably much cheaper) very plain sites I've seen for similarly-sized cities. [2]
In other words: if you aren't in the business of user experience, think twice before presenting a novel user experience. The business of police should be policing, not looking cool online. There is a zero chance that a technophobe would be likely to solve their problems using this site, thus increasing the burden on (already depleted) staff at stations.
This is just their news website to promote themselves so people don't think they're doing a crappy job. Their regular website still exists and it just as boring and functional as ever: http://city.milwaukee.gov/police
Clearly it is intended for those use cases, because, as grandparent said, the links to find the answers are there, it's just not that easily available.
I'm not sure exactly what issue you're taking up here, because grandparent clearly states some very straightforward and common user scenarios that any police website should be expecting to handle, and handle efficiently.
This site loads like a dog on my machine. Or perhaps that's a shout out to the K9 unit.
Except it's not the police web site. It's an auxiliary site intended for news. Go search for "Milwaukee police" and see what the #1 hit is and what the official web site is. It's not this one.
"Official" or not, it's a public-facing website for the Milwaukee police force. What it was "intended" for, and how the public is going to see it, are two different perceptions that are clearly not aligned.
I don't see how they're clearly not aligned. As far as I can tell, you got confused because you saw a direct link that was not well labeled and didn't notice the "news" in the URL. Do you have any reason to believe that the average person who goes looking for the information you describe will find and attempt to use this site?
To be clear, this is NOT the official website, thank God. It is their PR site that was designed pro bono by an ad agency. They still have a standard website, ugly, but with actual information and not just visuals.
Indeed. But what would it take for this website to make it to the top of a search engine, above the .gov you've mentioned? Is this subjective to that search engine's algorithm? (that's not a loaded question, as i'm not familiar with how any search engine weighs it's results).
Peter Gnas, office of the chief of Police at the Milwaukee Police Department (who also has an '@milwaukee.gov' e-mail address) is the registrant of milwaukeepolicenews.com
At least certain parts are. There's about a 4sqmi area that almost certainly someone will be murdered in this weekend. Maybe a few. Shootings almost every day. If they're even reported.
This looks as if it had been done by the Yes Men, but the WHOIS record tells that it is official.
Seriously, the job of the police is to uphold the law, not to look catch criminals or look cool in their paramilitary gear.
Here's the scary bit: the police relies on the support of the community and yet puts forth that image of itself. If they think that looking that way improves their image one will be better off staying far away both from the citizens of Milwaukee and its police department.
I... appreciate that they're using modern technologies. That's awesome. I also really like that they're topically focusing what they want to present. That's also awesome.
But that was a painful experience to go through, and it felt like my browser was crying. To me, in terms of UX, this is pretty much one step short of the blink tag. It's glitz for the sake of glitz, to the detriment of utility.
I despise sites like this, they are _painful_ to use and the transfer of actual information is nearly zero. I spend more time trying to get the content to line up than I do consuming it. It comes off as a tech demonstration put together without a single thought given to the usability or business goals of the site. Another example of this type of design: http://www.sugarloaf2020.com/
If you scroll the experience is terribly broken and scrolling is a deeply ingrained interaction paradigm for web sites. Its particularly annoying on a mac trackpad due to inertial scroll.
Saying "don't scroll, use the buttons" to get a non broken experience is like saying "don't click the big red button" to avoid the server throwing a 500.
Well I personally don't find the experience terribly broken, or broken at all. I don't see why anything on that page even has to perfectly line up. I mean on Pinterest you don't expect everything to perfectly line up when infinite scrolling, and you don't really lose any information if the image doesn't line up on this page.
However, I can see how it can really annoy some obsessive type personalities (who consider it horribly broken if the page doesn't line up perfectly)... no offense. It might be painful, but that pain's probably not due to you being able to get info from the page.
I've also disabled inertial scrolling. I can see how that would make it impossible to line up the page, but the page has clearly been designed to be used even if the images and elements aren't perfectly in place.
In my opinion, inertial scrolling on a desktop computer is the actual useless embellishment here. It makes sense on a small screened mobile device because there is no scroll bar, and because normal desktop-sized web pages will end up super long on a small screen. But on a desktop few pages will be large and long enough to require you to do a flick to go down.
> I don't see why anything on that page even has to perfectly line up.
The timeline page is basically unusable unless it lines up really well. Additionally it took me 4-5 times through to realize the years on that page were click actions (except 2013 which looks identical to the others???). Partially because of the annoyance of lining stuff up took me out of the mindset of 'what should i click on' and partially due to the inversion of focus. Generally actions the user can make should be clearly defined and stand out. In this case the current year stands out and the other years are very muted. In most interaction cases the elements that are muted are 'inactive'.
While you can read the content on the other pages with them out of alignment, the stiff breaks in the image background are very distracting.
All I can say to get to the real point is that if I hadn't grown up riding that mountain 30+ days a winter I never would have stuck around long enough to glean anything useful about it.
For what its worth the general feedback I've heard from other Sugarloafers indicates its not just me or my personality type that hates this site, it's a wide range of folks whose response has been "yuck".
For me, I not only have to go back and forth to get a full page, as using the scrollwheel the bar in the Timeline is always covering up some text. And I don't use inertial scrolling, but I don't see why should you have to disable it either.
A nitpick about the website: It completely breaks the back button. Back un-scrolls?! WTF.
And now for the sad commentary on the social state: The vehicle in the picture says "Rescue" on it in large, friendly letters. The vehicle is a tank festooned with gun ports.
Not only was this site posted just 16 days ago,[1] but as I commented at the time, scrolling the site causes 100% usage of one of my CPU's cores. This is still the case.
The fact that so many people consider sites such as this to be "awesome" is one of the many reasons I'm glad I no longer work for clients.
As a piece of propaganda, I'd say it's pretty nice considering I can count the sites using good Parallax effects on one hand.
Unfortunately, the selection of images doesn't help their cause. Considering their history, I would think there would be more pictures of Cops helping kids and old folks as opposed to images of urban attack vehicles and cops in SWAT gear.
The lead guy has what appears to be a Benelli M2 shotgun with a bunch of crap added (rail, light, and some kind of red dot sight). The other guy has what might be some kind of AR15/M4.
Yes, they're wearing black, and have a lot of random junk attached to them, but they're not necessarily much more heavily armed than a CA CHP car with a shotgun and an AR-15 or M16A1 inside.
I grew up in on the east side of Milwaukee, moved to Chicago and now live in NYC. With each move the police grew progressively more militarized. I always felt it, but obvious when I was travelling in Italy over the summer. I noted how unassuming and calm the Italian police were.
Parts of Milwaukee, can be very rough but I don't think the police looking and acting like paratroopers is the answer to staving social unrest and anxiety. No matter where I am in the US it seems the message of "protect and serve" gets lost in translation.
America is a very fear riden place and I would guess that when a fearful people vote and elect representatives, they elect people who assure safety of the people by more and more aggressive stances.
Well put. Yes it's sad that half of Americans think the best response to most offenses is shoot-to-kill, ask questions later. My city has a professional police force; I don't think it's a big coincidence that we also have a relatively low crime rate.
The scroll also snaps back to the top when I resize my window.
Also, I think it's detecting my screen resolution and assuming that my browser is maximized. My browser is typically 1/2 the width of my screen, so everything's all garbled up :(
The parallax scrolling looks cool, but there's too much momentum, making the desired content scroll out of view.
The visual language is 1984. This sends chills down my spine and I'd never go for an image like that for a public service. Maybe this image is reassuring to the Milwaukee Police Dept, but that shouldn't play a role in designing a "customer-facing" website.
As cool and interesting as it is, as a citizen, the information I am actually interested in is all the way down at the bottom. Even then, if what you're looking for isn't in the FAQ, you have to open a PDF just to see more links (what?). There isn't even a phone number listed for non-emergency calls.
Great photos, but scrolling with my magic mouse got me angry pretty quick when I couldn't read anything even near the edge of the top or bottom or each section without an over-scroll happening.
Actually the design is innovative and very good in breaking the mold. As with anything new there might be some shortcomings, like being performance hog on the browser.
I've been very annoyed at/interested in non-obvious menu item labels lately. For example, on this site we have "The Source" and "The Stats"–I would have no guesses as to what those mean.
I see this with my own website customers as well. Instead of "Pricing", they use "Investment" and instead of "Contact", they use "Hello" or "Inquiries".
Does anyone have links explaining if/why this is bad?
OP, here. I agree with much of the criticism, and I have nothing to do with Milwaukee, their PD or this website. I just thought it was quite different from normal municipal websites, and would be worth discussion.
Perhaps they should take the idea of interesting and different design and decouple it from the militaristic attitude, and they'd be on to something.
A perfect example of design that complete overshoots and denigrates its usability and usefulness. I wouldn't even expect this amount of slickness from a web app that dispenses froyo from my cd-rom drive. The Mobile experience should be the desktop experience, as well; for something like a police blotter.
If you didn't tell me this was a police website, I'd have thought it was a tabloid, with that huge font.
I guess it's a modern theme, but is this the image they want to portray? Looks more like a movie or magazine website rather than a professional police force.
If only discussing the usability issue. 1. Spacebar doesn't work, and 2. It lags even on a rMacBook. and 3. scrolling using the MacBook trackpad makes the site feel slippery.
> WARNING: We have detected that you currently have Javascript disabled.
> This website requires the use of Javascript, for the best possible viewing experience we highly recommend that you enable Javascript via your browser's options.
Do I really need to elaborate here? For the record, the site works (to some extent) in Lynx.
But in Firefox without Javascript, they actually took the time to make it completely useless and they have that little block of text on top. Why did they waste their time doing that?
If they don't support non-Javascript browsers, fine. I actually don't care about that. But to... anti-support them. To actively work to make the page useless to them. That is what I don't get. I would appreciate some insight into their thoughts here.
They don't want to support non-Javascript browsers, but they don't want users who've turned off Javascript to think their site is broken. So they put a warning box up to explain the situation. Seems fair enough, as long as it's just a passive warning rather than blocking the actual site.
Android gets a simple mobile site with boring self-congratulatory text reports of the great job cops are doing. Apparently 20th century computers get all the fun on this one.
But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.