Milwaukee Police News

http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/

by awwstn2 • 14 years ago

121 111 14 years ago

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.

Very nice page, but a poor website

saraid2162• 14 years ago

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.

patdennis• 14 years ago

It's almost impossible to scroll using the trackpad on my MBP.

I think it's the inertial scrolling that causes problems... the slightest touch sends it down three or four pages.

hkmurakami• 14 years ago

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 :(

chrsstrm• 14 years ago

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.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

Looks pretty, but is not very usable.

slapshot• 14 years ago

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.

[1] http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/wp-content/themes/milwauk...

[2] E.g., http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/

tstegart• 14 years ago

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

ricardobeat• 14 years ago

This website is called Milwaukee Police News, it's probably not the official department site.

mikeash3• 14 years ago

That's a rather impressive rant to write without apparently ever considering whether this site is intended to be used for any of that stuff.

shaggyfrog2• 14 years ago

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.

danso• 14 years ago

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.

http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/milwaukee-unveils-worlds-best-...

001sky• 14 years ago

good info, but tangentially...since when are cop's having PR websites?!

genwin2• 14 years ago

Since they realized they got a bigger budget only by spending all their previous budget.

wrekkuh• 14 years ago

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

Please see: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/milwaukeepolice...

l0tics• 14 years ago

Looks great until you click on something like "pay for a parking ticket" https://step1.caledoncard.com/citations/milwaukee.html

nostromo• 14 years ago

If you want your city to be perceived as a war zone, this is the website for you.

TheFuture3• 14 years ago

I'm here, it is.

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.

rurounijones• 14 years ago

Excellent looking site (Takes ages to load although that might be HN bashing it)

About the only thing I don't like about it is the preponderance of images featuring gun-toting SWAT members, armoured cars etc, seems a bit hollywood.

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

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.

But awesome job on the scrollbars, yo.

yesimahuman3• 14 years ago

I grew up in Milwaukee, and I agree, it only serves to support the strong division in that city.

I wonder if this is related to hiring problems? The glorification could help find new candidates. I hear the MPD is always hiring...

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

> I grew up in Milwaukee, and I agree, it only serves to support the strong division in that city.

Can you elaborate on this? Wisconsin has never struck me as a state with a particularly conservative streak.

luke_s• 14 years ago

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:

http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?Document_ID=3

With the images on the same section of the Milwaukee police website:

http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/#menu=about-page

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?

bdunbar6• 14 years ago

"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.

chris_wot• 14 years ago

That's a worry, given that Victorian police have a history of shooting criminals dead.

brudgers• 14 years ago

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.

goatforce5• 14 years ago

This is not an official photo of the Toronto Police, but it has been widely circulated since...

http://twistedsifter.com/2011/07/picture-of-the-day-cops-in-...

Shivetya• 14 years ago

War on Drugs.

Militarization of the police because we took the most violent route in trying to control the "illegal" drugs.

droithomme• 14 years ago

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.

rrreese• 14 years ago

My initial thought was that this is a site for the upcoming RoboCop remake.

freditup• 14 years ago

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.

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

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.

GFKjunior• 14 years ago

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.

stephenlambe• 14 years ago

Exactly what part of that website "portrays class and ethnic conflict"?

jpxxx3• 14 years ago

The part where the two actors are heavily armed police and a box of mugshots of minorities stamped MOST WANTED.

Edit: Also it's worth noting that as of several weeks ago this was a much more elaborate site. It's been significantly toned down since.

HarryHirsch• 14 years ago

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.

billswift• 14 years ago

The really scary bit is that most people still support the police, and will probably continue to do so no matter what the police do.

guelo• 14 years ago

The militarization of police departments, including professional propaganda, is scary.

callmeed• 14 years ago

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?

mbell3• 14 years ago

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/

Please stop designing sites like this.

chrischen2• 14 years ago

What's wrong with the sugarloaf website? If you click on the links on the left the content automatically lines up.

mbell3• 14 years ago

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.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

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.

curiousDog• 14 years ago

Seems to work fine for me in Chrome. Although they don't seem to be prepared for HN traffic and pretty soon reddit

zupreme• 14 years ago

Confirmed on a MPB w/ Safari

emeraldd2• 14 years ago

Keyboard navigation appears to be completely borked: try page up, page down, ctrl+home, or ctrl+end none of them appear to work! ARGH!

Just for fun, I tried searching for rescue in the page. The scroll magic they are using causes the found word in chrome to be off the screen.

emeraldd2• 14 years ago

Interestingly enough, they either fixed page-up/page-down or it was tied to a specific browser build . . .

bdunbar6• 14 years ago

The vehicle is a tank festooned with gun ports.

You're being needlessly alarming.

The vehicle is a wheeled armored personell carrier. Totally not a tank - there aren't any caterpillar tracks.

Go back to bed, nothing to see, no worries, Citizen.

noonespecial2• 14 years ago

My mistake. By the by, when should we expect the armor and weapon upgrades on the fire trucks to be complete?

subsection1h• 14 years ago

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.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436366

tayl0r• 14 years ago

The performance is terrible. Have the developers ever heard of smooth scrolling? How can any self respecting developer release this?

ww520• 14 years ago

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.

Kudos for trying something new.

mman2• 14 years ago

There is about a 750ms delay for scrolling on my lastgen macbook air. I am going to upgrade my machine for this site.

edit: Actually it's more like a 50ms delay followed by some mollasses

mman2• 14 years ago

Aww no parallax on iPad

zbowling• 14 years ago

don't worry. i have the macbook retina with a gig of video ram and the latest and fastest i7 processor and it's scrolls like crap.

ck2• 14 years ago

Why are the Milwaukee police more heavily armed than the soldiers in Afghanistan?

rdl• 14 years ago

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.

The APC, yeah, that's a bit over the top.

noarchy• 14 years ago

It isn't much of a stretch to say that police in the US are an extension of the military, the branch that is dispatched to control its own population.

swang• 14 years ago

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.

petercooper• 14 years ago

From the Hot Fuzz school of policing..

JacobIrwin• 14 years ago

Missing MOST WANTED page...? http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/most-wanted-page

yskchu• 14 years ago

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.

Evbn• 14 years ago

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.

derleth• 14 years ago

> 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.

lmm• 14 years ago

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.

at-fates-hands• 14 years ago

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.

EthanEtienne• 14 years ago

Mmmm, all I see is a beautiful site, I guess I'm brain washed.

digitalengineer• 14 years ago

Our police rides around on bicycles. But hey, I live in Holland. Short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBOnGuK7D0o

some1else• 14 years ago

The site beaks the back-button.

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.

autophil• 14 years ago

I like it. The site has a Hill Street Blues quality to it, but tougher and darker. That's okay. The cops need to look tough because they are tough.

I think the more communication the better. Is it propoganda? Maybe, but I wouldn't work my brain into a lather about that.

Overall, I'd say it's cool. If my town had a site like this I'd read it.

splatcollision• 14 years ago

Yes, we live in a police state over here. Please send help.

headShrinker• 14 years ago

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.

genwin2• 14 years ago

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.

quomopete• 14 years ago

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.

awwstn2• 14 years ago

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.

pasbesoin• 14 years ago

One site for which I'm definitely not enabling Javascript.

Milwaukee Police News

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