Last night on 60 Minutes NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly shared an interesting piece of information. Apparently, according to Kelly, the NYPD has anti-aircraft capabilities. While Commissioner Kelly was careful to point out that the decision to deploy the cities AA assets would only be made in the most extreme situations, he did say they are equipped and prepared should the need arise.

Because Kelly declined to elaborate on the exact nature of the NYPD’s anti-aircraft arsenal we are left to speculate what exactly that might be. While there are a vast array of AA weapon systems available, my guess is that the NYPD is most likely fielding the FIM-92 Stinger Missile in its man portable configuration (seen to the left being fired by a US Marine). Since the NYPD would most likely need to deploy its anti-aircraft weapons against a single small aircraft, a shoulder fired solution seems like the best choice. In this sort of situation the city wouldn’t need the multi-fire capability of a vehicle mounted system and being man portable, the stinger can be discreetly transported without panicking the public, is quickly deployable and still deadly accurate (ironically the same reason authorities are afraid terrorist may choose to use a shoulder fired missile against a commercial aircraft).

Regardless of the weapons system the NYPD is using, the fact of the matter is that they are capable of shooting an aircraft that they feel is a threat out of the sky. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand I can understand a municipality to wanting to be able to protect its citizens (and thus its businesses and tax revenue) from every possible threat. However, what we are witnessing is incredibly powerful weaponry being placed in the hands of police officers and I don’t know if that is a good thing. What do you think?

Fighting terrorism in New York City [via Gizmodo]

Britain’s DNA database is unquestionably one of the largest (if not the largest) such database in the world. Its tremendous size is due in part to the blatant flaunting of EU court rulings (which as part of the EU Britain has agreed to abide by) regarding the storage of DNA records of innocent individuals. Instead of immediately purging DNA of innocent parties from the database the UK maintains those records for six years. According to a new report by the government’s advisory board on the development of human genetics, police in the UK may be abusing the country’s lax DNA rules to ensure that the database contains information on whomever they wish.

During its investigation, the commission found that it has now become routine practice to take a DNA sample at the time of arrest (rather than after a conviction), guaranteeing the samples availability for at least six years. In fact, the commission found evidence that officers will arrest potential subjects on any grounds just to obtain DNA samples. In some cases the arrestees are not even formally charged with a crime. According to data released by the home secretary there are nearly one million DNA profiles belonging to innocent individuals in the database. While innocent citizens currently make up only 20% of the database (a figure that is alarmingly high), the data suggest that figure will continue to rise unless some form of oversight is put into place to prevent this abuse from continuing.

Police routinely arresting people to get DNA, inquiry claims [via Boing Boing]