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Milwaukee Police News
- JacobIrwin 14y agoMissing MOST WANTED page...? http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/most-wanted-page http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/most-wanted-page
- ww520 14y agoActually 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.
- andrewguenther 14y agoAs 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
- saraid216 14y agoI... 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 14y agoIt'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 14y agoThe 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 14y agoGreat 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 14y agoLooks pretty, but is not very usable.
- slapshot 14y agoKudos 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/milwaukeepolice/MPD-FAQs.pdf http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com/wp-content/themes/milwauk... [2] E.g., http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/ http://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/police/
- ricardobeat 14y agoThis website is called Milwaukee Police News, it's probably not the official department site.
- tstegart 14y agoThis 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 http://city.milwaukee.gov/police
- mikeash 14y ago
- danso 14y agoTo 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-looking-police-website-143535 http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/milwaukee-unveils-worlds-best-...
- 001sky 14y agogood info, but tangentially...since when are cop's having PR websites?!
- genwin 14y agoSince they realized they got a bigger budget only by spending all their previous budget.
- wrekkuh 14y agoIndeed. 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/milwaukeepolicenews.com http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/milwaukeepolice...
- l0tics 14y agoLooks great until you click on something like "pay for a parking ticket" https://step1.caledoncard.com/citations/milwaukee.html https://step1.caledoncard.com/citations/milwaukee.html
- nostromo 14y agoIf you want your city to be perceived as a war zone, this is the website for you.
- TheFuture 14y agoI'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 14y agoExcellent 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.
- jpxxx 14y agoIt'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.
- freditup 14y agojpxxxx, 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.
- jpxxx 14y agoYes 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.
- yesimahuman 14y agoI 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...
- w1ntermute 14y 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.
- HarryHirsch 14y agoThis 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 14y agoThe 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 14y agoThe militarization of police departments, including professional propaganda, is scary.
- callmeed 14y agoI'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?
- mbell 14y agoI 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/ http://www.sugarloaf2020.com/ Please stop designing sites like this.
- chrischen 14y agoWhat's wrong with the sugarloaf website? If you click on the links on the left the content automatically lines up.
- mbell 14y agoIf 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.
- chrischen 14y agoWell 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.
- noonespecial 14y agoA 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 14y agoSeems to work fine for me in Chrome. Although they don't seem to be prepared for HN traffic and pretty soon reddit
- zupreme 14y agoConfirmed on a MPB w/ Safari
- emeraldd 14y agoKeyboard 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.
- emeraldd 14y agoInterestingly enough, they either fixed page-up/page-down or it was tied to a specific browser build . . .
- bdunbar 14y agoThe 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.
- noonespecial 14y agoMy mistake. By the by, when should we expect the armor and weapon upgrades on the fire trucks to be complete?
- subsection1h 14y agoNot 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 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4436366
- tayl0r 14y agoThe performance is terrible. Have the developers ever heard of smooth scrolling? How can any self respecting developer release this?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mman 14y agoThere 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
- ck2 14y agoWhy are the Milwaukee police more heavily armed than the soldiers in Afghanistan?
- rdl 14y agoThe 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 14y agoIt 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 14y agoIf 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 14y agoFrom the Hot Fuzz school of policing..
- yskchu 14y agoIf 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 14y agoAndroid 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 14y 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 14y agoThey 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 14y agoAs 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.
- tomc1985 14y agoThis runs at like 4fps on my MBP running Firefox 15 :-(
- EthanEtienne 14y agoMmmm, all I see is a beautiful site, I guess I'm brain washed.
- digitalengineer 14y agoOur police rides around on bicycles. But hey, I live in Holland. Short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBOnGuK7D0o http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBOnGuK7D0o
- some1else 14y agoThe 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 14y agoI 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 14y agoYes, we live in a police state over here. Please send help.
- Morg 14y agoAnd that is why designers should not be allowed to make websites. That thing is ultra-slow, not beautiful, billion pages scroll... dafuq.
- headShrinker 14y agoI 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.
- genwin 14y agoWell 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 14y agoA 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 14y agoOP, 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 14y agoOne site for which I'm definitely not enabling Javascript.