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Crowdsourcing stories on gun sales in Massachusetts
By adamg on Sun, 01/13/2019 - 1:06pm
The Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism and MuckRock have copies of lots and lots of documents related to gun sales in the state. They're looking for help to look at them and uncover interesting stuff.
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For what purpose?
For what purpose?
An organization circumventing
An organization circumventing paying the minimum or a living wage to investigative reporters or professional researchers?
I agree
I don't understand the purpose of this effort. Is it anti-gun? Anti-corruption? Anti-police? I read and re-read the article and still don't understand the purpose. Maybe I am just thick...
$aving$...NOT
Try to donate free ammo - not politically correct. Walmart was shamed into taking back their last ammo donation to a PD in MA
That true?
If it is, one need not try to make a living wage argument to discredit Walmart anymore. Donating (not even selling!) ammo to a sanctioned killing monopoly should be enough to prove that the Waltons straight up don't give a (expletive).
Least they have a much better self-awareness of how to protect their interests than most other people do.
citations needed
citations needed
Police are wrong is a foregone conclusion?
I have witnessed the press/police relationship deteriorate from a time when seasoned reporters and photographers could walk into any police station or barracks, have a cigarette with the cops and be allowed access to reports, files and just about anything they wanted. Then a beer at Foley's after work as the Globe and Herald trucks dropped off bundles of the first edition. Now it appears from the syllabus that our student journalists are taught that the "police are always wrong" is a foregone conclusion.
The purchase of goods by the state, local governments and quasi-public agencies (MBTA, Massport, MWRA) is strictly regulated in this state. I'm not sure what the current minimum dollar amount is for competitive bidding and posting of "invitation to bid" in the local newspaper but I see these postings all the time in the legal notices.
If these are inexpensive purchases then they may be exempt but I know supplying something like a police car (or a whole fleet for State Police or a big city) often switches among the three or four vendors in MA who are licensed Ford dealers but specialize in a seamless installation of the lights, siren, radios, on board computers etc. Those contracts are watched like a hawk by the vendors that specialize in that stuff. Same for when a large department is outfitted with new sidearms every ten years. Glock, Sig Sauer, Smith and Wesson and many others are eager to bid. The state and any decent sized city/town has a purchasing agent or procurement officer so blame them. The police have little say in what they get for equipment.
My prediction
is that in a few years' time, there will be a similar, "grass roots" initiative about shaming the police departments around here for not buying electric cruisers.
Duly Noted
Of course, when it never happens, you will claim that you never predicted this, right?