Peter Moskos has an interesting post at his blog. In New York City if a policeman answers a 911 call for a person who's waiting for an ambulance she has to enter the person's data into her phone which results in a check of the database for outstanding warrants. Moskos argues that's wrong and bad: people will associate EMTs with law enforcement and avoid calling for help.
Towards the end he notes a separate issue--in Baltimore every time the police stopped someone, they ran a check for outstanding warrants. In NYC, they don't. Moskos traces the difference to a difference in technology: apparently in NYC multiple precincts share a radio band; in Baltimore each precinct has its own band. So, as an economist would predict, there's rationing of a scarce resource in NYC but not in Baltimore.
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