Word: localized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...smugglers' traffic has flattened an area the size of a basketball court. It is littered with the yellow hessian bags used to carry contraband and the remains of smugglers' campfires. "I see the police about once a week," says Alfredo, an Indonesian petrol smuggler. Other smugglers say the regular local police patrol consists of two unarmed officers who walk to the clearing and turn back...
...southwest of Dili, there are signs of progress. While overworked Australian UNPOL officers complain good-naturedly about having to pay $200 out of their own pocket to buy a cell door, an off-duty PNTL task-force officer brings in a drunken man who has been terrorizing local market traders with a machete. Says an admiring UNPOL district commander, Paul Harvey: "There are PNTL officers here I would rather work with than some officers back home." The long-suffering people of East Timor hope his confidence is well founded...
...camps had concentrated populations beyond what the meager land could support. At one camp, staff were increasingly finding themselves mediating conflicts between refugees and local farmers, who complained the influx from Darfur had ruined their land. At another camp, Haroon Ibra Diar described how, when his people fled to Chad, the janjaweed were already employing their own macabre energy-saving measures. "They beheaded people and used their heads for firewood," he said. I asked him what the future held. "We are farmers," he replied. "But how can we farm here? There's not even enough water to drink...
...target an area where homes, schools or other premises suffer high burglary rates. Next, residents are given marking kits, paid for either by the company or out of government funds. Windows and street furniture in the area are then plastered with the SmartWater logo and the local media are roped in to help wage psychological warfare on local villains - typically, police will rig out a bait car with a spray to secure a headline conviction and make it known they will routinely scan suspects arrested for any reason. Last December, police in Peterborough sent greeting cards to convicted thieves...
...first foray outside Britain, police in Tallahassee, Florida conducted an 11-month field trial that resulted in a 33% drop in thefts. Project coordinator Greg Frost of the Tallahassee police was guardedly impressed, but wonders if other social factors were at work. "We were more actively engaged with the local crime-watch associations, for example," he says. "Maybe the neighbors were more effective at looking out for each other...