Survey Site Down

(another huge post - sorry, but it needs to be said)

We went to the "Customer Service" survey site late last night. We wanted to see what it was all about before we ripped it. It was up and functional then. Now it's down. We're wondering if that's because the UIC people are tweaking it, the UIC people were collecting a bunch of connected cash from the City and someone noticed the heat being brought, or (the latest rumor) HQ has shit canned the entire venture just like the "How's my Driving" debacle.

But thanks to the greatest readers on the planet, someone managed to type out a majority of the questions being asked by the UIC team:

• What was the race of the police officer you interacted with the most?
  
  What was the gender of the officer you interacted with the most?
  
  What was the age of the officer you interacted with the most?
  
  Did the officer listen to what you had to say?
  
  Do you feel the officer was fair and evenhanded?
  
  Was the officer polite?
  
  Do you feel the officer discriminated against you because of your race, gender, age, religion or sexual orientation?
  
  Did the officer seem concerned about your feelings?
  
  Was the officer patient and not rushed?
  
  Did the officer say or do anything that you considered insulting, disrespectful or rude?
  
  Did the officer take the matter seriously?
  
  Did the officer appear to know what he or she was doing?
  
  Did the officer answer your questions well?
  
  Did the officer explain what would happen next?
  
  Did the officer treat you more like a child or more like an adult?
  
  Did the officer provide you with useful tips to avoid this situation in the future?
  
  Did the officer blame you for what happened?

Talk about your loaded questions. Does everyone see exactly where these questions are headed? Citizens are being asked to profile the police officers. Remember those "Not in my Department" public service announcements? Well, don't worry - now the citizens will get to do "bias-based citizenship." And the second part of the survey?

• Are Chicago police officers doing a good job working with residents to solve local problems?
  
  Are Chicago police officers effective at fighting crime?
  
  Are Chicago police officers held accountable when they do something wrong?
  
  Would you be willing to help the Chicago police find someone who committed a crime in your neighborhood?
  
  Do you trust the Chicago Police Department to make decisions that are good for everyone in the city?
  
  Do you feel the Chicago Police Department today listens to people like yourself and then tries to improve its services?

What a bunch of horseshit questions those are. There seems to be more than a little bit of liberal slant there. How about holding the aldercreatures and the mayor responsible for the decisions and laws they pass? The police have next to nothing to do with any of that. What a bunch of crap.

And who do these idiots at UIC think they are judging the police? They are operating from a non-existent frame of reference. What police experience do they have? How many arrests have they made? How many courts have they attended? How many homicide scenes have they been at? How many battery victims have they met? How many CSA victims have they comforted? We'll bet the number approaches zero quite rapidly.

And here's another amazing bit of info about the site when it was up and running. Each question had 3 to 5 answers. The last two answers were "I do not remember that information" and "I prefer not to answer that question." Each of those answers dumped you to a screen that said something along the lines of "If you cannot answer the questions, you cannot participate in this survey. Thank you." And just below that?

• A "Return to Previous Question" button
  

Now we aren't highly paid university professors. We aren't even lowly paid graduate assistants. But we took a couple of classes once and we're pretty sure that letting people go back and tacitly permitting them to "remember" something they couldn't otherwise recall kind of invalidates the entire premise of a "spontaneous" recollection of their interaction with the police. People want to be helpful and people want to see what's at the end of the survey, so they are going to invent all kinds of BS. Especially if it feeds into their "revenge" feelings about how they just got a ticket they didn't deserve or their drunk uncle just got locked up for wandering around the yard in his birthday suit or the loud party next door turned down the music until the cops left and then cranked the stereo back up to "11."

We kind of hope that someone with half a fucking brain pulled the plug on this disaster. On the other hand, we hope it comes back soon, because we are going to do a post a week so everyone gets a chance to bury the UIC people in "data."