The Postal Service is Shrinking Fast

The United States Postal Service is lobbying Congress hard to reduce its number of delivery days from the current six a week to five a week. The USPS wants to eliminate Saturday mail deliveries in order to reduce costs and cope with less revenue from the dwindling number of pieces of "Snail Mail" that the public sends out in the new age of E-mails and texting options. In the year 2000 the postal service handled a record number of pieces of mail. That year it was over 55.1 billion. In 2010 the projected number is set to be about 29.8 billion. The argument against the reduction in the weekly number of delivery days has to do with some of the things that the public receives through the mail that they cannot do without such as prescription drugs, Social Security checks, and getting their bills on time. Those in favor of the change argue that most people wont miss the reduced amounts of junk mail that may occur and that nowadays many people pay their bills online and can have their SSI checks directly transferred to their bank accounts and such. The Postal Service is expected to suffer a loss this year of over 8.5 billion dollars due to the reduced volume of mail and by reducing the delivery days to 5 instead of 6 it would go a good deal of the way towards reducing that operating loss. If Congress approves the change (which is required) the USPS will be able to cut its work force of over 600,000 employees by about 80,000.

NYPD Fighting Crime By Taking Fewer Shots

If you are a cop in the NYPD you know that there is the possibility that at some point you may have to take a shot at a suspect in your career. Over the last several years, decades even, that likelihood has become less and less likely. In 2009 the NYPD set a record for the fewest shots that it has ever fired at suspects in it's history for a twelve month period since they started keeping records of it in 1971. In 09 The NYPD fired 296 total rounds from their guns which resulted in the killing of 12 suspects. This broke their previous record low of 352 rounds in 2004.
It has not always been this way. In the past the NYPD has had to use many more rounds in order to police the city streets. Back in 1971 they fired a total of 2113 rounds and ended up killing 93 total suspects. Since 1971 the trend has definitely been downward. In 1995 they fired 1728 total rounds. In 1997 1040. In 2000 that number dropped to 504. In 2005 it spiked up a bit and rose to 616. By 2008 it had dropped back down to 364 which was just an average of 1 bullet a day.
The reason the numbers trend downward over the years may have to do with less crime on the streets but may also have to do with policy changes in the department. Back in 1971 when the NYPD fired over 2000 shots police officers were in the habit of firing "Warning Shots" at suspects which is a policy that the NYPD no longer practices.