Gas prices rise, doing what no politician could every have the guts to do…raise prices (which if taxes could go to schools etc., instead of to gas co’s as they are now) so folks drive less.

Police get out of cars. Foot patrols are back! More cops take to bicycles, per their chief’s instructions! Readallaboutit!

Excerpt: “But one of the most popular fuel conservation measures has been the simplest: walking. Or as Chief Frank Hooper of Gainesville, Ga., put it in a memorandum, “walk and talk.”

The old-fashioned foot patrol has gone in and out of vogue. But in the last decade or so, the use of ever more refined mapping to pinpoint criminal hotspots has lent itself to the practice. Many departments at least pay lip service to the idea of community policing, in which officers get to know residents, develop contacts and tackle problems that fall outside the traditional realm of police work. Police chiefs who are particularly devoted to the community policing model say gasoline prices are helping to push their officers in that direction.”