Colorado Matters listeners share their feedback in "Loud & Clear." Recently, host Ryan Warner spoke to David Shipley, a former officer who oversees the Colorado Information Sharing Consortium. Warner asked about police body cameras that may one day have facial recognition technology and Shipley looks forward to that possibility. But Shipley said the technology isn't yet reliable enough to use widely in Colorado.
Steve Wilson, a privacy specialist based in Australia, wished to underscore that point. "In policing," he writes, "the false positive false negative tradeoff is a crucial problem. What's preferred? To miss the opportunity to spot a known wrongdoer? Or to mistake an innocent person for a felon? It's absolutely critical that biometric policing systems be designed to cope with the occasional mistakes."
We recently heard about the Colorado State Patrol's initiative to remove "accident" from our vocabulary -- at least when it comes to car crashes. The word "crash," they say, conveys preventability, but the word "accident" doesn't. Phil Weinstein of Boulder disagreed. He writes, "Inherent in the word 'accident' is the idea that someone made a mistake. That absolutely implies preventability."
Denver City planners want to encourage people stay longer at the 16th Street Mall. They have a host of ideas to accomplish that, including bringing in more attractive stores, and potentially relocating the MallRide shuttles. To that, Robin Doss of Wheat Ridge writes: "The majority of the shops on the 16th Street Mall don't make anyone want to linger. They have no soul. They're mere chains where people hurry in and hurry out. And frankly since you can get them many other places in Denver, why deal with traffic and parking downtown? Give people a reason to linger and they will."
CPR's Nathan Heffel told us about the possible return of the Winter Park Ski Train. Then Nicole Dewell, of Eagle, told us about how she fell in love on the train more than 17 years ago: "I had moved here from New York and was eager to meet people for skiing and I was driving up to Winter Park every weekend back and forth over that wretched pass by myself and needed a cheap way to get up to the mountains. [I] looked for a job on the train and ended up working for Pour la France! caterers as a second job on the weekend. That's where I met my current husband Andy Dewell, and fell in love... we're hoping at some point we can take our two daughters who are avid ski racers up on the train so they can see where it all started!"
We also spoke with journalist Rinker Buck, who recently traveled the Oregon Trail by covered wagon. A listener in Grand Junction wrote to tell us about another crossing -- in 1993. Morris Carter, of Wyoming, took five wagons, four daughters and paying tourists. But Buck stands by his claim that his was the first authentic Oregon Trail trip in over a century. He says Carter's trek was a bit cushier than his own because it came with motorized support, and showers.
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