The police and the far right in Greece::a case study of police voting behaviour in Athens

The electoral advance of the far right party of Golden Dawn has left a clear mark on the Greek parliamentary elections of 2012. A less debated aspect of these results involves the extent of the electoral influence of Golden Dawn among police personnel. Using electoral data from two districts in Greece’s capital city, this paper explores the extent of that influence among major front line police units based in those localities. Our analysis obtains clear indications that Golden Dawn’s presence has been much more emphatic among police personnel than among the general public. These results warrant further exploration of this development, particularly in light of the possibility that far-right ideology may influence the character of everyday policing in Greece and the use of police discretion at the detriment of vulnerable or politically undesirable groups

Theorizing technologically mediated policing in smart cities: an ethnographic approach to sensing infrastructures in security practices

Smart digital infrastructures predicated on myriads of sensors distributed in the environment are often rendered as key to contemporary urban security governance to detect risky or suspicious entities before or during a criminal event takes place. At the same time, they often involve surveillance of urban environments, and thus not only criminals but also large groups of people and entities unrelated to criminal phenomena can end up under close inspection.This chapter makes its contribution on two levels. For one, it offers a theoretical framework to the research and conceptualization of the role of sensing infrastructures in urban security practices. It shows how insights from Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies can produce a nuanced understanding of the role of digital technologies in security practices, beyond standard conceptualizations of technology. Moreover, the chapter proposes a geological approach to enrich our repertoire of imagining and researching smart urban ecosystems.Secondly, the chapter contributes to a higher level of transparency of these practices by presenting the results of ethnographic research performed in a set of police organizations that employ sensing infrastructures and algorithmic profiling in their practices. The chapter draws empirically on research performed in the Dutch police, both at municipal and national levels with some additional material gathered in a constabulary in England. In these organizations, resource allocation decisions are often predicated on automated number plate recognition technology that processes data from an array of smart cameras distributed in the environment. In these ways together, the chapter highlights a set of normative issues with implications for the effectiveness and legitimacy of urban security (surveillance) practices in smart environments. Security and Global Affair

Police ethics and integrity: breaking the blue code of silence

This article analyzes evidence from a survey of police officers who were asked about their attitudes towards police corruption, unethical behaviour and minor infringements of police rules. It reveals that most of the officers who took part in the study regard certain actions, such as those involving the acquisition of goods or money, as much worse than behaviour involving illegal brutality or bending of the rules in order to protect colleagues from criminal proceedings. It also reveals that officers who responded to the survey are relatively unwilling to report unethical behaviour by colleagues unless there is some sort of acquisitive motive or outcome predicted. Overall the findings support the existence of cultural 'blue code' and 'Dirty Harry' beliefs systems surrounding police rule bending, but also provide an initial study of a small sample (n=275) that point to the value of further investigation

5-Carboxy-8-hydroxyquinoline is a broad spectrum 2-oxoglutarate oxygenase inhibitor which causes iron translocation

2-Oxoglutarate and iron dependent oxygenases are therapeutic targets for human diseases. Using a representative 2OG oxygenase panel, we compare the inhibitory activities of 5-carboxy-8-hydroxyquinoline (IOX1) and 4-carboxy-8-hydroxyquinoline (4C8HQ) with that of two other commonly used 2OG oxygenase inhibitors, N-oxalylglycine (NOG) and 2,4-pyridinedicarboxylic acid (2,4-PDCA). The results reveal that IOX1 has a broad spectrum of activity, as demonstrated by the inhibition of transcription factor hydroxylases, representatives of all 2OG dependent histone demethylase subfamilies, nucleic acid demethylases and γ-butyrobetaine hydroxylase. Cellular assays show that, unlike NOG and 2,4-PDCA, IOX1 is active against both cytosolic and nuclear 2OG oxygenases without ester derivatisation. Unexpectedly, crystallographic studies on these oxygenases demonstrate that IOX1, but not 4C8HQ, can cause translocation of the active site metal, revealing a rare example of protein ligand-induced metal movement. © 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry