From here:
As part of an effort to cut crime at the Alewife MBTA subway and bus station in Cambridge, transit police placed a cardboard cutout of a police officer in the bicycle cage. Hundreds of people use the racks daily.
Deputy Chief Robert Lenehan says the fake cop, along with video cameras and a new lock, has cut bike thefts by 67 percent.
It’s also a money saver. Lenehan estimates it would cost $200,000 a year to have an officer watch over the cage full-time.
The Anglican Church of Canada could learn something from this: replacing bishops with cardboard cut-out replicas would save Anglicans millions of dollars. No more high salaries; no more travel expenses; no more lawsuits.
Where we used stay in Florida, the St.Petersburg police realized huge savings, by placing fully uniformed police mannequins, in patrol cars, parked conspicuously at various intersections. Statistics showed a drop in speeding, traffic violations, and local theft.
Perhaps the ACoC could employ fully robed, blow-up mindless mannequins, that look good, and could make great normative variant pretend bishops.
Oh! They already have some of those.
Never mind.
But the ACoC is about the bishops and nothing else! Why would the bishops want to replace themselves? But worshippers … well, that’s another matter. Why not replace them with cardboard cutouts? Your church full, at a stroke!