It was easier getting in the car than getting out of it, but this inept hairy burglar finally found a way to do it.
NOT YOUR AVERAGE BEAR
By Jerry Reynolds
The Car Pro Weekly
September 8, 2011
A bear in Lake Tahoe broke into a Toyota Prius parked in a local driveway. He got angry, as bears do, and shifted the Prius into neutral - though probably not on purpose. Then, the hybrid rolled into a neighbor's house.
Local cops say they've never seen a bear open a car door before, but alarmists among us believe bears are learning how to mess with our stuff by surreptitiously watching us and mimicking our behavior.
After wedging itself inside the car, the bear became stuck. Frustrated, hungry and mad, it kicked, scratched, bit and tore at the interior of the hybrid, trying to force a way out as easily as it found its way in.
In its behind-the-wheel rampage, the bear ripped open the seats, bit a chunk out of the steering wheel and damaged the Prius' gear box, shifting the car into neutral.
From the safety of the cabin, the awakened family watched helplessly as the commandeered Prius slowly started rolling out of the driveway.
The car was totaled, but the bear wasn't, and he escaped from the Prius and ran back into the woods.
Friday, September 09, 2011
Thursday, September 08, 2011
IS ROOM 203 REALLY WORTH $49 MILLION?
It sure looks great. And since it cost $49 million you would expect nothing less than praise from the police commissioner for what’s being done in Room 203 with its two-story-tall video monitor. But how effective is it really?
INSIDE LOOK AT NYPD’S $49M NERVE CENTER FOR FIGHTING CRIME
By Joe Kemp
New York Daily News
September 6, 2011
Walk into room 203 at police headquarters at any hour and you'll find several detectives hunched over work stations perched in front of a two-story-tall video monitor.
The screen displays diagrams and city maps as detectives in the Real Time Crime Center - the NYPD's high-tech crimefighting hub - comb through billions of records to help investigators track down violent criminals.
The Daily News was given a tour of the Police Department's so-called nerve center, which recently moved to the second floor of 1 Police Plaza after a face-lift.
The renovation of the Joint Operations Center, which includes the crime center, cost $49 million, 60% of which was federal money.
"It's a 2-4/7 operation," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "The detectives here are pushing information out to their fellow investigators in the field."
The center, which first opened on the eighth floor in July 2005, serves as an information warehouse with several growing databases that give officers the ability to sift through billions of records in a short time.
As soon as a violent crime is reported, investigators assigned to the case begin working with detectives at the RTCC, so cops at the scene can "hit the ground running," Kelly said.
"We do a whole analysis of the area," said Capt. Michael Godek, executive officer of the RTCC. "We take a lot of valuable information ... and we connect the dots."
And any clue to a perpetrator's identity helps.
The databases are filled with "thousands upon thousands" of entries - updated each day - that include criminals' nicknames, tattoos, addresses, arrest history and even their dental records.
"We find everything about you, and we give that to detectives," Godek said. "And we give them additional leads."
Most recently, detectives working in the state-of-the-art center helped to identify the gunman wanted for shooting two children, one critically, in the Bronx.
Luis Moore, 23, turned himself in to police less than a day after he allegedly shot 2-year-old Patience Boyd in the head and wounded 6-year-old Jayla Rodriguez on Aug. 29.
Moore, upset over a $400 pot debt, was gunning for Ricky Rodriguez, 20, who was hit in the lower back, police sources said.
Cops released Moore's mug shot to the press within hours of the shooting, after detectives at the Real Time Crime Center helped finger him as a suspect.
Quick collars are a key factor in keeping crime down in the city, Kelly said.
"We deal with a recidivist population," he said. "The quicker we take them off the street, the sooner we stop them from committing another crime."
INSIDE LOOK AT NYPD’S $49M NERVE CENTER FOR FIGHTING CRIME
By Joe Kemp
New York Daily News
September 6, 2011
Walk into room 203 at police headquarters at any hour and you'll find several detectives hunched over work stations perched in front of a two-story-tall video monitor.
The screen displays diagrams and city maps as detectives in the Real Time Crime Center - the NYPD's high-tech crimefighting hub - comb through billions of records to help investigators track down violent criminals.
The Daily News was given a tour of the Police Department's so-called nerve center, which recently moved to the second floor of 1 Police Plaza after a face-lift.
The renovation of the Joint Operations Center, which includes the crime center, cost $49 million, 60% of which was federal money.
"It's a 2-4/7 operation," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. "The detectives here are pushing information out to their fellow investigators in the field."
The center, which first opened on the eighth floor in July 2005, serves as an information warehouse with several growing databases that give officers the ability to sift through billions of records in a short time.
As soon as a violent crime is reported, investigators assigned to the case begin working with detectives at the RTCC, so cops at the scene can "hit the ground running," Kelly said.
"We do a whole analysis of the area," said Capt. Michael Godek, executive officer of the RTCC. "We take a lot of valuable information ... and we connect the dots."
And any clue to a perpetrator's identity helps.
The databases are filled with "thousands upon thousands" of entries - updated each day - that include criminals' nicknames, tattoos, addresses, arrest history and even their dental records.
"We find everything about you, and we give that to detectives," Godek said. "And we give them additional leads."
Most recently, detectives working in the state-of-the-art center helped to identify the gunman wanted for shooting two children, one critically, in the Bronx.
Luis Moore, 23, turned himself in to police less than a day after he allegedly shot 2-year-old Patience Boyd in the head and wounded 6-year-old Jayla Rodriguez on Aug. 29.
Moore, upset over a $400 pot debt, was gunning for Ricky Rodriguez, 20, who was hit in the lower back, police sources said.
Cops released Moore's mug shot to the press within hours of the shooting, after detectives at the Real Time Crime Center helped finger him as a suspect.
Quick collars are a key factor in keeping crime down in the city, Kelly said.
"We deal with a recidivist population," he said. "The quicker we take them off the street, the sooner we stop them from committing another crime."
SHOULD YOU HELP YOUR KIDS WITH HOMEWORK?
Hmm, this goes against all the advice put out by experts in the field of education. And it also flies in the face of the experts who blame the poor performance of black children on their parents because they don’t involve themselves in their kids’ schooling.
HOW HANDS-ON PARENTS WILL RAISE DEPENDENT DEPENDENTS
By John Rosemond
Jewish World Review
September 7, 2011
As the new school year begins, it's time for me, once again, to make my perennial case against parental involvement in homework.
First, it is significant to note that as recently as 40 years ago, little more than a generation, the rare parent helped with homework. That would be 1971, when scholastic achievement was significantly higher than it is today. (In addition, average expenditure per pupil, in real dollars, was lower and the teacher/pupil ratio was higher at every grade, but those are future columns.) Furthermore, I believe it is more than coincidence that when parents did not render regular assistance with homework, children emancipated more successfully and much earlier than is the case today.
Second, the notion that nightly parental involvement and micro-management (although school administrators and teachers will not call it that) of homework is a good thing arose from studies done in the 1970s that found that the parents of high-achieving kids newly arrived from Vietnam and other Asian countries actively participated in homework sessions. Somehow, it got lost that this was a main means for these folks to learn English, develop basic business math skills, and accelerate their assimilation. The practice was functional in that parochial context. The mistake was to assume that what was good for one cultural group would be good for all.
There is no evidence that actual achievement is enhanced through parental involvement in homework. After all, achievement has gone down as parental involvement has gone up. Grades improve, yes, but that is because parents make sure homework is returned to school virtually without error. And they drill their kids on upcoming test material to the saturation point. And then they are known, many of them, to complain if teachers do not give the grades they think their kids deserve. By that point, it is hard to tell whose grades they are.
In the process of all this involvement, kids fail to learn basic study skills, are deprived of the inestimable benefits of trial-and-error, and become increasingly dependent on parental help as parents, now heavily invested, become increasingly anxious about grades and take them as a sign of their own competence. That is called co-dependency. Meanwhile, teachers become increasingly dependent on parents to help them teach. I know of no other professional group that expects other people to help them with their job and not be paid for it.
The upshot of all this is that many college students are doing homework with their parents over the phone and online nearly every night, and many college professors have felt the wrath of parents who do not accept the grades they feel they and their children deserve. And employers even tell me that many of today's young people cannot seem to make independent decisions without consulting -- guess who?
"What do you recommend, John?" I was recently asked, to which I replied that I recommend parents take interest in their children's homework and make themselves available for limited assistance, but that their children's homework be, well, their children's homework — a not-so-radical notion.
A mother recently told me that on the first day of this school year, her eighth-grade son came home with a note from the math teacher informing parents of their homework responsibilities, which boiled down to one word: nightly. Because she has no intention of participating in this group-think, she asked my advice.
Write the teacher back, I said, along the following lines: "My child should be fully capable of doing whatever assignments you give him independently, and I expect him to do his best. If his best is not THE best, so be it. I want him to discover, on his own, his strengths and weaknesses so that he does not go to college and waste time and money discovering that, without my help, he is not a good math student. Please know that you will always have my full support if my child's performance or behavior becomes a problem."
Over the years, I have recommended this same response to many parents.
From what I am able to gather, their kids seem to do just fine, and in many cases, better.
HOW HANDS-ON PARENTS WILL RAISE DEPENDENT DEPENDENTS
By John Rosemond
Jewish World Review
September 7, 2011
As the new school year begins, it's time for me, once again, to make my perennial case against parental involvement in homework.
First, it is significant to note that as recently as 40 years ago, little more than a generation, the rare parent helped with homework. That would be 1971, when scholastic achievement was significantly higher than it is today. (In addition, average expenditure per pupil, in real dollars, was lower and the teacher/pupil ratio was higher at every grade, but those are future columns.) Furthermore, I believe it is more than coincidence that when parents did not render regular assistance with homework, children emancipated more successfully and much earlier than is the case today.
Second, the notion that nightly parental involvement and micro-management (although school administrators and teachers will not call it that) of homework is a good thing arose from studies done in the 1970s that found that the parents of high-achieving kids newly arrived from Vietnam and other Asian countries actively participated in homework sessions. Somehow, it got lost that this was a main means for these folks to learn English, develop basic business math skills, and accelerate their assimilation. The practice was functional in that parochial context. The mistake was to assume that what was good for one cultural group would be good for all.
There is no evidence that actual achievement is enhanced through parental involvement in homework. After all, achievement has gone down as parental involvement has gone up. Grades improve, yes, but that is because parents make sure homework is returned to school virtually without error. And they drill their kids on upcoming test material to the saturation point. And then they are known, many of them, to complain if teachers do not give the grades they think their kids deserve. By that point, it is hard to tell whose grades they are.
In the process of all this involvement, kids fail to learn basic study skills, are deprived of the inestimable benefits of trial-and-error, and become increasingly dependent on parental help as parents, now heavily invested, become increasingly anxious about grades and take them as a sign of their own competence. That is called co-dependency. Meanwhile, teachers become increasingly dependent on parents to help them teach. I know of no other professional group that expects other people to help them with their job and not be paid for it.
The upshot of all this is that many college students are doing homework with their parents over the phone and online nearly every night, and many college professors have felt the wrath of parents who do not accept the grades they feel they and their children deserve. And employers even tell me that many of today's young people cannot seem to make independent decisions without consulting -- guess who?
"What do you recommend, John?" I was recently asked, to which I replied that I recommend parents take interest in their children's homework and make themselves available for limited assistance, but that their children's homework be, well, their children's homework — a not-so-radical notion.
A mother recently told me that on the first day of this school year, her eighth-grade son came home with a note from the math teacher informing parents of their homework responsibilities, which boiled down to one word: nightly. Because she has no intention of participating in this group-think, she asked my advice.
Write the teacher back, I said, along the following lines: "My child should be fully capable of doing whatever assignments you give him independently, and I expect him to do his best. If his best is not THE best, so be it. I want him to discover, on his own, his strengths and weaknesses so that he does not go to college and waste time and money discovering that, without my help, he is not a good math student. Please know that you will always have my full support if my child's performance or behavior becomes a problem."
Over the years, I have recommended this same response to many parents.
From what I am able to gather, their kids seem to do just fine, and in many cases, better.
YOU KILLED MY BROTHER
A great plot for a movie.
LAWYERS GIVE OPENING STATEMENTS IN PRISON CELL-KILLING TRIAL
by Andy Furillo
The Sacramento Bee
September 6, 2011
A prosecutor said today that a prison inmate was able to "trick" his victim into becoming his cellmate so he could avenge the murder of his brother.
Inmate Robert Grajeda Canchola had befriended Julian Barajas on the yard at California State Prison, Sacramento, seven years ago to set him up for the Sept. 20, 2004, torture killing in the cell they shared, Deputy District Attorney Roxanne Ball said.
"The evidence will show this was a killing for revenge," Ball told the Sacramento Superior Court jury.
She said Canchola, now 38, who is being tried under his prison name of Robert Rodriguez, arranged for a cell switch to get back at Barajas for the 1993 murder of Antonio Canchola, the defendant's younger brother.
Barajas, who was 27 when he died, was convicted in the 1997 shooting death of Antonio Canchola, 16, at a party in Montebello, a Los Angeles suburb.
In his opening statement, Canchola's lawyer, Russell W. Miller, said the trial will be about why Canchola strangled Barajas.
Miller said state correctional officer Celso P. Zamudio selected Barajas to be Canchola's cellmate. Miller also said his client suffered 10 stab wounds and that the evidence in trial will show there was a struggle between the two.
LAWYERS GIVE OPENING STATEMENTS IN PRISON CELL-KILLING TRIAL
by Andy Furillo
The Sacramento Bee
September 6, 2011
A prosecutor said today that a prison inmate was able to "trick" his victim into becoming his cellmate so he could avenge the murder of his brother.
Inmate Robert Grajeda Canchola had befriended Julian Barajas on the yard at California State Prison, Sacramento, seven years ago to set him up for the Sept. 20, 2004, torture killing in the cell they shared, Deputy District Attorney Roxanne Ball said.
"The evidence will show this was a killing for revenge," Ball told the Sacramento Superior Court jury.
She said Canchola, now 38, who is being tried under his prison name of Robert Rodriguez, arranged for a cell switch to get back at Barajas for the 1993 murder of Antonio Canchola, the defendant's younger brother.
Barajas, who was 27 when he died, was convicted in the 1997 shooting death of Antonio Canchola, 16, at a party in Montebello, a Los Angeles suburb.
In his opening statement, Canchola's lawyer, Russell W. Miller, said the trial will be about why Canchola strangled Barajas.
Miller said state correctional officer Celso P. Zamudio selected Barajas to be Canchola's cellmate. Miller also said his client suffered 10 stab wounds and that the evidence in trial will show there was a struggle between the two.
DUMB ABBAS ISN'T
The defenders of Obama insist that he has been a steadfast friend of Israel. I still believe Obama will be biting his tongue when the U.S. casts a veto in the UN Security Council when the vote for Palestinian Statehood comes up. Whatever pro-Israel positions Obama has taken are based on the question I’ve raised before: How do you spell THE JEWISH VOTE?
PA TURNS TABLES ON OBAMA, USES HIS SPEECH TO BACK UN BID
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
IsraelNationalNews.com
September 7, 2011
The Palestinian Authority has turned the tables on President Barack Obama, using an old speech to support its campaign for the United Nations recognition that he opposes.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his aides have launched an all-out media and diplomatic assault ahead of this month’s scheduled Arab League request to the United Nations that it declare the PA an independent state based on its unilateral demands.
President Obama has been adamant that Abbas reach his goal through the American-sponsored “peace process” that calls for direct talks with Israel.
However, the president, in his usual smooth and convincing oratory, told the U.N. General Assembly last year, "When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel.”
A PA radio commercial states, "If he said it, he must have meant it.”
“The ad is a reflection of Palestinian frustration with the Obama administration,” Reuters reported Wednesday.
Though the U.S. president's remarks were hedged, Abbas has described the statement as the "Obama promise."
The president’s remarks were taken out of context, but the campaign is bound to rub salt in the wounds of American Jews who voted for President Obama based on his promises not to divide Jerusalem, bind the Palestinian Authority to former agreements and halt incitement, and not enforce an agreement on Israel.
The commercial ignores Abbas’ refusal to uphold his pledge to sit down with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu if he were to freeze building for Jews in Judea and Samaria. After the freeze was implemented two years ago, Abbas argued that it was not extensive enough because it did not include all parts of Jerusalem that the PA claims as part of its hoped-for state.
Despite Abbas’ promoting himself in Western media as opposing terrorist attacks, the new PA campaign also includes comments by Yasser Arafat, whom Abbas replaced after his death.
"We are reminding (Obama) of what he said in the United Nations in 2010," Ahmad Zaki El-Areedi, director of PA’s official Voice of Palestine radio told Reuters.
Besides the media blitz and a globe-trotting tour to win backing for UN recognition, Abbas is promoting a “flying seat” campaign that includes peaceful rallies, including one in New York.
Pro-Israel groups are planning a massive rally in New York September 20 to protest the Arab initiative to the United Nations.
PA TURNS TABLES ON OBAMA, USES HIS SPEECH TO BACK UN BID
By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
IsraelNationalNews.com
September 7, 2011
The Palestinian Authority has turned the tables on President Barack Obama, using an old speech to support its campaign for the United Nations recognition that he opposes.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and his aides have launched an all-out media and diplomatic assault ahead of this month’s scheduled Arab League request to the United Nations that it declare the PA an independent state based on its unilateral demands.
President Obama has been adamant that Abbas reach his goal through the American-sponsored “peace process” that calls for direct talks with Israel.
However, the president, in his usual smooth and convincing oratory, told the U.N. General Assembly last year, "When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel.”
A PA radio commercial states, "If he said it, he must have meant it.”
“The ad is a reflection of Palestinian frustration with the Obama administration,” Reuters reported Wednesday.
Though the U.S. president's remarks were hedged, Abbas has described the statement as the "Obama promise."
The president’s remarks were taken out of context, but the campaign is bound to rub salt in the wounds of American Jews who voted for President Obama based on his promises not to divide Jerusalem, bind the Palestinian Authority to former agreements and halt incitement, and not enforce an agreement on Israel.
The commercial ignores Abbas’ refusal to uphold his pledge to sit down with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu if he were to freeze building for Jews in Judea and Samaria. After the freeze was implemented two years ago, Abbas argued that it was not extensive enough because it did not include all parts of Jerusalem that the PA claims as part of its hoped-for state.
Despite Abbas’ promoting himself in Western media as opposing terrorist attacks, the new PA campaign also includes comments by Yasser Arafat, whom Abbas replaced after his death.
"We are reminding (Obama) of what he said in the United Nations in 2010," Ahmad Zaki El-Areedi, director of PA’s official Voice of Palestine radio told Reuters.
Besides the media blitz and a globe-trotting tour to win backing for UN recognition, Abbas is promoting a “flying seat” campaign that includes peaceful rallies, including one in New York.
Pro-Israel groups are planning a massive rally in New York September 20 to protest the Arab initiative to the United Nations.
DARK DAYS AHEAD FOR TV WEATHERMAN
I predict dark and cloudy days ahead for this Arkansas weatherman.
TV WEATHERMAN AWAKENS IN HOT TUB NEXT TO NAKED DEAD MAN WITH ‘DOG COLLAR’ AROUND HIS NECK AFTER DRUG AND ALCOHOL-FUELED PARTY
By Thomas Durante
Mail Online
September 7, 2011
It may be part of his job to predict when a storm is on its way, but he never saw this one coming.
Police in Arkansas said Tuesday that they are investigating the death of a man found in an unfilled hot tub with a sleeping TV weatherman.
Maumelle police officers were called to the home of Christopher Barbour Monday morning where they found the body in the hot tub.
Mr Barbour, told cops that the dead man and meteorologist Brett Cummins of Little Rock station KARK, were guests at his home Sunday night for Labor Day weekend party.
Police were told that the trio was drinking and snorting drugs.
Mr Barbour said that he awoke the next morning to Cummins' loud snoring, and found the weatherman in his hot tub with the nude body of Dexter Williams lying next to him.
Williams' face was discoloured and he had with a chain around his neck - described by police as a 'dog collar.'
There were also traces of blood in the hot tub, police said.
Upon awakening, Mr Cummins became ill and vomited on the carpet. He later left the home, but returned to give his statement to police, which was not released.
Maumelle police Lt Jim Hansard said investigators haven't ruled out foul play in the death of Williams, 24, of Mountain Pine.
Lt Hansard told MailOnline that an autopsy has being conducted on Williams' body, the results of which are pending.
No arrests had been made in the case.
According to a report from Maumelle police, the Mr Barbour said he invited Mr Cummins to his home Sunday evening.
He showed up with his Mr Williams, a friend, and they started drinking and snorting drugs, Mr Barbour told police.
At some point, they got into a hot tub and continued drinking, according to the police report.
Police are reportedly working with local prosecutor JaNan Davis to determine what charges, if any, might be filed.
Cummins did not respond to a phone message left Tuesday.
Mike Vaughn, the general manager for KARK, said Cummins reported to work Monday, but never went on the air.
He said the station received the report about Williams' death and was working to figure out what happened, but he declined to comment further.
During a Tuesday news broadcast, KARK-TV anchor Bob Clausen said: 'Our meteorologist Brett Cummins was at the home at the time of the death and we felt we should share this with you our viewers.
'Brett will not be on the air while he is mourning the loss of his friend. Our thoughts naturally are with Brett and of course with the family and friends of Dexter Williams.'
TV WEATHERMAN AWAKENS IN HOT TUB NEXT TO NAKED DEAD MAN WITH ‘DOG COLLAR’ AROUND HIS NECK AFTER DRUG AND ALCOHOL-FUELED PARTY
By Thomas Durante
Mail Online
September 7, 2011
It may be part of his job to predict when a storm is on its way, but he never saw this one coming.
Police in Arkansas said Tuesday that they are investigating the death of a man found in an unfilled hot tub with a sleeping TV weatherman.
Maumelle police officers were called to the home of Christopher Barbour Monday morning where they found the body in the hot tub.
Mr Barbour, told cops that the dead man and meteorologist Brett Cummins of Little Rock station KARK, were guests at his home Sunday night for Labor Day weekend party.
Police were told that the trio was drinking and snorting drugs.
Mr Barbour said that he awoke the next morning to Cummins' loud snoring, and found the weatherman in his hot tub with the nude body of Dexter Williams lying next to him.
Williams' face was discoloured and he had with a chain around his neck - described by police as a 'dog collar.'
There were also traces of blood in the hot tub, police said.
Upon awakening, Mr Cummins became ill and vomited on the carpet. He later left the home, but returned to give his statement to police, which was not released.
Maumelle police Lt Jim Hansard said investigators haven't ruled out foul play in the death of Williams, 24, of Mountain Pine.
Lt Hansard told MailOnline that an autopsy has being conducted on Williams' body, the results of which are pending.
No arrests had been made in the case.
According to a report from Maumelle police, the Mr Barbour said he invited Mr Cummins to his home Sunday evening.
He showed up with his Mr Williams, a friend, and they started drinking and snorting drugs, Mr Barbour told police.
At some point, they got into a hot tub and continued drinking, according to the police report.
Police are reportedly working with local prosecutor JaNan Davis to determine what charges, if any, might be filed.
Cummins did not respond to a phone message left Tuesday.
Mike Vaughn, the general manager for KARK, said Cummins reported to work Monday, but never went on the air.
He said the station received the report about Williams' death and was working to figure out what happened, but he declined to comment further.
During a Tuesday news broadcast, KARK-TV anchor Bob Clausen said: 'Our meteorologist Brett Cummins was at the home at the time of the death and we felt we should share this with you our viewers.
'Brett will not be on the air while he is mourning the loss of his friend. Our thoughts naturally are with Brett and of course with the family and friends of Dexter Williams.'
BUNDLE OR BUNGLE?
I have both my phone and internet service with AT&T. Almost every day I get snail-mail or e-mails from AT&T trying to get me to sign up for their U-verse phone, internet and TV bundle. I also get snail-mail from Comcast soliciting me for their bundle. They all offer a low monthly introductory charge for x-number of months, but that is only for basic TV programming. Sometimes they throw in premium channels like HBO and Showtime free for three months. But when those introductory periods expire, the monthly charges take a huge leap upwards.
COMBINING TV, INTERNET AND PHONE WAS A MISTAKE
By Ken Hoffman
Houston Chronicle
September 6,2011
You know those TV commercials where the cable companies want us to buy cable TV, Internet and phone service for one low price?
Is that called bundling … or bungling?
Saturday night, all three went out. The flashing green lights on my modem dimmed, replaced by one red light where the box said "service."
This happened right as I was settling in front of the TV to watch Novak Djokovic, the world's No. 1 tennis player, take the court at the U.S. Open. In a blink - no TV.
As John McEnroe would scream … you cannot be serious!
The TV screen showed a message saying "Picture is lost" and offered a few suggestions on how to fix the problem. One of them was, "contact us at www.so-and-so.com." I couldn't do that because my Internet was out.
Or I should call them at 1-800-etc. I couldn't do that on my home phone because that was out, too.
Tell me the advantages of bundling TV, Internet and phone again?
My cellphone still worked to make phone calls, but it wouldn't connect to the Internet or let me email. I had to call a friend to look up the cable company's repair hotline.
"We are experiencing higher than normal volume of calls; please stay on the line for the next available representative."
The recorded message should have said, "stay on the line for the next available outsourced job in India." That always ends up bad for me. We're both speaking English, but we're not speaking the same language. I don't talk tech.
While I was on hold for 40 minutes, I kept hearing recorded blurbs from the cable company saying, "We'll change the way you watch TV" and "TV will never be the same." Can't argue with that. Usually I see a picture.
When "Bobby" (yeah, right, your name is Bobby) picked up, he explained that there was an outage in my neighborhood and it would be fixed within an hour. I didn't want to wait on hold again, so I asked him to call me back in an hour to check.
He never called back. Typical man; they never call when they say they will.
It took 40 minutes, but I eventually did talk to a living human being, even though he was 8,000 miles away. Sometimes you get lost in a maze of recorded "If this is your home phone, press 1" messages and there's no escape.
It's easier to just change cable companies. Then you'll get a salesperson who'll promise anything to sign you up.
It's like that old Rodney Dangerfield joke: "I was in a store and wanted to use the restroom. But there was a sign, "Employees Only." I had to go pretty bad, so I applied for a job."
An hour passed, and still no Internet, TV, phone or call from Bobby. I had to write a few emails, so I got on my bike and crossed Buffalo Speedway into the snobby part of town, where my cellphone picked up the Internet. They should have passport control on Buffalo Speedway.
I wrote emails with one hand as I pedaled around. I'm not sure that's even legal. I looked like a burglar casing a neighborhood.
The next day, a service technician came to my house and said a wire was incorrectly attached to my modem and that blew out my connection. So it wasn't a neighborhood outage. But if that's true, how come my cellphone didn't pick up the Internet until I was several blocks from my home?
It doesn't matter. The technician got me up and running, and I'm fully empowered with TV and Internet. I don't know why I have a land-line phone. I never use it.
The night before, as I was riding and emailing, I met a woman walking her dog. I told her about my blackout at home. She said, "That's why we don't bundle the TV, phone and Internet - in case one of them goes out, they all don't go out."
Smart.
COMBINING TV, INTERNET AND PHONE WAS A MISTAKE
By Ken Hoffman
Houston Chronicle
September 6,2011
You know those TV commercials where the cable companies want us to buy cable TV, Internet and phone service for one low price?
Is that called bundling … or bungling?
Saturday night, all three went out. The flashing green lights on my modem dimmed, replaced by one red light where the box said "service."
This happened right as I was settling in front of the TV to watch Novak Djokovic, the world's No. 1 tennis player, take the court at the U.S. Open. In a blink - no TV.
As John McEnroe would scream … you cannot be serious!
The TV screen showed a message saying "Picture is lost" and offered a few suggestions on how to fix the problem. One of them was, "contact us at www.so-and-so.com." I couldn't do that because my Internet was out.
Or I should call them at 1-800-etc. I couldn't do that on my home phone because that was out, too.
Tell me the advantages of bundling TV, Internet and phone again?
My cellphone still worked to make phone calls, but it wouldn't connect to the Internet or let me email. I had to call a friend to look up the cable company's repair hotline.
"We are experiencing higher than normal volume of calls; please stay on the line for the next available representative."
The recorded message should have said, "stay on the line for the next available outsourced job in India." That always ends up bad for me. We're both speaking English, but we're not speaking the same language. I don't talk tech.
While I was on hold for 40 minutes, I kept hearing recorded blurbs from the cable company saying, "We'll change the way you watch TV" and "TV will never be the same." Can't argue with that. Usually I see a picture.
When "Bobby" (yeah, right, your name is Bobby) picked up, he explained that there was an outage in my neighborhood and it would be fixed within an hour. I didn't want to wait on hold again, so I asked him to call me back in an hour to check.
He never called back. Typical man; they never call when they say they will.
It took 40 minutes, but I eventually did talk to a living human being, even though he was 8,000 miles away. Sometimes you get lost in a maze of recorded "If this is your home phone, press 1" messages and there's no escape.
It's easier to just change cable companies. Then you'll get a salesperson who'll promise anything to sign you up.
It's like that old Rodney Dangerfield joke: "I was in a store and wanted to use the restroom. But there was a sign, "Employees Only." I had to go pretty bad, so I applied for a job."
An hour passed, and still no Internet, TV, phone or call from Bobby. I had to write a few emails, so I got on my bike and crossed Buffalo Speedway into the snobby part of town, where my cellphone picked up the Internet. They should have passport control on Buffalo Speedway.
I wrote emails with one hand as I pedaled around. I'm not sure that's even legal. I looked like a burglar casing a neighborhood.
The next day, a service technician came to my house and said a wire was incorrectly attached to my modem and that blew out my connection. So it wasn't a neighborhood outage. But if that's true, how come my cellphone didn't pick up the Internet until I was several blocks from my home?
It doesn't matter. The technician got me up and running, and I'm fully empowered with TV and Internet. I don't know why I have a land-line phone. I never use it.
The night before, as I was riding and emailing, I met a woman walking her dog. I told her about my blackout at home. She said, "That's why we don't bundle the TV, phone and Internet - in case one of them goes out, they all don't go out."
Smart.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
BREAKING ALL THE RULES TO SERVE JUSTICE
Lately I have been communicating a lot with some of my former California police colleagues. All of a sudden I decided to fess up to something I did after I became a parole agent. I broke all the rules in the book to put it to a crooked used car dealer. Here’s what happened:
One day when I was in my Santa Ana parole office, some guy walks in and introduced himself by telling me that the secretary of my former detective division in Riverside wanted him to drop by and say hello. He told me that he was her husband, which he really was.
I was dumbfounded because that secretary did not like me one bit. She was pissed off because whenever my close friends Neal Peyatt, the San Bernardino police chief, or Ed Noon, the head of the SBSO narcotics and vice unit, called for information when I wasn’t in the office, they would refuse her offer to help them personally or her offer to have other detectives help them.
Anyway, here's the real reason for the visit. It turns out that the secretary’s husband operated one of those 'here today, moved to another location tomorrow' used car lots. He took advantage of 'dumb' Mexicans and blacks by charging them way too much more than the cars were worth. And when the complaints started coming in he just up and moved to another location in Orange County. He was a real sleazeball.
Now the real reason he came to see me was that he had sold a car to one of my parolees similar to today’s Cameros (and Firebirds). He wanted me to get him the car back because - surprise, surprise - the parolee paid for it with a hot check. I promised him that since he was married to the detective office secretary, I would do my best to get the car returned. SORRY, BUT I LIED!
The parolee, a Mexican-American in his late twenties, was living with his mother. I went over to the house to see him, but first I sneaked a look in the garage. Voila, there it was. Then I went in the house to see him and said, 'Hey motherfucker, you paid for that car with a hot check, didn't you? Of course, he hemmed and hawed around before admitting he had done so. On top of that the parole conditions required him to get permission to enter into any kind of contract. So, he figured I was going to bust him right then and there.
Well, I had no such intention. I told him that the used car dealer was a bigger crook than he was - which was true - so I was going to give him a break on two conditions. First he was to keep his mother's garage closed at all times and that if anyone so much as moved that car only one inch, his ass was going back to the joint. And second, if he violated any more parole conditions, wrote any checks whatsoever, or broke any laws, his ass was going back to the joint, mucho pronto!
Guess what? The parolee was on his best behavior from then on. Every so often I would check the car's odometer and it showed that the car had not been moved.
The dealer phoned me several times to ask if I found his car. I lied to the asshole and told him I was still looking. Finally one day he walked back in my office. I greeted him by telling him that "I was just about to call you. I've got both good news and bad news. I've found your car - that's the good news. The bad news is that the parolee wants to file a complaint against you with the police and the attorney general for cheating him and for running a used car operation that was cheating poor Mexicans and blacks. So, what shall I do?"
And here’s the clincher. The asshole asked me to forget it and to tell the parolee he was welcome to the car. That's the last I ever heard from that sleazeball.
Damn it, what I did sure felt good! To this day I firmly believe that justice was served when I broke all the rules. Of course, I would have been in deep shit had the asshole turned me in. But I also felt confident from the get-go that he would rather lose that car than risk an investigation into his questionable used car sales practices. After all, instead of coming to see me, why didn’t he go to the police?
One day when I was in my Santa Ana parole office, some guy walks in and introduced himself by telling me that the secretary of my former detective division in Riverside wanted him to drop by and say hello. He told me that he was her husband, which he really was.
I was dumbfounded because that secretary did not like me one bit. She was pissed off because whenever my close friends Neal Peyatt, the San Bernardino police chief, or Ed Noon, the head of the SBSO narcotics and vice unit, called for information when I wasn’t in the office, they would refuse her offer to help them personally or her offer to have other detectives help them.
Anyway, here's the real reason for the visit. It turns out that the secretary’s husband operated one of those 'here today, moved to another location tomorrow' used car lots. He took advantage of 'dumb' Mexicans and blacks by charging them way too much more than the cars were worth. And when the complaints started coming in he just up and moved to another location in Orange County. He was a real sleazeball.
Now the real reason he came to see me was that he had sold a car to one of my parolees similar to today’s Cameros (and Firebirds). He wanted me to get him the car back because - surprise, surprise - the parolee paid for it with a hot check. I promised him that since he was married to the detective office secretary, I would do my best to get the car returned. SORRY, BUT I LIED!
The parolee, a Mexican-American in his late twenties, was living with his mother. I went over to the house to see him, but first I sneaked a look in the garage. Voila, there it was. Then I went in the house to see him and said, 'Hey motherfucker, you paid for that car with a hot check, didn't you? Of course, he hemmed and hawed around before admitting he had done so. On top of that the parole conditions required him to get permission to enter into any kind of contract. So, he figured I was going to bust him right then and there.
Well, I had no such intention. I told him that the used car dealer was a bigger crook than he was - which was true - so I was going to give him a break on two conditions. First he was to keep his mother's garage closed at all times and that if anyone so much as moved that car only one inch, his ass was going back to the joint. And second, if he violated any more parole conditions, wrote any checks whatsoever, or broke any laws, his ass was going back to the joint, mucho pronto!
Guess what? The parolee was on his best behavior from then on. Every so often I would check the car's odometer and it showed that the car had not been moved.
The dealer phoned me several times to ask if I found his car. I lied to the asshole and told him I was still looking. Finally one day he walked back in my office. I greeted him by telling him that "I was just about to call you. I've got both good news and bad news. I've found your car - that's the good news. The bad news is that the parolee wants to file a complaint against you with the police and the attorney general for cheating him and for running a used car operation that was cheating poor Mexicans and blacks. So, what shall I do?"
And here’s the clincher. The asshole asked me to forget it and to tell the parolee he was welcome to the car. That's the last I ever heard from that sleazeball.
Damn it, what I did sure felt good! To this day I firmly believe that justice was served when I broke all the rules. Of course, I would have been in deep shit had the asshole turned me in. But I also felt confident from the get-go that he would rather lose that car than risk an investigation into his questionable used car sales practices. After all, instead of coming to see me, why didn’t he go to the police?
CRIME FIGHTING TOOLS VS. THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY
The right to privacy issue has spread like a tsunami. Police conducting criminal investigations cannot get student information from public schools and from colleges without a warrant because courts have ruled that giving out any information is a violation of the students’ privacy rights. The media cannot get any information from law enforcement agencies on the misconduct of an officer without being told that such information cannot be released because of privacy rights. And when the police try to use the latest technology to keep tabs on criminals, the ACLU and other civil rights groups fight them in court over the right to privacy issue.
There was a time when the right to privacy was limited to protecting people from prying eyes and ears within the privacy of their homes. Now civil libertarians claim cameras that snap pictures of automobile drivers are violating privacy rights because they could reveal spousal cheating.
My personal belief is that the right to privacy issue should not be used to impede public safety and legitimate criminal investigations.
COURTS GRAPPLE WITH GPS TECHNOLOGY IN CRIMINAL CASES
By Peter Hermann
Jewish World Review
September 6, 2011
As rapidly evolving technological advances allow people to be tracked by global positioning devices found in most new cellphones, Congress and courthouses nationwide are trying to balance privacy rights with the needs of law enforcement to locate criminals.
Maryland U.S. District Judge Susan K. Gauvey recently refused to issue a warrant sought by federal authorities to find a suspect through his cellphone's GPS data, saying the government was trying to use technology in a new way — "not to collect evidence of a crime, but solely to locate a charged defendant."
Nearly three dozen ACLU affiliates around the country filed public information requests this month with local police agencies seeking statistics on how often GPS data is sought, how it's used and how it's stored.
Congress, meanwhile, has held hearings on cellphone technology and privacy, acknowledging that existing law hasn't kept up with issues raised by the proliferation of smartphones and other devices capable of keeping real-time tabs on their owners.
"For investigators, the cellphone has become one of the greatest tools available," said Douglas Ward, director of the Division of Public Safety Leadership in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.
"But certainly we want to do this the right way and protect people's rights," he added. "This technology is going to cause more and more of these arguments, and the courts are going to have to settle how it all turns out. Like anything else, there can be abuses. Justice demands that we weigh that."
So far courts have come to conflicting conclusions. A federal appeals court overturned a conviction of a Washington man based on a warrantless GPS search, while appellate courts in California and Oregon upheld convictions in their states. The U.S Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the issue in its next term — addressing whether police can place GPS devices on cars to track suspects without obtaining warrants.
In Baltimore's federal court, Gauvey conceded in a 139-page ruling that "to some, this use would appear reasonable, even commendable and efficient." But, the judge wrote, "To others, this use of location data by law enforcement would appear chillingly invasive and unnecessary in the apprehension of defendants."
The American Civil Liberties Union questions how the GPS data is being used by police. The group said last week that police in Michigan sought information for every mobile phone near a planned labor protest, and that Sprint, in just over a year, received 8 million requests from police for global positioning data. The Maryland ACLU chapter is not among those filing information requests.
The proliferation of this new technology has made it easier for police to go after suspected criminals. Detectives frequently track stolen cellphones to thieves who foolishly use them to call friends and relatives. Now, thieves can be tracked without even making a call.
"The ability to track the location of cellphones has become almost routine," said Ward, a retired 27-year veteran of the Maryland State Police. "To have that threatened in any way is going to make policing much less efficient."
In the Baltimore case, federal agents hunting an elusive suspect had a tantalizing bit of intelligence: his cell number. The phone was equipped with a GPS device, so even if police had no idea where the man was, his phone company did.
They could nearly track his every step.
Federal prosecutors thought it would lead to a quick arrest. But what seemed to authorities a reasonable request was to a judge an intrusion into the suspect's privacy.
Gauvey wrote that turning down the government's request "does not frustrate or impede law enforcement's important efforts, but rather places them within the Constitutional and statutory framework which balances citizens' rights of privacy against government's protection of society."
The judge wrote, however, that her ruling "does place the precise location information out of the government's casual reach."
James Wyda, the federal public defender for Maryland, argued in legal briefs that a necessary ingredient for a search warrant is proving "a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place. … In this case, the government did not claim that the cellular site information it sought … was evidence of a crime."
This is where existing laws have failed to keep pace with technology. Typically, search warrants target documents that already exist, called "stored information," according to the legal brief. In seeking GPS data, prosecutors are seeking documents that have not yet been created — where a person will be in the future.
Details of the Baltimore case, including the suspect's name and the crimes he is charged with, remain secret. The search warrant applications are sealed by the court, and Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein declined to provide more information.
However, authorities were in fact able to track down and arrest the suspect without using the GPS information.
Rosenstein called the circumstances unique. "We have never needed such an order in any case before or since, as far as I know, so there is little reason to appeal the moot opinion," he said in a statement.
Rosenstein said "the Justice Department is not proposing to use GPS to track random citizens. The person sought in this case was a felony criminal defendant for whom authorities had an arrest warrant. … Because of the circumstances of the case … they were concerned that he would flee if they called to ask him to turn himself in."
But Gauvey wrote that the suspect had no idea a warrant had been issued. The judge repeatedly noted in her ruling that "the government has reported no attempts of the subject to flee" and she questioned authorities for labeling the man a "fugitive" — saying that implies he had been a convicted felon, rather than a person accused of an unproven offense.
The judge did write that had there been evidence of a risk of flight, the request for the warrant "would have been fairly routine."
During a hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Nathan S. Judish, a senior counsel in the computer crimes and intellectual property division within the U.S. Department of Justice, sparred with the judge over how GPS data could be obtained.
"I think we are entitled to take reasonable steps to effectuate an arrest warrant and determine the location of the person subject to the arrest warrant," Judish argued, according to a transcript of the proceeding. "It seems to me extremely reasonable. We need to go where the person is and arrest them."
Gauvey countered, saying it was "highly likely" that the government would track the suspect inside his home, where he has an expectation of privacy, as much as they would track him on a public street, where he has no expectation of privacy.
The judge said the suspect has a right to privacy not only "in his location," but also "in his movement."
Judish said a suspect wanted on a warrant enjoys less privacy than others. But Gauvey disagreed. "I don't know any authority that says that," she said.
The judge also noted that GPS devices can pinpoint a person within 10 square meters, and that the average house size is 743 square meters. She cited studies showing that 65 percent of people sleep with their cellphones next to them. She questioned prosecutors wanting "unlimited location data at any time on demand during a 30-day period."
Ward, the Johns Hopkins police expert, said that warrants seeking access to GPS data cannot define the parameters and scope of the request, and ask for permission to spy on people in places and in settings not yet known.
That, he said, makes some judges uneasy.
"Warrants involving GPS allow police to develop patterns," Ward said. "It's not only who they're calling and what they're saying, but where they're going."
There was a time when the right to privacy was limited to protecting people from prying eyes and ears within the privacy of their homes. Now civil libertarians claim cameras that snap pictures of automobile drivers are violating privacy rights because they could reveal spousal cheating.
My personal belief is that the right to privacy issue should not be used to impede public safety and legitimate criminal investigations.
COURTS GRAPPLE WITH GPS TECHNOLOGY IN CRIMINAL CASES
By Peter Hermann
Jewish World Review
September 6, 2011
As rapidly evolving technological advances allow people to be tracked by global positioning devices found in most new cellphones, Congress and courthouses nationwide are trying to balance privacy rights with the needs of law enforcement to locate criminals.
Maryland U.S. District Judge Susan K. Gauvey recently refused to issue a warrant sought by federal authorities to find a suspect through his cellphone's GPS data, saying the government was trying to use technology in a new way — "not to collect evidence of a crime, but solely to locate a charged defendant."
Nearly three dozen ACLU affiliates around the country filed public information requests this month with local police agencies seeking statistics on how often GPS data is sought, how it's used and how it's stored.
Congress, meanwhile, has held hearings on cellphone technology and privacy, acknowledging that existing law hasn't kept up with issues raised by the proliferation of smartphones and other devices capable of keeping real-time tabs on their owners.
"For investigators, the cellphone has become one of the greatest tools available," said Douglas Ward, director of the Division of Public Safety Leadership in the Johns Hopkins University School of Education.
"But certainly we want to do this the right way and protect people's rights," he added. "This technology is going to cause more and more of these arguments, and the courts are going to have to settle how it all turns out. Like anything else, there can be abuses. Justice demands that we weigh that."
So far courts have come to conflicting conclusions. A federal appeals court overturned a conviction of a Washington man based on a warrantless GPS search, while appellate courts in California and Oregon upheld convictions in their states. The U.S Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the issue in its next term — addressing whether police can place GPS devices on cars to track suspects without obtaining warrants.
In Baltimore's federal court, Gauvey conceded in a 139-page ruling that "to some, this use would appear reasonable, even commendable and efficient." But, the judge wrote, "To others, this use of location data by law enforcement would appear chillingly invasive and unnecessary in the apprehension of defendants."
The American Civil Liberties Union questions how the GPS data is being used by police. The group said last week that police in Michigan sought information for every mobile phone near a planned labor protest, and that Sprint, in just over a year, received 8 million requests from police for global positioning data. The Maryland ACLU chapter is not among those filing information requests.
The proliferation of this new technology has made it easier for police to go after suspected criminals. Detectives frequently track stolen cellphones to thieves who foolishly use them to call friends and relatives. Now, thieves can be tracked without even making a call.
"The ability to track the location of cellphones has become almost routine," said Ward, a retired 27-year veteran of the Maryland State Police. "To have that threatened in any way is going to make policing much less efficient."
In the Baltimore case, federal agents hunting an elusive suspect had a tantalizing bit of intelligence: his cell number. The phone was equipped with a GPS device, so even if police had no idea where the man was, his phone company did.
They could nearly track his every step.
Federal prosecutors thought it would lead to a quick arrest. But what seemed to authorities a reasonable request was to a judge an intrusion into the suspect's privacy.
Gauvey wrote that turning down the government's request "does not frustrate or impede law enforcement's important efforts, but rather places them within the Constitutional and statutory framework which balances citizens' rights of privacy against government's protection of society."
The judge wrote, however, that her ruling "does place the precise location information out of the government's casual reach."
James Wyda, the federal public defender for Maryland, argued in legal briefs that a necessary ingredient for a search warrant is proving "a fair probability that contraband or evidence of a crime will be found in a particular place. … In this case, the government did not claim that the cellular site information it sought … was evidence of a crime."
This is where existing laws have failed to keep pace with technology. Typically, search warrants target documents that already exist, called "stored information," according to the legal brief. In seeking GPS data, prosecutors are seeking documents that have not yet been created — where a person will be in the future.
Details of the Baltimore case, including the suspect's name and the crimes he is charged with, remain secret. The search warrant applications are sealed by the court, and Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein declined to provide more information.
However, authorities were in fact able to track down and arrest the suspect without using the GPS information.
Rosenstein called the circumstances unique. "We have never needed such an order in any case before or since, as far as I know, so there is little reason to appeal the moot opinion," he said in a statement.
Rosenstein said "the Justice Department is not proposing to use GPS to track random citizens. The person sought in this case was a felony criminal defendant for whom authorities had an arrest warrant. … Because of the circumstances of the case … they were concerned that he would flee if they called to ask him to turn himself in."
But Gauvey wrote that the suspect had no idea a warrant had been issued. The judge repeatedly noted in her ruling that "the government has reported no attempts of the subject to flee" and she questioned authorities for labeling the man a "fugitive" — saying that implies he had been a convicted felon, rather than a person accused of an unproven offense.
The judge did write that had there been evidence of a risk of flight, the request for the warrant "would have been fairly routine."
During a hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Nathan S. Judish, a senior counsel in the computer crimes and intellectual property division within the U.S. Department of Justice, sparred with the judge over how GPS data could be obtained.
"I think we are entitled to take reasonable steps to effectuate an arrest warrant and determine the location of the person subject to the arrest warrant," Judish argued, according to a transcript of the proceeding. "It seems to me extremely reasonable. We need to go where the person is and arrest them."
Gauvey countered, saying it was "highly likely" that the government would track the suspect inside his home, where he has an expectation of privacy, as much as they would track him on a public street, where he has no expectation of privacy.
The judge said the suspect has a right to privacy not only "in his location," but also "in his movement."
Judish said a suspect wanted on a warrant enjoys less privacy than others. But Gauvey disagreed. "I don't know any authority that says that," she said.
The judge also noted that GPS devices can pinpoint a person within 10 square meters, and that the average house size is 743 square meters. She cited studies showing that 65 percent of people sleep with their cellphones next to them. She questioned prosecutors wanting "unlimited location data at any time on demand during a 30-day period."
Ward, the Johns Hopkins police expert, said that warrants seeking access to GPS data cannot define the parameters and scope of the request, and ask for permission to spy on people in places and in settings not yet known.
That, he said, makes some judges uneasy.
"Warrants involving GPS allow police to develop patterns," Ward said. "It's not only who they're calling and what they're saying, but where they're going."
33 YEARS ON DEATH ROW FOR KILLING A COP AND THE APPEALS KEEP GOING ON AND ON
They should bring back hanging and be done with it. Or how about going to the swift and painless guillotine?
FLORIDA EXECUTIONS IN LEGAL LIMBO
By Nathan Crabbe
The Gainesville Sun
September 5, 2011
More than 33 years after he killed a Coral Gables police officer, Manuel Valle's execution has been delayed until at least Thursday to allow time for an appeal.
It's the latest twist that has seen Valle sentenced and re-sentenced to death three times since he shot Officer Louis Pena during a traffic stop in April 1978. Legal experts say a change in execution drugs that led to one of the latest delays could continue to impede Florida executions, while the state faces a perhaps greater challenge over its method of arriving at death sentences.
Gov. Rick Scott signed Valle's death warrant, the first since he took office, with the execution initially scheduled for Aug. 2 at Florida State Prison near Starke. A challenge to an execution drug led the date to be pushed to today. Last week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered the execution to be postponed at least two more days to consider whether Valle, 61, was improperly denied a clemency hearing.
For University of Florida legal skills professor George R. “Bob” Dekle, delays to the execution of a convicted killer are nothing new. Dekle prosecuted the case of serial killer Ted Bundy for murdering 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach, of Lake City, in 1978. It took about 9½ years between Bundy's death sentence in that case and his execution.
“It didn't take long at all. He was on the fast track” compared with others on Death Row, Dekle said.
The average length of stay on Florida's Death Row for the 69 prisoners executed since 1979 is 12.68 years, according to the state Department of Corrections. Dekle said defense attorneys use “guerrilla warfare” in trying to prolong the lives of clients sentenced to death. Attorneys try to cause enough trouble and cost enough money that prosecutors throw up their hands and agree to a life sentence, Dekle said.
“It's not the way the system should work,” he said. “Originally, Death Row was meant to be a temporary holding facility for somebody that should be executed in short order. That's not the way it is now.”
In Valle's case, he initially went to trial with lighting speed — just 23 days after the crime. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the quick turnaround denied Valle a fair trial in ordering the case to be heard again. He was sentenced to death again in 1981, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the sentence, and Valle was re-sentenced in 1988.
In recent years, challenges to the lethal injection method have led to delays in executions across the nation. Florida was forced to make changes after the botched execution of Angel Diaz, who appeared to be wincing in pain and required a second dose of lethal drugs, in December 2006. A state commission found that IV lines had been pushed through Diaz's veins.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 upheld the three-drug cocktail of execution drugs used across the U.S. Florida and other states with lethal injection at the time used a similar three-drug combination of the anesthetic sodium thiopental, followed by a paralyzing agent and finally a drug that stops the heart. But the manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped U.S. production earlier this year.
Florida switched to another drug, pentobarbital, in June. The Dutch manufacturer of the drug later announced that it was untested and unsafe for executions. That led to Valle's challenge over whether enough of the drug was being administered to prevent the pain from the final drug. After a delay to consider the claim, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the method.
Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said the state has confidence in the new drug. She pointed to a consciousness check made after the drug was administered, one of the changes made following Diaz' execution, as ensuring inmates are not awake for the remainder of the execution.
“We're confident. We're ready to go,” she said.
Differences in execution methods among states could open up a new round of challenges, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor who specializes in death penalty issues. While some states have made a change similar to Florida, she said others have switched to another drug or replaced the three-drug cocktail with a single drug.
That could lead the U.S. Supreme Court to again consider whether the variety of methods meets the standards of its previous decision, she said.
“There was safety in numbers” but having multiple methods “starts to raise questions about what states are doing,” she said.
Florida also faces challenges to its method of arriving at death sentences. Florida is one of the only states where juries can make death penalty recommendations that are not unanimous. Jurors also are not required to provide reasons for recommending the sentence, a method that a federal judge in Miami ruled in June was unconstitutional.
Dekle said the state might face other challenges over the non-unanimous death recommendations. The American Bar Association recommended changing the system in a 2006 report on the state's death penalty.
In Valle's case, a jury voted 8-4 to recommend death. Dekle defends the idea of not requiring unanimity, noting that a jury voted 10-2 for death in Bundy's case that he prosecuted.
“If he didn't deserve the death penalty, nobody does,” Dekle said.
FLORIDA EXECUTIONS IN LEGAL LIMBO
By Nathan Crabbe
The Gainesville Sun
September 5, 2011
More than 33 years after he killed a Coral Gables police officer, Manuel Valle's execution has been delayed until at least Thursday to allow time for an appeal.
It's the latest twist that has seen Valle sentenced and re-sentenced to death three times since he shot Officer Louis Pena during a traffic stop in April 1978. Legal experts say a change in execution drugs that led to one of the latest delays could continue to impede Florida executions, while the state faces a perhaps greater challenge over its method of arriving at death sentences.
Gov. Rick Scott signed Valle's death warrant, the first since he took office, with the execution initially scheduled for Aug. 2 at Florida State Prison near Starke. A challenge to an execution drug led the date to be pushed to today. Last week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ordered the execution to be postponed at least two more days to consider whether Valle, 61, was improperly denied a clemency hearing.
For University of Florida legal skills professor George R. “Bob” Dekle, delays to the execution of a convicted killer are nothing new. Dekle prosecuted the case of serial killer Ted Bundy for murdering 12-year-old Kimberly Diane Leach, of Lake City, in 1978. It took about 9½ years between Bundy's death sentence in that case and his execution.
“It didn't take long at all. He was on the fast track” compared with others on Death Row, Dekle said.
The average length of stay on Florida's Death Row for the 69 prisoners executed since 1979 is 12.68 years, according to the state Department of Corrections. Dekle said defense attorneys use “guerrilla warfare” in trying to prolong the lives of clients sentenced to death. Attorneys try to cause enough trouble and cost enough money that prosecutors throw up their hands and agree to a life sentence, Dekle said.
“It's not the way the system should work,” he said. “Originally, Death Row was meant to be a temporary holding facility for somebody that should be executed in short order. That's not the way it is now.”
In Valle's case, he initially went to trial with lighting speed — just 23 days after the crime. The Florida Supreme Court ruled that the quick turnaround denied Valle a fair trial in ordering the case to be heard again. He was sentenced to death again in 1981, but the U.S. Supreme Court vacated the sentence, and Valle was re-sentenced in 1988.
In recent years, challenges to the lethal injection method have led to delays in executions across the nation. Florida was forced to make changes after the botched execution of Angel Diaz, who appeared to be wincing in pain and required a second dose of lethal drugs, in December 2006. A state commission found that IV lines had been pushed through Diaz's veins.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2008 upheld the three-drug cocktail of execution drugs used across the U.S. Florida and other states with lethal injection at the time used a similar three-drug combination of the anesthetic sodium thiopental, followed by a paralyzing agent and finally a drug that stops the heart. But the manufacturer of sodium thiopental stopped U.S. production earlier this year.
Florida switched to another drug, pentobarbital, in June. The Dutch manufacturer of the drug later announced that it was untested and unsafe for executions. That led to Valle's challenge over whether enough of the drug was being administered to prevent the pain from the final drug. After a delay to consider the claim, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the method.
Florida Department of Corrections spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said the state has confidence in the new drug. She pointed to a consciousness check made after the drug was administered, one of the changes made following Diaz' execution, as ensuring inmates are not awake for the remainder of the execution.
“We're confident. We're ready to go,” she said.
Differences in execution methods among states could open up a new round of challenges, said Deborah Denno, a Fordham Law School professor who specializes in death penalty issues. While some states have made a change similar to Florida, she said others have switched to another drug or replaced the three-drug cocktail with a single drug.
That could lead the U.S. Supreme Court to again consider whether the variety of methods meets the standards of its previous decision, she said.
“There was safety in numbers” but having multiple methods “starts to raise questions about what states are doing,” she said.
Florida also faces challenges to its method of arriving at death sentences. Florida is one of the only states where juries can make death penalty recommendations that are not unanimous. Jurors also are not required to provide reasons for recommending the sentence, a method that a federal judge in Miami ruled in June was unconstitutional.
Dekle said the state might face other challenges over the non-unanimous death recommendations. The American Bar Association recommended changing the system in a 2006 report on the state's death penalty.
In Valle's case, a jury voted 8-4 to recommend death. Dekle defends the idea of not requiring unanimity, noting that a jury voted 10-2 for death in Bundy's case that he prosecuted.
“If he didn't deserve the death penalty, nobody does,” Dekle said.
CALIFORNIA VS. TEXAS AND VIRGINIA
Let’s face it. The liberal powers that be in California just plain do not want to see anyone executed.
DEATH PENALTY DISTORTIONS
By Scott Rate
LAPPL Blog
September 2, 2011
A recent legislative hearing in Sacramento focused on the death penalty and its implementation costs. Ventura County Star writer Timm Herdt reports that no one at the hearing was able to answer a key question: Why are other states like Texas and Virginia able to hand down death sentences and have them upheld through the federal appeals process? Could it be that the high costs of capital punishment in California are not inherent to the penalty, but rather, the result of deliberate and improper delaying by penalty opponents who see the current economic climate as an opportunity to abolish it in California once and for all?
Since passage of Proposition 8 in 1982, the California Supreme Court has been governed by the U.S. Constitution in deciding whether evidence gathered in criminal cases, including death penalty cases, was properly collected and admitted into evidence. The 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, which also review these death penalty cases, are governed by the same body of law.
Other federal circuit courts, like those with jurisdiction over states such as Texas and Virginia, have no trouble expeditiously deciding death penalty appeals using the exact same law that applies to death penalty cases in California.
If the death penalty system is broken, it is because some key players, including federal judges, defense attorneys and legislators opposed to the death penalty, do everything in their power to hinder and obstruct implementation of the penalty in California. As we mentioned in a previous post, their maneuvers have included failing to provide funding for appellate attorneys and delaying the filing of legal briefs to avoid approving a death penalty verdict.
As we’ve said before, if one were to substitute the 9th Circuit with the 5th or 4th Circuits, which cover Texas and Virginia respectively, we would be seeing a different outcome in California’s death penalty cases pending in federal courts. In addition, if California were to properly fund the death penalty appeals process, it would be shortened dramatically.
Families who’ve lost loved ones to murderous death row inmates, along with the public at large, deserve honest arguments from California’s capital punishment opponents. Citing deliberately inflated costs isn’t one of them.
DEATH PENALTY DISTORTIONS
By Scott Rate
LAPPL Blog
September 2, 2011
A recent legislative hearing in Sacramento focused on the death penalty and its implementation costs. Ventura County Star writer Timm Herdt reports that no one at the hearing was able to answer a key question: Why are other states like Texas and Virginia able to hand down death sentences and have them upheld through the federal appeals process? Could it be that the high costs of capital punishment in California are not inherent to the penalty, but rather, the result of deliberate and improper delaying by penalty opponents who see the current economic climate as an opportunity to abolish it in California once and for all?
Since passage of Proposition 8 in 1982, the California Supreme Court has been governed by the U.S. Constitution in deciding whether evidence gathered in criminal cases, including death penalty cases, was properly collected and admitted into evidence. The 9th Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, which also review these death penalty cases, are governed by the same body of law.
Other federal circuit courts, like those with jurisdiction over states such as Texas and Virginia, have no trouble expeditiously deciding death penalty appeals using the exact same law that applies to death penalty cases in California.
If the death penalty system is broken, it is because some key players, including federal judges, defense attorneys and legislators opposed to the death penalty, do everything in their power to hinder and obstruct implementation of the penalty in California. As we mentioned in a previous post, their maneuvers have included failing to provide funding for appellate attorneys and delaying the filing of legal briefs to avoid approving a death penalty verdict.
As we’ve said before, if one were to substitute the 9th Circuit with the 5th or 4th Circuits, which cover Texas and Virginia respectively, we would be seeing a different outcome in California’s death penalty cases pending in federal courts. In addition, if California were to properly fund the death penalty appeals process, it would be shortened dramatically.
Families who’ve lost loved ones to murderous death row inmates, along with the public at large, deserve honest arguments from California’s capital punishment opponents. Citing deliberately inflated costs isn’t one of them.
OMG, I'M RICH!
Silver in the Hair;
Gold in the Teeth;
Crystals in the Kidneys;
Sugar in the Blood;
Lead in the Ass;
Iron in the Arteries;
And an inexhaustible supply of Natural Gas.
I never thought I'd accumulate such wealth.
Gold in the Teeth;
Crystals in the Kidneys;
Sugar in the Blood;
Lead in the Ass;
Iron in the Arteries;
And an inexhaustible supply of Natural Gas.
I never thought I'd accumulate such wealth.
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
INCURABLE RECIDIVIST
In every state where it has been enacted, the three-strikes law has been full of controversy. While us law-and-order types support it, civil libertarians and bleeding heart types have condemned it for sending people to prison for life when the third-strike offense happened to be a rather minor one. But Bob Walsh summed it up best: “At some point society has to say ‘enough is enough.’ They did so, appropriately in this case.”
AFTER 17 YEARS, THREE-STRIKES LAW IS STILL HOTLY DEBATED
By Jack Leonard
Los Angeles Times
September 5, 2011
Scott Andrew Hove tucked a spool of welding wire and work gloves inside his waistband and headed for the Home Depot store's exit without paying.
As he made his way out of the Lake Elsinore store, employees stopped Hove and found the stolen merchandise hidden under his sweat shirt.
"I was stupid," the certified welder told them.
The items were worth only $20.94. But the theft cost Hove, 45, a life prison sentence recently, when a Riverside County judge ordered him to spend 29 years to life behind bars under California's three-strikes law.
His sentence points to the legal debate that continues to rage 17 years after voters approved the law: whether its tough sentences sometimes far exceed the crimes. Unlike other three-strikes laws across the country, California treats any felony as a third strike — even a nonviolent offense such as petty theft or drug possession — as long as an offender's criminal history includes at least two violent or serious crimes, such as rape, robbery or residential burglary.
Riverside County prosecutors argued that Hove — who has a long history of drugs and thefts, including convictions for residential burglary — had proved himself "an incurable recidivist." Court records show he managed to avoid the full weight of the three-strikes law at least four times before his latest theft. Among his offenses was a 1996 crash in which he severely injured someone while driving under the influence of methamphetamine.
"He's your prototypical poster child for three strikes," said Riverside County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Pittman. "How many times does society have to be victimized before we decide to put someone away?"
Hove's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jeff Zimel, agreed that his client deserved some time behind bars but argued in court that a sentence of 13 years in prison would be more appropriate. He said that a life sentence was "excessive, outrageous and contrary to the spirit of the three-strikes law."
Voters overwhelmingly approved the three-strikes law in 1994 amid heightened public anxiety over crime. Supporters say three strikes punishes offenders for what is often a lifetime of crime. The law, which imposes sentences of at least 25 years to life for a third strike, has put thousands of violent criminals behind bars for long stretches.
But it has also produced cases where critics say the punishment was far out of proportion with the crime. Thousands of offenders have been sentenced under the law for third strikes that involve drugs or thefts. Among them was a drug addict whose third strike involved shoplifting nine videotapes to sell for heroin.
Today, most prosecutors are more selective about when they choose to use the law's full force, but Hove's sentence illustrates that punishments still can vary from county to county.
In L.A. County, prosecutors follow a written policy that generally seeks potential life terms only when an offender's most recent crime is violent or serious. By contrast, the Riverside County district attorney's office examines cases individually. For Hove, the office was once willing to seek reduced sentences but has since run out of patience as his rap sheet has grown longer.
"This guy has received a lot of grace," said Jennifer E. Walsh, a political science professor at Azusa Pacific University and an expert on three strikes. "We might be looking at more cases like this down the line."
Hove's case offers a look at the controversial choices that judges and prosecutors make when deciding how to the apply the law.
Hove grew up in Orange County, the youngest of four children. His father, an imposing figure who weighed more than 300 pounds, abused him physically and verbally, his family said in court records. At one point, the elder Hove choked his 16-year-old son until the boy turned blue, Hove's mother said.
At school, Hove was diagnosed with a learning disability and took medication for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. He showed signs of impulsivity and repeatedly ran into trouble. He was prescribed Ritalin until he was about 12. His mother said she believed her son began using drugs when he came off the medication.
School authorities suspended the young Hove several times for fighting, rule-breaking and drug possession. His first arrest occurred at 13, when he was sent to juvenile hall for shoplifting, drug use and stealing car parts and bicycles, according to a defense psychologist's report.
Hove told authorities that his addictions to drugs, including crack cocaine and methamphetamine, fueled his thefts. "I'm not a bad person," he told a probation officer earlier this year. "I have a drug problem."
In 1991, Hove broke into an office and rooms at a Santa Ana hotel where he had been living. He took VCRs, an answering machine, a radio and other items. He pleaded guilty to three counts of residential burglary and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Once the three-strikes law took effect, each of Hove's residential burglary convictions counted as a "strike." He now ran the risk of a possible life sentence if he committed another felony.
But Hove's crimes continued.
In May 1996, Hove was driving on the wrong side of the road in Chino Hills when he struck a 65-year-old man carrying his grandson, according to an appellate court opinion. The boy was thrown to safety but the crash left his grandfather in a vegetative state, the appeals court said.
Hove tested positive for methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty in San Bernardino County to driving under the influence of a controlled substance and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Hove avoided another potential life sentence in 2001 when he pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana for sale in Riverside County. In 2004, Riverside County prosecutors sought another reduced sentence when he was again charged with possessing drugs for sale.
But when Hove returned to court in 2008 charged with drug possession, Riverside County prosecutors decided he deserved a three-strikes sentence, said Pittman, the chief deputy district attorney. A judge, however, disagreed. Hove was sentenced to two years in prison. He was on parole for that offense when he walked into the Lake Elsinore Home Depot in November 2009.
Armed with Hove's long criminal record, prosecutors argued that Hove was a career criminal incapable of reforming.
"The defendant has already had enough 'breaks,' " Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalia Matusik wrote in court papers.
A defense psychologist recommended an intense residential drug treatment program rather than prison. He concluded that Hove's crimes were directly connected to his drug abuse and that Hove used drugs to deal with his untreated mental health problems.
On Aug. 19, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Albert J. Wojcik rejected Hove's final plea for leniency at his sentencing.
Hove's mother, Nondus Hove, said she has been dismayed by her son's frequent legal troubles but believes his sentence is a miscarriage of justice.
"To strike someone out for something like that, it's ridiculous," she said.
AFTER 17 YEARS, THREE-STRIKES LAW IS STILL HOTLY DEBATED
By Jack Leonard
Los Angeles Times
September 5, 2011
Scott Andrew Hove tucked a spool of welding wire and work gloves inside his waistband and headed for the Home Depot store's exit without paying.
As he made his way out of the Lake Elsinore store, employees stopped Hove and found the stolen merchandise hidden under his sweat shirt.
"I was stupid," the certified welder told them.
The items were worth only $20.94. But the theft cost Hove, 45, a life prison sentence recently, when a Riverside County judge ordered him to spend 29 years to life behind bars under California's three-strikes law.
His sentence points to the legal debate that continues to rage 17 years after voters approved the law: whether its tough sentences sometimes far exceed the crimes. Unlike other three-strikes laws across the country, California treats any felony as a third strike — even a nonviolent offense such as petty theft or drug possession — as long as an offender's criminal history includes at least two violent or serious crimes, such as rape, robbery or residential burglary.
Riverside County prosecutors argued that Hove — who has a long history of drugs and thefts, including convictions for residential burglary — had proved himself "an incurable recidivist." Court records show he managed to avoid the full weight of the three-strikes law at least four times before his latest theft. Among his offenses was a 1996 crash in which he severely injured someone while driving under the influence of methamphetamine.
"He's your prototypical poster child for three strikes," said Riverside County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Guy Pittman. "How many times does society have to be victimized before we decide to put someone away?"
Hove's attorney, Deputy Public Defender Jeff Zimel, agreed that his client deserved some time behind bars but argued in court that a sentence of 13 years in prison would be more appropriate. He said that a life sentence was "excessive, outrageous and contrary to the spirit of the three-strikes law."
Voters overwhelmingly approved the three-strikes law in 1994 amid heightened public anxiety over crime. Supporters say three strikes punishes offenders for what is often a lifetime of crime. The law, which imposes sentences of at least 25 years to life for a third strike, has put thousands of violent criminals behind bars for long stretches.
But it has also produced cases where critics say the punishment was far out of proportion with the crime. Thousands of offenders have been sentenced under the law for third strikes that involve drugs or thefts. Among them was a drug addict whose third strike involved shoplifting nine videotapes to sell for heroin.
Today, most prosecutors are more selective about when they choose to use the law's full force, but Hove's sentence illustrates that punishments still can vary from county to county.
In L.A. County, prosecutors follow a written policy that generally seeks potential life terms only when an offender's most recent crime is violent or serious. By contrast, the Riverside County district attorney's office examines cases individually. For Hove, the office was once willing to seek reduced sentences but has since run out of patience as his rap sheet has grown longer.
"This guy has received a lot of grace," said Jennifer E. Walsh, a political science professor at Azusa Pacific University and an expert on three strikes. "We might be looking at more cases like this down the line."
Hove's case offers a look at the controversial choices that judges and prosecutors make when deciding how to the apply the law.
Hove grew up in Orange County, the youngest of four children. His father, an imposing figure who weighed more than 300 pounds, abused him physically and verbally, his family said in court records. At one point, the elder Hove choked his 16-year-old son until the boy turned blue, Hove's mother said.
At school, Hove was diagnosed with a learning disability and took medication for attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. He showed signs of impulsivity and repeatedly ran into trouble. He was prescribed Ritalin until he was about 12. His mother said she believed her son began using drugs when he came off the medication.
School authorities suspended the young Hove several times for fighting, rule-breaking and drug possession. His first arrest occurred at 13, when he was sent to juvenile hall for shoplifting, drug use and stealing car parts and bicycles, according to a defense psychologist's report.
Hove told authorities that his addictions to drugs, including crack cocaine and methamphetamine, fueled his thefts. "I'm not a bad person," he told a probation officer earlier this year. "I have a drug problem."
In 1991, Hove broke into an office and rooms at a Santa Ana hotel where he had been living. He took VCRs, an answering machine, a radio and other items. He pleaded guilty to three counts of residential burglary and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Once the three-strikes law took effect, each of Hove's residential burglary convictions counted as a "strike." He now ran the risk of a possible life sentence if he committed another felony.
But Hove's crimes continued.
In May 1996, Hove was driving on the wrong side of the road in Chino Hills when he struck a 65-year-old man carrying his grandson, according to an appellate court opinion. The boy was thrown to safety but the crash left his grandfather in a vegetative state, the appeals court said.
Hove tested positive for methamphetamine. He pleaded guilty in San Bernardino County to driving under the influence of a controlled substance and was sentenced to four years in prison.
Hove avoided another potential life sentence in 2001 when he pleaded guilty to possessing marijuana for sale in Riverside County. In 2004, Riverside County prosecutors sought another reduced sentence when he was again charged with possessing drugs for sale.
But when Hove returned to court in 2008 charged with drug possession, Riverside County prosecutors decided he deserved a three-strikes sentence, said Pittman, the chief deputy district attorney. A judge, however, disagreed. Hove was sentenced to two years in prison. He was on parole for that offense when he walked into the Lake Elsinore Home Depot in November 2009.
Armed with Hove's long criminal record, prosecutors argued that Hove was a career criminal incapable of reforming.
"The defendant has already had enough 'breaks,' " Deputy Dist. Atty. Natalia Matusik wrote in court papers.
A defense psychologist recommended an intense residential drug treatment program rather than prison. He concluded that Hove's crimes were directly connected to his drug abuse and that Hove used drugs to deal with his untreated mental health problems.
On Aug. 19, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Albert J. Wojcik rejected Hove's final plea for leniency at his sentencing.
Hove's mother, Nondus Hove, said she has been dismayed by her son's frequent legal troubles but believes his sentence is a miscarriage of justice.
"To strike someone out for something like that, it's ridiculous," she said.
RELENTLESS PURSUIT OF 11-YEAR-OLD CRIMINAL
We can all feel safer knowing that the long arm of the law is in relentless pursuit of dangerous criminals like Skylar Capo.
GOVERNMENT TURNS TLC INTO CRIME, FINES THE CULPRIT
By Chuck Shepherd
News of the Weird
September 2, 2011
The heavy hand of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service landed on 11-year-old Skylar Capo and her mom in June, after an agent happened to spot Skylar holding a baby woodpecker in her hands at a Lowes home improvement store in Fredericksburg, Va.
Actually, Skylar had minutes before saved the woodpecker from the primed teeth of a house cat and was providing temporary TLC, intending to release the bird when the trauma had passed.
The agent, apparently, was unimpressed, reciting a provision of the Migratory Bird Act, and two weeks later, another Fish and Wildlife agent knocked on the Capos' door (accompanied by a Virginia state trooper) and served Mrs. Capo a citation calling for a $535 fine.
Finally in August, according to WUSA-TV, Fish and Wildlife officials relented, calling the agent's action a mistake.
GOVERNMENT TURNS TLC INTO CRIME, FINES THE CULPRIT
By Chuck Shepherd
News of the Weird
September 2, 2011
The heavy hand of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service landed on 11-year-old Skylar Capo and her mom in June, after an agent happened to spot Skylar holding a baby woodpecker in her hands at a Lowes home improvement store in Fredericksburg, Va.
Actually, Skylar had minutes before saved the woodpecker from the primed teeth of a house cat and was providing temporary TLC, intending to release the bird when the trauma had passed.
The agent, apparently, was unimpressed, reciting a provision of the Migratory Bird Act, and two weeks later, another Fish and Wildlife agent knocked on the Capos' door (accompanied by a Virginia state trooper) and served Mrs. Capo a citation calling for a $535 fine.
Finally in August, according to WUSA-TV, Fish and Wildlife officials relented, calling the agent's action a mistake.
THE RED DOT
With apologies to my Indian friends Sanjiv and Chandan.
AT LAST, WE HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THE RED DOT FROM THE INDIAN EMBASSY IN OTTAWA
For centuries, Hindu women have worn a red dot on their foreheads. Most of us have naively thought this was connected with tradition or religion, but the Indian embassy in Ottawa has recently revealed the true story.
When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the union. On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the dot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a costume jewelry shop, a taxi cab, or a motel in the United States.
If the scratch-off leaves nothing there, the husband must remain in India to answer telephones for American cell phone, satellite TV and computer companies to provide their customers tech support.
AT LAST, WE HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THE RED DOT FROM THE INDIAN EMBASSY IN OTTAWA
For centuries, Hindu women have worn a red dot on their foreheads. Most of us have naively thought this was connected with tradition or religion, but the Indian embassy in Ottawa has recently revealed the true story.
When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the union. On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the dot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a costume jewelry shop, a taxi cab, or a motel in the United States.
If the scratch-off leaves nothing there, the husband must remain in India to answer telephones for American cell phone, satellite TV and computer companies to provide their customers tech support.
Monday, September 05, 2011
JAILS FOR PROFIT LEAVE TAXPAYERS HOLDING THE BAG
Greed is good, or is it? This problem is not unique to the State of Texas.
TEXAS PRISON BOOM GOING BUST
Grits For Breakfast
September 4, 2011
‘Texas Prison Boom Going Bust’ is the headline of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram piece out today documenting a trend that will be familiar to Grits readers. The story opens:
__For about 20 years, employees at the North Texas Intermediate Sanctions Facility went quietly about the business of housing hundreds of short-term parole violators.
__The prison, a complex occupying almost an entire block at 4700 Blue Mound Road, now is vacant largely as a result of reforms aimed at reducing the state's penal system costs.
__Starting in the early 1990s, Texas ignited an almost $3 billion prison building spree, turning to private prison operators to house inmates as the prison population swelled beyond the capacity of state facilities. Now, state, county and city budget cuts, a decline in crime rates, an older population, and penal and court reforms have all contributed to what some call a glut of inmate beds. Those factors have resulted in closed and half-empty prisons and jails.
__They have also left local governments, which saw prisons as revenue and job-generators, scrambling to pay for facilities the state no longer needs.
The story provides a litany of examples of counties investing in jail capacity beyond their own needs with the hope of turning a profit, then ending up holding the bag after their private "partner" walked away. My favorite quote: "You look back and ask why would you take on 30 years of debt on a two-year contract." No kidding! My second favorite quote in the story was from Marc Levin at the Texas Public Policy Foundation warning counties and municipalities that they could no longer count on ever-rising incarceration rates to fill speculative-built jails: "I would hope that counties and cities would do some population projections before they go forward with building these jails," he said. "Any business has to consider how a government's perspective might change. No one is entitled to assume that certain policies are going to remain in place."
That would have been good advice to have received 3-5 years ago. Today it almost seems cruel to warn them about moral hazard when everyone else's bad decisions seem to get bailed out. But as the city of Littlefield is finding, there's no one waiting in the wings to step in and buy up empty jail cells with no contracts attached to them. Jail-bed supply significantly exceeds demand statewide. With the exception of immigration detention, the bubble has burst. As has, hopefully, the "jail as profit center" myth among Texas county commissioners.
TEXAS PRISON BOOM GOING BUST
Grits For Breakfast
September 4, 2011
‘Texas Prison Boom Going Bust’ is the headline of a Fort Worth Star-Telegram piece out today documenting a trend that will be familiar to Grits readers. The story opens:
__For about 20 years, employees at the North Texas Intermediate Sanctions Facility went quietly about the business of housing hundreds of short-term parole violators.
__The prison, a complex occupying almost an entire block at 4700 Blue Mound Road, now is vacant largely as a result of reforms aimed at reducing the state's penal system costs.
__Starting in the early 1990s, Texas ignited an almost $3 billion prison building spree, turning to private prison operators to house inmates as the prison population swelled beyond the capacity of state facilities. Now, state, county and city budget cuts, a decline in crime rates, an older population, and penal and court reforms have all contributed to what some call a glut of inmate beds. Those factors have resulted in closed and half-empty prisons and jails.
__They have also left local governments, which saw prisons as revenue and job-generators, scrambling to pay for facilities the state no longer needs.
The story provides a litany of examples of counties investing in jail capacity beyond their own needs with the hope of turning a profit, then ending up holding the bag after their private "partner" walked away. My favorite quote: "You look back and ask why would you take on 30 years of debt on a two-year contract." No kidding! My second favorite quote in the story was from Marc Levin at the Texas Public Policy Foundation warning counties and municipalities that they could no longer count on ever-rising incarceration rates to fill speculative-built jails: "I would hope that counties and cities would do some population projections before they go forward with building these jails," he said. "Any business has to consider how a government's perspective might change. No one is entitled to assume that certain policies are going to remain in place."
That would have been good advice to have received 3-5 years ago. Today it almost seems cruel to warn them about moral hazard when everyone else's bad decisions seem to get bailed out. But as the city of Littlefield is finding, there's no one waiting in the wings to step in and buy up empty jail cells with no contracts attached to them. Jail-bed supply significantly exceeds demand statewide. With the exception of immigration detention, the bubble has burst. As has, hopefully, the "jail as profit center" myth among Texas county commissioners.
APARTHEID?
Former American President Jimmy Carter has accused Israel of being an apartheid nation. Is that so?
Omar Baghouti, a resident of Ramallah and the leading Arab advocate of boycotting Israel, is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Apartheid?
Jews and Arabs shop together in Israel. Apartheid?
Jews and Arabs swim together at Israeli beaches. Apartheid?
Walid Badir, Israeli soccer star and captain of the HaPoel Tel Aviv team, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Mira Awad, a singer and songwriter who represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Rana Raslan, the former Miss Israel, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Majalli Wahabi, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and acting President of Israel in February 2007, is a Druze. Apartheid?
Reda Mansour, historian, poet and former Israeli ambassador to Ecuador, is a Druze. Apartheid?
Salim Joubran, Israeli Supreme Court Justice, is an Arab. Apartheid?
The Palestinian Authority has declared that any Arab who sells land to a Jew should be put to death. NOW THAT IS APARTHEID!
Speaking to the Egyptian media on July 28, 2010, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the ‘moderate’ leader catered to by Obama and the international community, said “I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.” NOW, MR. CARTER, THAT IS APARTHEID!
Omar Baghouti, a resident of Ramallah and the leading Arab advocate of boycotting Israel, is a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University. Apartheid?
Jews and Arabs shop together in Israel. Apartheid?
Jews and Arabs swim together at Israeli beaches. Apartheid?
Walid Badir, Israeli soccer star and captain of the HaPoel Tel Aviv team, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Mira Awad, a singer and songwriter who represented Israel at the Eurovision Song Contest, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Rana Raslan, the former Miss Israel, is an Arab. Apartheid?
Majalli Wahabi, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and acting President of Israel in February 2007, is a Druze. Apartheid?
Reda Mansour, historian, poet and former Israeli ambassador to Ecuador, is a Druze. Apartheid?
Salim Joubran, Israeli Supreme Court Justice, is an Arab. Apartheid?
The Palestinian Authority has declared that any Arab who sells land to a Jew should be put to death. NOW THAT IS APARTHEID!
Speaking to the Egyptian media on July 28, 2010, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the ‘moderate’ leader catered to by Obama and the international community, said “I will never allow a single Israeli to live among us on Palestinian land.” NOW, MR. CARTER, THAT IS APARTHEID!
Sunday, September 04, 2011
DOUBLE JEOPARDY IT AIN'T
Entrapment and Double Jeopardy are two of the most misunderstood (by the public) and misapplied (by lawyers) issues in criminal law.
In the Clemens case, Mike Attanasio and Rusty Hardin, both high-powered attorneys, had to know this was never a double jeopardy case. The double jeopardy rule holds that a criminal defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime. In this case, the trial ended in a mistrial shortly after it began. In effect that means Clemens had not really been tried on the charges filed against him. Thus, no double jeopardy. Attanasio and Hardin must have thought they had a mullet for a judge.
ROGER CLEMENS ORDERED TO FACE TRIAL AGAIN
By John Royal
Houston Press Hair Balls
September 2, 2011
In a not too surprising development, U.S. District Court Judge Reginald Walton ruled earlier this afternoon, after a morning of oral arguments, that double jeopardy did not attach during the aborted Roger Clemens trial earlier this summer. As a result, the government will get another shot at Roger Clemens next year.
The mistrial was declared this summer when the prosecution showed evidence involving the wife of Andy Pettitte, Laura Pettitte, to the jury during the early stages of the trial. Judge Walton had declared during pretrial that the evidence, her affidavit claiming that Andy had told her of Clemens's HGH confession, would not be allowed before the jury, and could not be discussed. But while showing clips of Clemens's congressional testimony, her name was mentioned and the video frozen on a quote from the affidavit. At which point, the judge decided the jury had been tainted and declared a mistrial.
The Clemens legal team, led today by Mike Attanasio, argued that this was an intentional act by the prosecution, and that because of the principle of double jeopardy -- stating that one person cannot be tried for the same crime twice -- the mistrial meant that there could be no retrial. The prosecution argued that this was an unintentional error and that because it was unintentional, double jeopardy should not attach and a retrial was proper.
Judge Walton continued lecturing the prosecution attorneys throughout today's hearings, but ultimately ruled that this was an unintentional error. As such, and because Attanasio has another trial coming, he set the retrial for April 17.
Rusty Hardin, who was present and is still the lead attorney for Clemens, said they had yet to decide on whether to appeal the decision, though they do have that right, and though this seems to be a near certainty. If there is an appeal, the retrial may end up being over a year or more away. So we still have a long wait ahead until Clemens gets another chance to clear his name because Judge Walton has placed a gag order on all parties.
Hopefully the prosecution learned from their mistake, and there will be no more delays because of their acts. But this is just, in many ways, a failure of the government's steroids trials, just going up there with the disaster the Barry Bonds trial ultimately turned out to be.
In the Clemens case, Mike Attanasio and Rusty Hardin, both high-powered attorneys, had to know this was never a double jeopardy case. The double jeopardy rule holds that a criminal defendant cannot be tried twice for the same crime. In this case, the trial ended in a mistrial shortly after it began. In effect that means Clemens had not really been tried on the charges filed against him. Thus, no double jeopardy. Attanasio and Hardin must have thought they had a mullet for a judge.
ROGER CLEMENS ORDERED TO FACE TRIAL AGAIN
By John Royal
Houston Press Hair Balls
September 2, 2011
In a not too surprising development, U.S. District Court Judge Reginald Walton ruled earlier this afternoon, after a morning of oral arguments, that double jeopardy did not attach during the aborted Roger Clemens trial earlier this summer. As a result, the government will get another shot at Roger Clemens next year.
The mistrial was declared this summer when the prosecution showed evidence involving the wife of Andy Pettitte, Laura Pettitte, to the jury during the early stages of the trial. Judge Walton had declared during pretrial that the evidence, her affidavit claiming that Andy had told her of Clemens's HGH confession, would not be allowed before the jury, and could not be discussed. But while showing clips of Clemens's congressional testimony, her name was mentioned and the video frozen on a quote from the affidavit. At which point, the judge decided the jury had been tainted and declared a mistrial.
The Clemens legal team, led today by Mike Attanasio, argued that this was an intentional act by the prosecution, and that because of the principle of double jeopardy -- stating that one person cannot be tried for the same crime twice -- the mistrial meant that there could be no retrial. The prosecution argued that this was an unintentional error and that because it was unintentional, double jeopardy should not attach and a retrial was proper.
Judge Walton continued lecturing the prosecution attorneys throughout today's hearings, but ultimately ruled that this was an unintentional error. As such, and because Attanasio has another trial coming, he set the retrial for April 17.
Rusty Hardin, who was present and is still the lead attorney for Clemens, said they had yet to decide on whether to appeal the decision, though they do have that right, and though this seems to be a near certainty. If there is an appeal, the retrial may end up being over a year or more away. So we still have a long wait ahead until Clemens gets another chance to clear his name because Judge Walton has placed a gag order on all parties.
Hopefully the prosecution learned from their mistake, and there will be no more delays because of their acts. But this is just, in many ways, a failure of the government's steroids trials, just going up there with the disaster the Barry Bonds trial ultimately turned out to be.
LAUGHABLE PROMISES
When Calderon promised to clean up corruption among police and federal attorneys by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, I almost got sick from laughing so hard. Back in the 1960s I had several occasions to work with some Mexican cops. Police corruption has been the norm in Mexico forever and for Calderon to think he can clean that up is a laughable pipe dream. The Mexican president must be smoking some of that dope his army has been seizing.
PRESIDENT: MEXICO WILL HAVE CLEAN COPS
By Katherine Corcoran
Associated Press
September 3, 2011
On Friday, in his annual state-of-the-nation address, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that he will fight to the last day of his term to defeat the drug cartels that have taken over towns, police forces and institutions in parts of Mexico.
Calderon also promised to clean up corruption among police and federal attorneys by the time he leaves office in December 2012.
In his second-to-last year in office, Calderon cut much of the usual fanfare around the speech out of respect for 52 civilians who died last week in a casino fire, a presumed extortion attack by Zetas cartel members in the northern city of Monterrey.
A police officer has been arrested in the attack. The Monterrey mayor's brother has been questioned regarding casino-related corruption.
Calderon announced the creation of a federal prosecutor dedicated entirely to victims of violence. The prosecutor's job will be to identify victims and find people who have disappeared at the hands of criminal groups.
Calderon has come under fire from victims' groups for minimizing the impact of violence on innocents. One of those groups is headed by the poet Javier Sicilia, who lost his son to an attack by drug gangs.
The new prosecutor "will take a major step to close the wounds that have opened in the country," Calderon said.
Last week he called the casino fire the worst incident of drug-related violence involving civilians in his term and declared three days of national mourning.
After encounters with the general public, Calderon said it became clear that "victims should be the center of our attention."
PRESIDENT: MEXICO WILL HAVE CLEAN COPS
By Katherine Corcoran
Associated Press
September 3, 2011
On Friday, in his annual state-of-the-nation address, Mexican President Felipe Calderon said that he will fight to the last day of his term to defeat the drug cartels that have taken over towns, police forces and institutions in parts of Mexico.
Calderon also promised to clean up corruption among police and federal attorneys by the time he leaves office in December 2012.
In his second-to-last year in office, Calderon cut much of the usual fanfare around the speech out of respect for 52 civilians who died last week in a casino fire, a presumed extortion attack by Zetas cartel members in the northern city of Monterrey.
A police officer has been arrested in the attack. The Monterrey mayor's brother has been questioned regarding casino-related corruption.
Calderon announced the creation of a federal prosecutor dedicated entirely to victims of violence. The prosecutor's job will be to identify victims and find people who have disappeared at the hands of criminal groups.
Calderon has come under fire from victims' groups for minimizing the impact of violence on innocents. One of those groups is headed by the poet Javier Sicilia, who lost his son to an attack by drug gangs.
The new prosecutor "will take a major step to close the wounds that have opened in the country," Calderon said.
Last week he called the casino fire the worst incident of drug-related violence involving civilians in his term and declared three days of national mourning.
After encounters with the general public, Calderon said it became clear that "victims should be the center of our attention."
HEY, LOOKEE DOWN THERE! THAT'S MY STUFF THEY'RE STEALING
I saw Lynn and his pilot buddy being interviewed on the NBC Today Show. They came across as a couple of good-old-boy Arkansas rednecks. The thieves were a couple of African-American gentlemen.
EYE IN THE SKY: MAN SPOTS HOME BURGLARY FROM PLANE
By Tom Powell
WREG-TV
August 30, 2011
JONESBORO, ARKANSAS -- Steven Lynn went for the first plane ride of his lifetime Friday. He and a couple of his friends went to check out area lakes to see if they were prime for fishing. When they finished scouting the water, Lynn asked the pilot to fly over his home so he could get aerial pictures.
He never captured the perfect shot, instead he says he spotted a burglary in progress on his property.
"The only thing that was going through my mind was how wild it was," he says.
Lynn says two burglars were loading up stuff like scrap metal and air conditioning units onto a trailer. He stopped snapping pictures and recording video so he could dial 911.
"I'm in the airplane, flew over my house, and seen people stealing stuff out of the yard," he told the dispatcher. "My uncle is there right now and I believe he can keep them there."
Deputies say the suspects ran from Lynn's uncle, then took off in a pickup truck. The pilot stayed with them overhead, tracking their every move. Lynn called out directions to the dispatcher.
"It really worked well," says Craighead County Deputy Sheriff Phillip Wheaton. He says thanks to Lynn's play-by-play from the sky, the suspected burglars Roosevelt Smith III and Joseph Peel were quickly captured. "It's a very unique thing. We've had farmers in crop dusters find vehicles in a field, but never a burglary that's in progress."
Lynn says the cliché fits in this case. He says he took his first flight in the right place at the right time. "I was lucky," he says with a smile.
EYE IN THE SKY: MAN SPOTS HOME BURGLARY FROM PLANE
By Tom Powell
WREG-TV
August 30, 2011
JONESBORO, ARKANSAS -- Steven Lynn went for the first plane ride of his lifetime Friday. He and a couple of his friends went to check out area lakes to see if they were prime for fishing. When they finished scouting the water, Lynn asked the pilot to fly over his home so he could get aerial pictures.
He never captured the perfect shot, instead he says he spotted a burglary in progress on his property.
"The only thing that was going through my mind was how wild it was," he says.
Lynn says two burglars were loading up stuff like scrap metal and air conditioning units onto a trailer. He stopped snapping pictures and recording video so he could dial 911.
"I'm in the airplane, flew over my house, and seen people stealing stuff out of the yard," he told the dispatcher. "My uncle is there right now and I believe he can keep them there."
Deputies say the suspects ran from Lynn's uncle, then took off in a pickup truck. The pilot stayed with them overhead, tracking their every move. Lynn called out directions to the dispatcher.
"It really worked well," says Craighead County Deputy Sheriff Phillip Wheaton. He says thanks to Lynn's play-by-play from the sky, the suspected burglars Roosevelt Smith III and Joseph Peel were quickly captured. "It's a very unique thing. We've had farmers in crop dusters find vehicles in a field, but never a burglary that's in progress."
Lynn says the cliché fits in this case. He says he took his first flight in the right place at the right time. "I was lucky," he says with a smile.
Saturday, September 03, 2011
CALIFORNIA POT RUSH
The California gold rush started in 1848. On Wednesday, there was a California pot rush.
POT HEADS SWARM AFTER TRUCK CRASH SPILLS BAGS OF MARIJUANA ONTO STREET IN SAN JOSE
By Philip Caulfield
New York Daily News
September 1, 2011
San Jose police said drivers and bystanders swiped bags of marijuana that spilled onto the road after a truck that was illegally hauling marijuana crashed.
Some lucky potheads had their prayers answered Wednesday when a truck hauling a massive stash of weed overturned at a busy San Jose intersection, spilling bags of hash all over the road.
Several drivers and bystanders swooped in and gathered up the ganja while the dopey driver fled on foot, cops told the San Jose Mercury News.
Cops who responded to the scene in South San Jose eventually collected the remaining bags of weed and found a loaded handgun inside the truck, police said.
Investigators said they are still looking for the driver - as well as the reefer thieves - but they didn't have any suspects.
No other vehicles were involved in the early morning crash, police said.
POT HEADS SWARM AFTER TRUCK CRASH SPILLS BAGS OF MARIJUANA ONTO STREET IN SAN JOSE
By Philip Caulfield
New York Daily News
September 1, 2011
San Jose police said drivers and bystanders swiped bags of marijuana that spilled onto the road after a truck that was illegally hauling marijuana crashed.
Some lucky potheads had their prayers answered Wednesday when a truck hauling a massive stash of weed overturned at a busy San Jose intersection, spilling bags of hash all over the road.
Several drivers and bystanders swooped in and gathered up the ganja while the dopey driver fled on foot, cops told the San Jose Mercury News.
Cops who responded to the scene in South San Jose eventually collected the remaining bags of weed and found a loaded handgun inside the truck, police said.
Investigators said they are still looking for the driver - as well as the reefer thieves - but they didn't have any suspects.
No other vehicles were involved in the early morning crash, police said.
GREEN IS IN THE RED
And we taxpayers are stuck for $535 million of Obama’s ‘brighter and more prosperous future.’
SOLYNDRA FOLLOWS EVERGREEN SOLAR, FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY; STIMULUS QUESTIONED
By Andrew Dodson
mlive.com
September 2, 2011
Three major solar companies filed for bankruptcy in the month of August, and government stimulus for the emerging industry is being questioned.
Privately held California-based Solyndra LLC announced this week it would file for bankruptcy and lay off about 1,100 workers, Bloomberg reported. Evergreen Solar, which operated a plant in Midland, and Spectrawatt also filed for bankruptcy this month.
Evergreen filed for bankruptcy citing heavy competition from China and intense competition in the industry.
Evergreen was awarded $5.7 million in state and city tax incentives, but never hit certain employment or investment targets to realize it.
Bloomberg reported that solar panel prices have dropped about 42 percent this year, mostly due to Chinese competition.
According to a press release from Solyndra, "Global economic and solar industry market conditions have forced the company to suspend its manufacturing operations."
In May 2010, President Obama said "Companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future." The company received a $535 million loan guarantee from the government in 2009. It was the first company selected under the President's clean-energy stimulus program.
SOLYNDRA FOLLOWS EVERGREEN SOLAR, FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY; STIMULUS QUESTIONED
By Andrew Dodson
mlive.com
September 2, 2011
Three major solar companies filed for bankruptcy in the month of August, and government stimulus for the emerging industry is being questioned.
Privately held California-based Solyndra LLC announced this week it would file for bankruptcy and lay off about 1,100 workers, Bloomberg reported. Evergreen Solar, which operated a plant in Midland, and Spectrawatt also filed for bankruptcy this month.
Evergreen filed for bankruptcy citing heavy competition from China and intense competition in the industry.
Evergreen was awarded $5.7 million in state and city tax incentives, but never hit certain employment or investment targets to realize it.
Bloomberg reported that solar panel prices have dropped about 42 percent this year, mostly due to Chinese competition.
According to a press release from Solyndra, "Global economic and solar industry market conditions have forced the company to suspend its manufacturing operations."
In May 2010, President Obama said "Companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future." The company received a $535 million loan guarantee from the government in 2009. It was the first company selected under the President's clean-energy stimulus program.
FROM CHINA TO MEXICO VIA U.S.
While the Border Protection officials are congratulating themselves, I wonder how many of such shipments get through without being detected?
From Borderland Beat:
U.S. BORDER PROTECTION INTERCEPTS 520 POUNDS OF PRECURSOR CHEMICALS EN ROUTE TO MEXICO
By Edmund DeMarche
Fox news
September 1, 2011
A recent U.S. drug bust shows that trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border is a two-way street.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Los Angeles said Thursday they intercepted 520 pounds of a chemical used in illegal drugs like methamphetamine and ecstasy -- contraband caught not while it was coming into the United States from Mexico but while it was traveling south out of the U.S.
The meth component was being sent from China to drug traffickers in Mexico.
The chemical, methylamine hydrochloride, was discovered in August at an air cargo facility at Los Angeles International Airport, the agency said. Judging by the shipment's size, it could have produced 330 pounds of the drug methamphetamine.
It is hard to quantify how much money that methamphetamine could have fetched in the U.S., but a Drug Enforcement Agency representative estimated the street value between $6.6 million and $16 million.
A spokesman from border protection said Mexican drug cartels have been growing desperate in recent months due to the increased enforcement on the U.S. southern border.
"This is a significant reflection of drug cartels getting frustrated because the traditional way of getting drugs in and out of the U.S. are not working," Jaime Ruiz, the spokesman, told FoxNews.com.
To be sure, border protection used the recent interception as an example of its widening reach at airports and seaports nationwide.
Todd C. Owen, a border protection field director in Los Angeles, called the interception a "fine example of the behind-the-scenes hard work" of the agency's officers to keep these chemicals from reaching drug trafficking organizations.
The eight drums of the chemical were discovered on Aug. 12. The agency sent the powder to a laboratory that identified the chemical.
The chemical has legitimate industrial applications in pharmaceutical products, but suppliers are subject to regulations and control measures, the statement said.
In August, authorities seized gamma-Butyrolactone at the airport. The chemical is used when manufacturing gamma-Hydroxybutrate, or better known as the date-rape drug, The Los Angeles Times reported.
That shipment, too, was traced back to China, according to the report.
Mexico is the main source of methamphetamine in the United States. The drug has also become a scourge in Mexico's northern border cities like Tijuana, across from San Diego, and Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, The Associated Press reported.
From Borderland Beat:
U.S. BORDER PROTECTION INTERCEPTS 520 POUNDS OF PRECURSOR CHEMICALS EN ROUTE TO MEXICO
By Edmund DeMarche
Fox news
September 1, 2011
A recent U.S. drug bust shows that trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border is a two-way street.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Los Angeles said Thursday they intercepted 520 pounds of a chemical used in illegal drugs like methamphetamine and ecstasy -- contraband caught not while it was coming into the United States from Mexico but while it was traveling south out of the U.S.
The meth component was being sent from China to drug traffickers in Mexico.
The chemical, methylamine hydrochloride, was discovered in August at an air cargo facility at Los Angeles International Airport, the agency said. Judging by the shipment's size, it could have produced 330 pounds of the drug methamphetamine.
It is hard to quantify how much money that methamphetamine could have fetched in the U.S., but a Drug Enforcement Agency representative estimated the street value between $6.6 million and $16 million.
A spokesman from border protection said Mexican drug cartels have been growing desperate in recent months due to the increased enforcement on the U.S. southern border.
"This is a significant reflection of drug cartels getting frustrated because the traditional way of getting drugs in and out of the U.S. are not working," Jaime Ruiz, the spokesman, told FoxNews.com.
To be sure, border protection used the recent interception as an example of its widening reach at airports and seaports nationwide.
Todd C. Owen, a border protection field director in Los Angeles, called the interception a "fine example of the behind-the-scenes hard work" of the agency's officers to keep these chemicals from reaching drug trafficking organizations.
The eight drums of the chemical were discovered on Aug. 12. The agency sent the powder to a laboratory that identified the chemical.
The chemical has legitimate industrial applications in pharmaceutical products, but suppliers are subject to regulations and control measures, the statement said.
In August, authorities seized gamma-Butyrolactone at the airport. The chemical is used when manufacturing gamma-Hydroxybutrate, or better known as the date-rape drug, The Los Angeles Times reported.
That shipment, too, was traced back to China, according to the report.
Mexico is the main source of methamphetamine in the United States. The drug has also become a scourge in Mexico's northern border cities like Tijuana, across from San Diego, and Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, The Associated Press reported.
CHOPSTICK CAPERS
And I’ll bet you thought chopsticks were only used as eating utensils. Leave it to Chinese thieves to do their pickpocketing capers with chopsticks.
STICKY FINGERS: BRAZEN CHINESE THIEVES PICKPOCKET SHOPPERS USING CHOPSTICKS
By Chris Parsons
Mail Online
September 2, 2011
A pair of brazen Chinese thieves are caught on camera pickpocketing unwitting shoppers using chopsticks.
The two shifty dark-coated men can be seen patrolling a backstreet before sneaking behind shoppers armed with the traditional Chinese utensil.
But rather than using the chopsticks for their proper purpose, the shameless thieves use them to carefully pry items from the back pockets of unwitting shoppers.
Police in China believe gangs of opportunist pickpockets are using them to target busy shoppers, usually women laden down with heavy shopping.
It is unclear where the chopstick thieves were when they were captured on camera, but the trend is thought to have taken place in several Chinese cities.
The thefts across China are carried out in broad daylight in front of dozens of passers-by who refuse to intervene.
In one clip a woman wearing a black and white patched coat is unaware she is being robbed by a thief using chopsticks.
She walks away before the thief has a chance to steal her belongings.
In another clip another woman is approached from behind by a pickpocket who grabs her mobile phone out of her white full-length coat.
He grips the phone between the chopsticks before placing it in a white handkerchief and walking away.
An onlooker said: 'It's so obvious what the gang are doing but no one does anything.
'This gang know exactly what they are doing and are highly skilled.
'By using chopsticks they avoid getting caught with their hands in the victim's pockets and don't leave finger-prints on stolen property.
STICKY FINGERS: BRAZEN CHINESE THIEVES PICKPOCKET SHOPPERS USING CHOPSTICKS
By Chris Parsons
Mail Online
September 2, 2011
A pair of brazen Chinese thieves are caught on camera pickpocketing unwitting shoppers using chopsticks.
The two shifty dark-coated men can be seen patrolling a backstreet before sneaking behind shoppers armed with the traditional Chinese utensil.
But rather than using the chopsticks for their proper purpose, the shameless thieves use them to carefully pry items from the back pockets of unwitting shoppers.
Police in China believe gangs of opportunist pickpockets are using them to target busy shoppers, usually women laden down with heavy shopping.
It is unclear where the chopstick thieves were when they were captured on camera, but the trend is thought to have taken place in several Chinese cities.
The thefts across China are carried out in broad daylight in front of dozens of passers-by who refuse to intervene.
In one clip a woman wearing a black and white patched coat is unaware she is being robbed by a thief using chopsticks.
She walks away before the thief has a chance to steal her belongings.
In another clip another woman is approached from behind by a pickpocket who grabs her mobile phone out of her white full-length coat.
He grips the phone between the chopsticks before placing it in a white handkerchief and walking away.
An onlooker said: 'It's so obvious what the gang are doing but no one does anything.
'This gang know exactly what they are doing and are highly skilled.
'By using chopsticks they avoid getting caught with their hands in the victim's pockets and don't leave finger-prints on stolen property.
STEVEN SEAGAL LAWMAN RETURNS
It’s good seeing one of my favorite actors back filming his TV series.
SHERIFF JOE, STEVEN SEAGAL DENY DOG KILLING CLAIM
By Mark Carlson
Associated Press
September 2, 2011
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and actor Steven Seagal deny accusations by a U.S. man and his lawyer that a family dog was killed during a raid for Seagal's reality TV show.
The sheriff's office said in a news release the allegation is without merit. Seagal added he's outraged.
The action movie actor was participating in the raid as a special deputy sheriff for his show "Steven Seagal Lawman" on the A&E cable channel. His movie credits include "Under Siege," "Above the Law" and "Fire Down Below."
Seagal and numerous deputies and posse members were present March 9 during a raid at the home of Jesus Llovera. In the claim, Llovera says an 11-month-old puppy was killed along with 100 roosters.
According to witnesses at the raid, a dog was present on Llovera's property when deputies and SWAT team members, including Seagal, entered the premises with a search warrant to arrest Llovera on cockfighting charges and seize all evidence pertaining to the crime.
Arpaio said there's no evidence to back up the claim that his officers killed a dog.
"If my deputies, or posse man Seagal for that matter, had done something so awful like shooting a family dog, then where are the photos to prove it?" Arpaio asked.
Llovera's attorney, Robert Campos, told The Associated Press Friday his client didn't accuse Steven Seagal of killing an animal on his property in a notice of claim filed against the sheriff's office.
"My client never accused Seagal of having anything to do with the death of his puppy," Campos said. "He (Llovera) just wanted an apology from Seagal for his role in the destruction of my client's home, property and animals."
In Llovera's claim, the sheriff's office and Seagal are accused of setting off explosives to create a distraction and confusion. The claim says Seagal was free to commandeer a tank and crash through an iron gate on the southeast corner of Llovera's property in southwest Phoenix.
Llovera is seeking $25,000 against the sheriff's office for humiliation, emotional distress and property damage.
SHERIFF JOE, STEVEN SEAGAL DENY DOG KILLING CLAIM
By Mark Carlson
Associated Press
September 2, 2011
PHOENIX — Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and actor Steven Seagal deny accusations by a U.S. man and his lawyer that a family dog was killed during a raid for Seagal's reality TV show.
The sheriff's office said in a news release the allegation is without merit. Seagal added he's outraged.
The action movie actor was participating in the raid as a special deputy sheriff for his show "Steven Seagal Lawman" on the A&E cable channel. His movie credits include "Under Siege," "Above the Law" and "Fire Down Below."
Seagal and numerous deputies and posse members were present March 9 during a raid at the home of Jesus Llovera. In the claim, Llovera says an 11-month-old puppy was killed along with 100 roosters.
According to witnesses at the raid, a dog was present on Llovera's property when deputies and SWAT team members, including Seagal, entered the premises with a search warrant to arrest Llovera on cockfighting charges and seize all evidence pertaining to the crime.
Arpaio said there's no evidence to back up the claim that his officers killed a dog.
"If my deputies, or posse man Seagal for that matter, had done something so awful like shooting a family dog, then where are the photos to prove it?" Arpaio asked.
Llovera's attorney, Robert Campos, told The Associated Press Friday his client didn't accuse Steven Seagal of killing an animal on his property in a notice of claim filed against the sheriff's office.
"My client never accused Seagal of having anything to do with the death of his puppy," Campos said. "He (Llovera) just wanted an apology from Seagal for his role in the destruction of my client's home, property and animals."
In Llovera's claim, the sheriff's office and Seagal are accused of setting off explosives to create a distraction and confusion. The claim says Seagal was free to commandeer a tank and crash through an iron gate on the southeast corner of Llovera's property in southwest Phoenix.
Llovera is seeking $25,000 against the sheriff's office for humiliation, emotional distress and property damage.
Friday, September 02, 2011
THE VAST MAJORITY OF COPS ARE GOOD GUYS
The ex-wife of a cop sent me an e-mail which read in part: I know from personal experience that there are some sicko law enforcement officers out there, including some that are outright corrupt and brutal. The power of 'control' screws their mind.
This is how I answered her:
I agree with you that there are some bad cops out there. But I am sure that the vast majority of cops are good guys doing an extremely difficult job under the most trying of circumstances while being underpaid and underappreciated. And those cops always face a good chance of sustaining some sort of injury and the possibility of getting killed.
Being a cop hardens you. People who have never been one would not understand that. Cops run into the dregs of society day in and day out. Cops experience some of the most God-awful crimes - hot and cold running blood. And a lot of the people cops are trying 'to serve and to protect' jump all over the poor bastards for giving them a traffic ticket, for not getting their property back that was stolen, for not catching the crook who stole it, and - because it is a police function to regulate human behavior - for what they perceive to be interference in their pursuit of pleasure.
On top of that, cops get hammered every day by the media with reports of official misconduct. Rarely does the media report the good things cops are doing. I think that’s because the good deeds are taken for granted. And when the media gets hold of a video showing cops ‘beating up’ some person, that video is often edited in such a way as to make the incident look much worse than it really was.
Because cops experience that kind of shit every day it is no wonder that some of them turn out to be as you describe them. But what's most noteworthy is that despite all that, the vast majority of cops continue to be good guys.
EDITOR'S NOTE: When he saw that California produced a firefighter license plate, a cop asked his partner, “Why didn’t they make a license plate for us?” His partner answered, “Because no one hates firefighters!”
This is how I answered her:
I agree with you that there are some bad cops out there. But I am sure that the vast majority of cops are good guys doing an extremely difficult job under the most trying of circumstances while being underpaid and underappreciated. And those cops always face a good chance of sustaining some sort of injury and the possibility of getting killed.
Being a cop hardens you. People who have never been one would not understand that. Cops run into the dregs of society day in and day out. Cops experience some of the most God-awful crimes - hot and cold running blood. And a lot of the people cops are trying 'to serve and to protect' jump all over the poor bastards for giving them a traffic ticket, for not getting their property back that was stolen, for not catching the crook who stole it, and - because it is a police function to regulate human behavior - for what they perceive to be interference in their pursuit of pleasure.
On top of that, cops get hammered every day by the media with reports of official misconduct. Rarely does the media report the good things cops are doing. I think that’s because the good deeds are taken for granted. And when the media gets hold of a video showing cops ‘beating up’ some person, that video is often edited in such a way as to make the incident look much worse than it really was.
Because cops experience that kind of shit every day it is no wonder that some of them turn out to be as you describe them. But what's most noteworthy is that despite all that, the vast majority of cops continue to be good guys.
EDITOR'S NOTE: When he saw that California produced a firefighter license plate, a cop asked his partner, “Why didn’t they make a license plate for us?” His partner answered, “Because no one hates firefighters!”
POLISH ANTI-SEMITISM THEN AND NOW
It is a well-known fact that many Poles eagerly helped the Nazis round up Jews during WWII, but 40 of them went far beyond that when the burned hundreds of Jews alive in the town of Jedwabne. And in recent years there has been an alarming resurgence of anti-Semitic acts in Poland as well as in the rest of Europe.
VANDALS SCRAWL ‘THEY WERE FLAMMABLE’ AT SPOT WHERE HUNDREDS OF JEWS WERE BURNED ALIVE DURING WORLD WAR II
By Joanna Corrigan
Mail Online
September 1, 2011
Vandals have desecrated a monument marking the spot in Poland where hundreds of Jews were burned alive during World War II.
They defaced the stonework, scrawling 'they were flammable' and also daubing a swastika on the memorial.
The monument in the eastern town of Jedwabne honours the victims of July 10, 1941, when about 40 Poles hunted down Jews, closed them in a barn and set it alight. It is estimated between 300 and 400 Jews were killed.
The incident is one of the better known cases of local people collaborating with the Nazis in the killing of Jews during the occupation of Eastern Europe.
The vandals used green paint to spray the symbols of a swastika and 'SS' - the name of an elite Nazi force - on the monument, as well as the phrases 'I don't apologise for Jedwabne' and 'they were flammable'.
Police discovered the desecration on Wednesday during a patrol and have since started an investigation.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said: 'I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition.
'There is no room for such behavior in Polish society - even if it is the work of but a small group of extremists.'
He expressed solidarity with anyone affected by the act, and said he was convinced the perpetrators would be tracked down soon and face justice.
The head of Poland's Jewish community, Piotr Kadlcik, called on authorities to crack down harder on anti-Semitic incidents, saying the desecration at Jedwabne comes after authorities have treated such cases with leniency for years.
The massacre was unknown for decades but came to light with the 2000 book 'Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland,' which sparked outrage and soul-searching in Poland.
It led to a government investigation that confirmed that Poles - and not Nazi Germans - were to blame for the killings.
Poland's then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski apologised for his country's sins, but some Poles today remain in denial that such horrors were committed by their own people.
Polish people are today commemorating the anniversary of the German attack on their country on Sept. 1, 1939, that marked the start of World War II.
Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population of some 2.5million until the conflict began, when most of its Jewish citizens perished in the Nazi-sponsored Holocaust.
The few who survived the war faced periodic oppression by the communist regime installed in Poland after 1945.
Poland is a largely homogenous Roman Catholic country but religious and ethnic minorities are more common in eastern regions near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine.
VANDALS SCRAWL ‘THEY WERE FLAMMABLE’ AT SPOT WHERE HUNDREDS OF JEWS WERE BURNED ALIVE DURING WORLD WAR II
By Joanna Corrigan
Mail Online
September 1, 2011
Vandals have desecrated a monument marking the spot in Poland where hundreds of Jews were burned alive during World War II.
They defaced the stonework, scrawling 'they were flammable' and also daubing a swastika on the memorial.
The monument in the eastern town of Jedwabne honours the victims of July 10, 1941, when about 40 Poles hunted down Jews, closed them in a barn and set it alight. It is estimated between 300 and 400 Jews were killed.
The incident is one of the better known cases of local people collaborating with the Nazis in the killing of Jews during the occupation of Eastern Europe.
The vandals used green paint to spray the symbols of a swastika and 'SS' - the name of an elite Nazi force - on the monument, as well as the phrases 'I don't apologise for Jedwabne' and 'they were flammable'.
Police discovered the desecration on Wednesday during a patrol and have since started an investigation.
Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said: 'I utterly condemn these acts of criminality, alien to Polish tradition.
'There is no room for such behavior in Polish society - even if it is the work of but a small group of extremists.'
He expressed solidarity with anyone affected by the act, and said he was convinced the perpetrators would be tracked down soon and face justice.
The head of Poland's Jewish community, Piotr Kadlcik, called on authorities to crack down harder on anti-Semitic incidents, saying the desecration at Jedwabne comes after authorities have treated such cases with leniency for years.
The massacre was unknown for decades but came to light with the 2000 book 'Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland,' which sparked outrage and soul-searching in Poland.
It led to a government investigation that confirmed that Poles - and not Nazi Germans - were to blame for the killings.
Poland's then-president Aleksander Kwasniewski apologised for his country's sins, but some Poles today remain in denial that such horrors were committed by their own people.
Polish people are today commemorating the anniversary of the German attack on their country on Sept. 1, 1939, that marked the start of World War II.
Poland was home to Europe's largest Jewish population of some 2.5million until the conflict began, when most of its Jewish citizens perished in the Nazi-sponsored Holocaust.
The few who survived the war faced periodic oppression by the communist regime installed in Poland after 1945.
Poland is a largely homogenous Roman Catholic country but religious and ethnic minorities are more common in eastern regions near the borders with Belarus and Ukraine.
THE CAR WAS SUCH AN AMAZING PIECE OF ENGINEERING THAT HE JUST HAD TO DRIVE IT AT 128 MPH
And in a residential neighborhood at that!
NASCAR STAR'S EXCUSE FOR DRIVING 128 MPH
By Jerry Reynolds
The Car Pro Weekly
September 1, 2011
You have to give a passing nod to NASCAR driver Kyle Busch's defense as he had his day in court for his 128-mile-per-hour speeding ticket this week. In a lengthy account from the Virginian Pilot, they explain how Busch blamed a car that cried to be driven fast.
Busch's attorney, Cliff Homesley, mentioned a lot of mitigating reasons why the judge shouldn't throw the book at his speed-loving client, who watched the proceedings in a conservative business suit that basically screamed regret and contrition. I had to take note of my favorite excuse: The car he was driving, a rare Lexus LFA, was such an amazing piece of engineering, well, how else could you help but crank it up to triple digits? Writes the Pilot:
Homesley began his defense by showing the judge a picture of the Lexus LFA that Busch was given the chance to drive for a day as racer for Toyota. Homesley noted that there were only 87 made at the time and they were all hand built in Japan. He read from Car & Driver's review about how the LFA "has a seductive shape'' and that "the cockpit swallows you up like a hot dog in a leather and carbon-fiber bun.'' And on and on. The point he was making was that here was a person who drives race cars for a living, and he has the opportunity to drive it for a day. Just think if anybody had that chance, wouldn't they want to open it up on the highway to see what it could do?
What could he do, indeed?:
Homesley went on for a half hour and covered a lot of ground, especially considering this was all about a speeding ticket. The prosecutor didn't have to say much: All he noted after Homesley spoke was that Busch was clocked going 128 mph through a residential area, a rejoinder to Homesley's argument that Busch's NASCAR racing skills would have made all the difference when it came to controlling the car.
In the end, Homesley succeeded: A jail sentence was suspended and although Busch's driving privileges were suspended for 45 days, his license wasn't taken away for months or years.
NASCAR STAR'S EXCUSE FOR DRIVING 128 MPH
By Jerry Reynolds
The Car Pro Weekly
September 1, 2011
You have to give a passing nod to NASCAR driver Kyle Busch's defense as he had his day in court for his 128-mile-per-hour speeding ticket this week. In a lengthy account from the Virginian Pilot, they explain how Busch blamed a car that cried to be driven fast.
Busch's attorney, Cliff Homesley, mentioned a lot of mitigating reasons why the judge shouldn't throw the book at his speed-loving client, who watched the proceedings in a conservative business suit that basically screamed regret and contrition. I had to take note of my favorite excuse: The car he was driving, a rare Lexus LFA, was such an amazing piece of engineering, well, how else could you help but crank it up to triple digits? Writes the Pilot:
Homesley began his defense by showing the judge a picture of the Lexus LFA that Busch was given the chance to drive for a day as racer for Toyota. Homesley noted that there were only 87 made at the time and they were all hand built in Japan. He read from Car & Driver's review about how the LFA "has a seductive shape'' and that "the cockpit swallows you up like a hot dog in a leather and carbon-fiber bun.'' And on and on. The point he was making was that here was a person who drives race cars for a living, and he has the opportunity to drive it for a day. Just think if anybody had that chance, wouldn't they want to open it up on the highway to see what it could do?
What could he do, indeed?:
Homesley went on for a half hour and covered a lot of ground, especially considering this was all about a speeding ticket. The prosecutor didn't have to say much: All he noted after Homesley spoke was that Busch was clocked going 128 mph through a residential area, a rejoinder to Homesley's argument that Busch's NASCAR racing skills would have made all the difference when it came to controlling the car.
In the end, Homesley succeeded: A jail sentence was suspended and although Busch's driving privileges were suspended for 45 days, his license wasn't taken away for months or years.
APPARENTLY THE JUDGE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND THAT WHEN YOU GOTTA GO, YOU GOTTA GO!
And he didn’t even give the defendant credit for not peeing on the floor.
COREY WEBB:PEES IN COURTROOM DURING TRIAL BREAK
By Richard Connelly
Houston Press Hair Balls
September 1, 2011
Signs your trial is not going well: When the judge says to you, "I don't know how you were raised, but peeing in a trash can in a state district courtroom is inappropriate behavior."
That quote, which surely will go down in judicial history alongside "with all deliberate speed," was uttered by District Judge Kerry Russell in a Tyler courtroom yesterday to 17-year-old Corey Webb, who just had to go, you know?
Webb was on trial for shooting at a peace officer during an escape attempt from a juvenile facility. He'd already shown a somewhat casual attitude to the judicial process, being reprimanded for mumbling loudly during attorneys' arguments and asking the judge if he could fire his lawyer.
And then, according to KYTX:
__After her testimony, the court broke for lunch. Right as the jury was ushered out Webb unbuckled his pants, walked over to a trash can and urinated in court. The judge had this to say to Webb:
__"I don't know how you were raised, but peeing in a trash can in a state district courtroom is inappropriate behavior. This is the second conversation we've had. There won't be a third."
After the break, Webb entered a guilty pee plea on the original charge.
COREY WEBB:PEES IN COURTROOM DURING TRIAL BREAK
By Richard Connelly
Houston Press Hair Balls
September 1, 2011
Signs your trial is not going well: When the judge says to you, "I don't know how you were raised, but peeing in a trash can in a state district courtroom is inappropriate behavior."
That quote, which surely will go down in judicial history alongside "with all deliberate speed," was uttered by District Judge Kerry Russell in a Tyler courtroom yesterday to 17-year-old Corey Webb, who just had to go, you know?
Webb was on trial for shooting at a peace officer during an escape attempt from a juvenile facility. He'd already shown a somewhat casual attitude to the judicial process, being reprimanded for mumbling loudly during attorneys' arguments and asking the judge if he could fire his lawyer.
And then, according to KYTX:
__After her testimony, the court broke for lunch. Right as the jury was ushered out Webb unbuckled his pants, walked over to a trash can and urinated in court. The judge had this to say to Webb:
__"I don't know how you were raised, but peeing in a trash can in a state district courtroom is inappropriate behavior. This is the second conversation we've had. There won't be a third."
After the break, Webb entered a guilty pee plea on the original charge.
JUAN THE WEENIE WAVER
I’m sure he was only growing that pot for his supply of medical marijuana.
WEENIE WAVER WITH PRIORS BUSTED FOR WEAPONS OFFENSE
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
September 1, 2011
A San Diego area weenie waver with priors ended up being busted for weapons offenses in the process, proving that sometimes attracting attention to yourself is a bad idea.
Juan Manuel Arteaga,35, of Fallbrook, was arrested for whipping it out in front of a group of four girls. He had a similar prior for which he was convicted five years ago. When the cops arrested him they found 58 potted marijuana plants and a sawed-off shotgun.
The girls, aged 12 and 13, had the presence of mind to get the car plate number, which the deputies tracked easily as the car was registered to him at his real home address. The cops also found he had failed to register as a sex offender, as required by his prior conviction.
Arteaga is being held against a $110,000 bail.
WEENIE WAVER WITH PRIORS BUSTED FOR WEAPONS OFFENSE
By Bob Walsh
PACOVILLA Corrections blog
September 1, 2011
A San Diego area weenie waver with priors ended up being busted for weapons offenses in the process, proving that sometimes attracting attention to yourself is a bad idea.
Juan Manuel Arteaga,35, of Fallbrook, was arrested for whipping it out in front of a group of four girls. He had a similar prior for which he was convicted five years ago. When the cops arrested him they found 58 potted marijuana plants and a sawed-off shotgun.
The girls, aged 12 and 13, had the presence of mind to get the car plate number, which the deputies tracked easily as the car was registered to him at his real home address. The cops also found he had failed to register as a sex offender, as required by his prior conviction.
Arteaga is being held against a $110,000 bail.
'SPREAD 'EM!'
I’ll bet that’s’ what he ordered her to do when he laid her on the hood. After all, according to all the movies and TV shows, that’s SOP when cops spread-eagle anyone on the hood of their patrol cars.
And then he kept poking his ‘nightstick’ in her until she moaned and groaned while blurting out, ‘Oh my God! Oh baby!’ over and over again.
NM COP HAVING SEX ON CAR HOOD WON’T BE CHARGED
Associated Press
September 1, 2011
SANTA FE, N.M. — He's in uniform and apparently on duty. But New Mexico State Police say the officer caught on camera having sex with a woman on the hood of a car did not commit a crime.
Video from a security camera of the encounter at the county-owned Canyon Ranch surfaced about two weeks ago.
State police spokesman Tim Johnson tells KQRE-TV an internal investigation has been done and the agency does not believe a crime occurred. He also says the officer will not be cited for lewd behavior.
Johnson declined to release the name of the officer, but KQRE reports he is an eight-year veteran of the department who's currently on administrative leave.
UPDATE 9-3-11: The Santa Fe New Mexican has reported that the officer, Bert Lopez, was fired not long after investigators said he did not commit a crime. Lopez has 30 days to appeal the firing.
And then he kept poking his ‘nightstick’ in her until she moaned and groaned while blurting out, ‘Oh my God! Oh baby!’ over and over again.
NM COP HAVING SEX ON CAR HOOD WON’T BE CHARGED
Associated Press
September 1, 2011
SANTA FE, N.M. — He's in uniform and apparently on duty. But New Mexico State Police say the officer caught on camera having sex with a woman on the hood of a car did not commit a crime.
Video from a security camera of the encounter at the county-owned Canyon Ranch surfaced about two weeks ago.
State police spokesman Tim Johnson tells KQRE-TV an internal investigation has been done and the agency does not believe a crime occurred. He also says the officer will not be cited for lewd behavior.
Johnson declined to release the name of the officer, but KQRE reports he is an eight-year veteran of the department who's currently on administrative leave.
UPDATE 9-3-11: The Santa Fe New Mexican has reported that the officer, Bert Lopez, was fired not long after investigators said he did not commit a crime. Lopez has 30 days to appeal the firing.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
'WHY DURING THE DAY THERE ARE, LIKE, A HUNDRED COPS ON GRAND AVENUE BUT AT NIGHT THERE AREN'T ANY?'
I have often written about the phony crime stats put out by police agencies to make themselves and their cities look good. What’s alarming about this story is that despite the probability they were trying to manipulate the stats, police commanders were unable to hide a significant crime increase in nine NYPD precincts. Furthermore, considering past stat manipulations, one would have to wonder about the truthfulness of NYPD’s claim that crime decreased in 43 of the 76 police precincts. And I belive that if the truth were known, similar results would be found in many other parts of the country.
I want to urge all my readers who are interested in criminal justice to look out for and get Eli Silverman’s book, "The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation," when it it comes out. I suspect the book will – to borrow a phrase from Dick Cheney – make heads explode all over the country.
DANGEROUS ‘HOODS
By Chuck Bennett, Jessica Simeone, and Colin Mixson
New York Post
August 31, 2011
Nine police precincts are showing an alarming spike in crime -- and could lead the way to the first citywide increase in decades, The Post has learned.
Overall crime is down a barely noticeable 0.1 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year, and police brass are fighting tooth and nail to keep the numbers from climbing.
"No matter if it's a slight uptick, no police commissioner or mayor wants it on their watch," said Eli Silverman, co-author of the forthcoming book, "The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation."
The NYPD has already removed Deputy Inspector José Navarro as commander of the 34th Precinct, in Washington Heights, where crime shot up during his 15 months in charge.
The 90th Precinct, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is also struggling with increases in murder, rape, assault, grand larceny and car theft, according to NYPD CompStat data.
"I got mugged on Grand Avenue about six months ago," said waiter Paul Lin, 44, of Williamsburg.
"He put a gun to the back of my head . . . What I don't understand is why during the day there are, like, a hundred cops on Grand Avenue but at night there aren't any."
There have been 15 rapes this year in that precinct, compared to four as of mid-August last year.
Other precincts struggling with rising crime include: the 42nd, in Tremont, The Bronx; the 66th, in Borough Park, the neighborhood in which young Leiby Kletzky was allegedly abducted by Levi Aron, Brooklyn; the 61st, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn; the 76th, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; the 77th, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; the 100th in Rockaway, Queens, and the 113th in St. Albans, Queens.
NYPD Department Chief Joseph Esposito and Deputy Commissioner Patrick Timlin have launched a get-tough policy with precinct commanders to demand they get crime under control.
If for the first time since 1993 crime does rise, observers say, most New Yorkers will still take it stride.
"There has to be discernible decline in the quality of the [public's] life," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College political-science professor.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said crime was down citywide and in 43 of the 76 police precincts.
Where it has increased, borough and precinct commanders strategize to anticipate trends.
A focus on shootings has resulted in major reductions citywide -- 67 fewer this year, compared to last year at this time.
I want to urge all my readers who are interested in criminal justice to look out for and get Eli Silverman’s book, "The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation," when it it comes out. I suspect the book will – to borrow a phrase from Dick Cheney – make heads explode all over the country.
DANGEROUS ‘HOODS
By Chuck Bennett, Jessica Simeone, and Colin Mixson
New York Post
August 31, 2011
Nine police precincts are showing an alarming spike in crime -- and could lead the way to the first citywide increase in decades, The Post has learned.
Overall crime is down a barely noticeable 0.1 percent so far this year compared to the same period last year, and police brass are fighting tooth and nail to keep the numbers from climbing.
"No matter if it's a slight uptick, no police commissioner or mayor wants it on their watch," said Eli Silverman, co-author of the forthcoming book, "The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipulation."
The NYPD has already removed Deputy Inspector José Navarro as commander of the 34th Precinct, in Washington Heights, where crime shot up during his 15 months in charge.
The 90th Precinct, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is also struggling with increases in murder, rape, assault, grand larceny and car theft, according to NYPD CompStat data.
"I got mugged on Grand Avenue about six months ago," said waiter Paul Lin, 44, of Williamsburg.
"He put a gun to the back of my head . . . What I don't understand is why during the day there are, like, a hundred cops on Grand Avenue but at night there aren't any."
There have been 15 rapes this year in that precinct, compared to four as of mid-August last year.
Other precincts struggling with rising crime include: the 42nd, in Tremont, The Bronx; the 66th, in Borough Park, the neighborhood in which young Leiby Kletzky was allegedly abducted by Levi Aron, Brooklyn; the 61st, in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn; the 76th, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn; the 77th, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; the 100th in Rockaway, Queens, and the 113th in St. Albans, Queens.
NYPD Department Chief Joseph Esposito and Deputy Commissioner Patrick Timlin have launched a get-tough policy with precinct commanders to demand they get crime under control.
If for the first time since 1993 crime does rise, observers say, most New Yorkers will still take it stride.
"There has to be discernible decline in the quality of the [public's] life," said Doug Muzzio, a Baruch College political-science professor.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said crime was down citywide and in 43 of the 76 police precincts.
Where it has increased, borough and precinct commanders strategize to anticipate trends.
A focus on shootings has resulted in major reductions citywide -- 67 fewer this year, compared to last year at this time.
BUT THE HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIALS KEEP CONGRATULATING THEMSELVES FOR KEEPING US SAFE
I’ve never really bought their self-congratulatory crap. While security measures and intelligence gathering have made us safer than before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, I think we’ve been lucky that al Qaeda and other terrorist groups haven’t had the ability to mount another massive 9/11-tyupe attack. Of course, much of the credit for that belongs to our military for striking at the terrorists in their lairs.
POST-9/11 ASSESSMENT FINDS GLARING SECURITY GAPS
By Brian Bennett
Jewish World Review
August 31, 2011
Despite the outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars and a vast reorganization of federal agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks, major gaps remain in the government's ability to prevent and respond to a terrorist strike, according to an assessment by the former heads of the 9/11 Commission.
The report, which will be released Wednesday, warns that the nation's ability to detect explosives hidden on passengers boarding airplanes "lacks reliability." It describes emergency communications used by first responders in urban areas as "inadequate." And it calls efforts to coordinate rescues "a long way from being fully implemented."
The panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in late 2002 as an independent, bipartisan group to investigate the hijackings of four jetliners by al-Qaida operatives. Its final report included numerous recommendations for reforms in the intelligence, law enforcement and domestic security communities.
The new assessment comes from the panel's onetime chairs, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, D-Ind..
The committee also faults the Department of Homeland Security and Congress for failing to create a way to track when people leave the country and for not implementing tougher security requirements for identity cards.
"A decade after 9/11, the nation is not yet prepared for a truly catastrophic disaster," says the report, titled "Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations."
"Until some of these things are done, we aren't going to be as safe as we should be," Kean said in an interview.
Kean said it was "outrageous" that Congress had not passed a law to allocate new radio spectrum to first responders.
The inability of firefighters and police to talk to each other from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was a "critical failure" on Sept. 11, 2001, according to the report, but a recommendation to dedicate radio spectrum for first responders has languished in Congress.
In February, President Barack Obama called for $7 billion to build an emergency broadband network using a designated band of radio spectrum known as D-block. But such a bill has not come to a vote in the Senate, and the House has not considered it.
More than a year and a half after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, passed through airport screening in Amsterdam and boarded a Christmas Day flight with plastic explosives sewn into his undergarments, the U.S. screening system "still falls short in significant ways," the report says.
The new full-body scanners "are not effective at detecting explosives hidden within the body and raise privacy and health concerns," it says.
Some of the hijackers on Sept. 11 used fake documents to obtain state-issued IDs to board the airplanes, but deadlines issued in 2008 for states to make driver's licenses more difficult to forge have been pushed back multiple times. Compliance is currently not required until January 2013.
The delay "makes us less safe," the report says.
Another recommendation that has been ignored: for the U.S. government to fingerprint visa holders as they leave the country.
A system that tracks when travelers exit the U.S. would be "very expensive" to implement, said Stewart Baker, former head of policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
"This is a rare circumstance where I think the 9/11 Commission is wrong," Baker said. "I don't see the counterterrorism value."
Rick Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said some of the recommendations were not followed because they would either be too expensive or they ran afoul of concerns about privacy and civil liberties.
"A lot of the work that remains requires a decision by Congress and ultimately the American people," Nelson said. "Do they want this increased security and are they willing to pay for it and give up some civil liberties?"
POST-9/11 ASSESSMENT FINDS GLARING SECURITY GAPS
By Brian Bennett
Jewish World Review
August 31, 2011
Despite the outlay of hundreds of billions of dollars and a vast reorganization of federal agencies since the Sept. 11 attacks, major gaps remain in the government's ability to prevent and respond to a terrorist strike, according to an assessment by the former heads of the 9/11 Commission.
The report, which will be released Wednesday, warns that the nation's ability to detect explosives hidden on passengers boarding airplanes "lacks reliability." It describes emergency communications used by first responders in urban areas as "inadequate." And it calls efforts to coordinate rescues "a long way from being fully implemented."
The panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, was created by Congress in late 2002 as an independent, bipartisan group to investigate the hijackings of four jetliners by al-Qaida operatives. Its final report included numerous recommendations for reforms in the intelligence, law enforcement and domestic security communities.
The new assessment comes from the panel's onetime chairs, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, D-Ind..
The committee also faults the Department of Homeland Security and Congress for failing to create a way to track when people leave the country and for not implementing tougher security requirements for identity cards.
"A decade after 9/11, the nation is not yet prepared for a truly catastrophic disaster," says the report, titled "Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of 9/11 Commission Recommendations."
"Until some of these things are done, we aren't going to be as safe as we should be," Kean said in an interview.
Kean said it was "outrageous" that Congress had not passed a law to allocate new radio spectrum to first responders.
The inability of firefighters and police to talk to each other from the rubble of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was a "critical failure" on Sept. 11, 2001, according to the report, but a recommendation to dedicate radio spectrum for first responders has languished in Congress.
In February, President Barack Obama called for $7 billion to build an emergency broadband network using a designated band of radio spectrum known as D-block. But such a bill has not come to a vote in the Senate, and the House has not considered it.
More than a year and a half after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber, passed through airport screening in Amsterdam and boarded a Christmas Day flight with plastic explosives sewn into his undergarments, the U.S. screening system "still falls short in significant ways," the report says.
The new full-body scanners "are not effective at detecting explosives hidden within the body and raise privacy and health concerns," it says.
Some of the hijackers on Sept. 11 used fake documents to obtain state-issued IDs to board the airplanes, but deadlines issued in 2008 for states to make driver's licenses more difficult to forge have been pushed back multiple times. Compliance is currently not required until January 2013.
The delay "makes us less safe," the report says.
Another recommendation that has been ignored: for the U.S. government to fingerprint visa holders as they leave the country.
A system that tracks when travelers exit the U.S. would be "very expensive" to implement, said Stewart Baker, former head of policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
"This is a rare circumstance where I think the 9/11 Commission is wrong," Baker said. "I don't see the counterterrorism value."
Rick Nelson, a counterterrorism expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said some of the recommendations were not followed because they would either be too expensive or they ran afoul of concerns about privacy and civil liberties.
"A lot of the work that remains requires a decision by Congress and ultimately the American people," Nelson said. "Do they want this increased security and are they willing to pay for it and give up some civil liberties?"
COURT RULES CITIZENS HAVE RIGHT TO FILM COPS
There have been a number of people arrested all over the country for videotaping cops while they were making arrests. I call it the ‘Rodney King Fallout Syndrome.’ I’ll be the first to admit that, as a cop, I would not want anyone to videotape me while I was making an arrest. But is that against the law or grounds for arresting the video-shooter if he is not interfering with the police operation? A court has now ruled that citizens have a right to film cops.
One cop made a very good point when he commented on this PoliceOne report by saying, “Videotaping doesn't bother me. I'm just surprised that nobody has been shot for pointing a cell phone in a low light condition during a high risk incident they decided to film. I'm sure it's going to happen eventually.”
Another officer said, “I have to admit that being recorded by people just sucks. But the [court] is right. If you’re doing your job, you’re gonna be okay. The only problem is when the video gets edited [by the media] and all the un-involved citizens freak out by the officer's actions because of the edited version they saw” [as with the Rodney King case].
COURT UPHOLDS ‘CITIZEN’S RIGHT’ TO FILM COPS
PoliceOne.com
August 29, 2011
BOSTON — Arresting someone for filming the police is a constitutional violation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit announced Friday.
The case began when Simon Glik was taken into police custody for recording an arrest with his cell phone camera, according to Tech Dirt. Glik told police he saw an officer punch the suspect and believed their use of force was excessive, sources say. Officers reportedly asked him to stop recording because audio recording — a capability of Glik’s phone — violated Massachusetts wiretap laws.
Glik was charged with disturbing the peace and aiding in the escape of a prisoner — charges that were later dropped — but he sued the officers who arrested him and the City of Boston for failing to investigate the case further. His First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated, he said.
The police officers filed for qualified immunity, which is designed to protect them against frivolous charges, but the district court ruled in Glik’s favor, unequivocally stating that recording police in public is protected under the First Amendment.
“A citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment,” the decision said.
The court also ruled that the use of Massachusetts wiretapping laws to arrest Glik was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
One cop made a very good point when he commented on this PoliceOne report by saying, “Videotaping doesn't bother me. I'm just surprised that nobody has been shot for pointing a cell phone in a low light condition during a high risk incident they decided to film. I'm sure it's going to happen eventually.”
Another officer said, “I have to admit that being recorded by people just sucks. But the [court] is right. If you’re doing your job, you’re gonna be okay. The only problem is when the video gets edited [by the media] and all the un-involved citizens freak out by the officer's actions because of the edited version they saw” [as with the Rodney King case].
COURT UPHOLDS ‘CITIZEN’S RIGHT’ TO FILM COPS
PoliceOne.com
August 29, 2011
BOSTON — Arresting someone for filming the police is a constitutional violation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit announced Friday.
The case began when Simon Glik was taken into police custody for recording an arrest with his cell phone camera, according to Tech Dirt. Glik told police he saw an officer punch the suspect and believed their use of force was excessive, sources say. Officers reportedly asked him to stop recording because audio recording — a capability of Glik’s phone — violated Massachusetts wiretap laws.
Glik was charged with disturbing the peace and aiding in the escape of a prisoner — charges that were later dropped — but he sued the officers who arrested him and the City of Boston for failing to investigate the case further. His First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated, he said.
The police officers filed for qualified immunity, which is designed to protect them against frivolous charges, but the district court ruled in Glik’s favor, unequivocally stating that recording police in public is protected under the First Amendment.
“A citizen’s right to film government officials, including law enforcement officers, in the discharge of their duties in a public space is a basic, vital, and well-established liberty safeguarded by the First Amendment,” the decision said.
The court also ruled that the use of Massachusetts wiretapping laws to arrest Glik was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.
PROSTITUTION METERS FOR STREETWALKERS
What a brilliant idea!
THE NEW STREET SEX TAX: GERMAN PROSTITUTES PAY PARKING TICKET MACHINES FOR PERMISSION TO WORK
By Lee Moran
Mail Online
August 31, 2011
Prostitutes working the streets of the former German capital are now having to pay £5.30 per night to a modified parking meter - to gain permission to ply their trade.
Sex workers in Bonn face hefty fines for not forking out the new 'income tax' which has been brought in to try and regulate the outdoor aspect of the industry.
It is to bring them into line with the country's brothel workers who already pay out a percentage of their profits in tax, which varies depending on the region.
Critics say the system, introduced on Monday, for the city's 200 street workers will encourage prostitution.
But city officials, who are set to earn £265,000 per year from the system, believe it will go some way to bringing street prostitutes into line with their peers in registered sex establishments.
Spokesman Monika Frombgen said: 'This is an act of tax fairness.
'Prostitutes in fixed establishments such as brothels and sauna clubs already pay tax.'
She revealed that inspectors will monitor the streets.
And, if caught without a valid ticket, offenders would be reprimanded. They would then face fines, and later a ban.
The fee is a daily charge, and irrespective of how many punters are entertained.
The machines, made by German company Siemens, clearly show the times of day when a ticket is required.
After protests from residents, specific quarters have been designated as sex work zones.
City officials have created 'consummation areas', which are wooden parking garages where customers driving cars can retreat to with their prostitutes.
Dortmund has a similar system where prostitutes buy tickets from gasoline stations.
THE NEW STREET SEX TAX: GERMAN PROSTITUTES PAY PARKING TICKET MACHINES FOR PERMISSION TO WORK
By Lee Moran
Mail Online
August 31, 2011
Prostitutes working the streets of the former German capital are now having to pay £5.30 per night to a modified parking meter - to gain permission to ply their trade.
Sex workers in Bonn face hefty fines for not forking out the new 'income tax' which has been brought in to try and regulate the outdoor aspect of the industry.
It is to bring them into line with the country's brothel workers who already pay out a percentage of their profits in tax, which varies depending on the region.
Critics say the system, introduced on Monday, for the city's 200 street workers will encourage prostitution.
But city officials, who are set to earn £265,000 per year from the system, believe it will go some way to bringing street prostitutes into line with their peers in registered sex establishments.
Spokesman Monika Frombgen said: 'This is an act of tax fairness.
'Prostitutes in fixed establishments such as brothels and sauna clubs already pay tax.'
She revealed that inspectors will monitor the streets.
And, if caught without a valid ticket, offenders would be reprimanded. They would then face fines, and later a ban.
The fee is a daily charge, and irrespective of how many punters are entertained.
The machines, made by German company Siemens, clearly show the times of day when a ticket is required.
After protests from residents, specific quarters have been designated as sex work zones.
City officials have created 'consummation areas', which are wooden parking garages where customers driving cars can retreat to with their prostitutes.
Dortmund has a similar system where prostitutes buy tickets from gasoline stations.
HE DROVE HIMSELF SMACK INTO THE JAILHOUSE
Once he came to a stop, he certainly made it convenient for the arresting officers.
DRIVER ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN DRUG DEAL SMASHES INTO COUNTY JAIL
Lost Angeles Times
August 30, 2011
A man allegedly involved in a drug deal Tuesday afternoon in skid row tried to evade police by taking a wild ride through downtown, where he drove the wrong way along busy streets before smashing his vehicle into the Central Jail, authorities said.
Undercover narcotics officers saw the transaction about 4:30 p.m. and began following the man, who started to drive the wrong way through downtown, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
The officers stopped their pursuit, police said, but the driver kept going. Initial reports indicate that he hit parked vehicles before crashing into the Los Angeles County Central Jail at 441 Bauchet Street in Chinatown, according to the LAPD.
The man was apprehended by LAPD officers, who were investigating the case Tuesday evening. No additional details were available.
DRIVER ALLEGEDLY INVOLVED IN DRUG DEAL SMASHES INTO COUNTY JAIL
Lost Angeles Times
August 30, 2011
A man allegedly involved in a drug deal Tuesday afternoon in skid row tried to evade police by taking a wild ride through downtown, where he drove the wrong way along busy streets before smashing his vehicle into the Central Jail, authorities said.
Undercover narcotics officers saw the transaction about 4:30 p.m. and began following the man, who started to drive the wrong way through downtown, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
The officers stopped their pursuit, police said, but the driver kept going. Initial reports indicate that he hit parked vehicles before crashing into the Los Angeles County Central Jail at 441 Bauchet Street in Chinatown, according to the LAPD.
The man was apprehended by LAPD officers, who were investigating the case Tuesday evening. No additional details were available.
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