Category: Life in the Big City

Not surprised

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Love Park

Through the years, I’ve met and spoken to many people involved in working with the homeless. One of the things I was surprised to learn in those conversations is that there is a large cohort of hard-core homeless people who, while not necessarily mentally ill, simply want to stay on the streets. So it’s not always as simple as giving someone a place to live and assistance in getting on their feet. (The more recent influx of those lost to the recent Depression of ’08 are much more likely to take whatever help they can get.)

One of the reasons so many cities have tried to prevent feeding the homeless is because it’s a basic tenet of social work: Don’t make it easier to stay on the streets. It’s one of the ways they try to get people into shelters.

So this story does not surprise me. It’s all too common.

Another day in Chicago

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Or almost any big city. Because it’s so extremely rare for cops to suffer consequences for their actions:

Chicago police accidentally killed a 55-year-old mother of five early Saturday when responding to a domestic disturbance, according to a police statement late Saturday.

“The 55-year-old female victim was accidentally struck and tragically killed,” the statement said. “The department extends it’s [sic] deepest condolences to the victim’s family and friends.”

Bettie Jones was one of two victims killed by police in the incident. The other victim was Quintonio Legrier, 19, whose father lived in another unit in the building and reportedly called the police.

The shooting occurred at about 4.25am on Saturday when police were responding to a domestic disturbance call in the building where they live, according to police and family members.

“Upon arrival, officers were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon, fatally wounding two individuals,” the Chicago police department said in a release.

The police dispatcher told officers that a “male caller said someone is threatening his life”.

“It’s also coming in as a domestic,” the dispatcher continued. “The 19-year-old son is banging on his bedroom door with a baseball bat.”

The police did not say whether any weapons had been recovered at the scene. They also did not specify how many officers were involved in the shooting.

“The officer(s) involved will be place on routine administrative duties for a period of 30 days,” police said.

Virginia gives green light to red light cameras

~ susie

Too many desperate towns using this as a revenue stream, but I suppose they have to do something to make money:

When a driver runs a red light and sees a flash, this is usually a result of a red light camera that goes off when a vehicle enters an intersection from the wrong direction and after the termination of the momentary grace period that occurs during the changing of the light. Under Virginia law, a person can be charged with a red light camera violation if the car is still moving through the intersection half a second after the light turns red. When this takes place, the camera takes a photo and records the time, date, time elapsed since the light changed, and the vehicle’s speed.

A person who is found to be in violation by a red light camera can be forced to pay a fine of up to $200 and have up to 4 points added to the license of the registered owner of the vehicle. A person should not confuse these red light cameras with speeding cameras, which do not exist in Virginia.

According to Virginia speeding lawyer Thomas Soldan, “Virginia residents who commute or travel frequently to Maryland and/or the District of Columbia may encounter speed cameras, which issue citations based solely upon the speed a vehicle is traveling. Red light cameras, on the other hand, deal solely with illegal passage through an intersection, although speed is a factor that may be recorded when a red light camera is activated.”

Virginia requires that jurisdictions that use these cameras place signs within 500 feet of the intersection where the cameras are located and conduct public awareness campaigns to discuss the implementation of these programs. Municipalities that install red light cameras insist that these cameras are meant to encourage safe driving practices and decrease the number of traffic light violations that occur.

Traffic volume and accident frequency are used when determining whether there is a solid reason for an area to get a stop. For instance, the Hampton, VA city council has determined that there are areas where the police can set up cameras to collect data on whether a camera is necessary. This is the last step required by the Virginia Department of Transportation before the police can fully implement the red-light camera program in Hampton.

Although Virginia has seen an increase in cameras, this increase has come with some criticism. One is that localities are using these cameras to increase revenue. Thus, some groups have suggested creating a specific use for the money for things like youth violence prevention programs or driver education. Another criticism is that the cameras cause rear-end-collisions from people trying to avoid a ticket by stopping short. Regardless of public opinion, as of right now, the amount of red light cameras in Virginia is on the rise.

Another day, another terror attack

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

paris attacks

So I was relaxing as best I could, but it was impossible to ignore the big news Friday night. Charlie Pierce said it best:

It is long past time for the oligarchies of the Gulf states to stop paying protection to the men in the suicide belts. Their societies are stunted and parasitic. The main job of the elites there is to find enough foreign workers to ensla…er…indenture to do all the real work. The example of Qatar and the interesting business plan through which that country is building the facilities for the 2022 World Cup is instructive here. Roughly the same labor-management relationship exists for the people who clean the hotel rooms and who serve the drinks. In Qatar, for people who come from elsewhere to work, passports have been known to disappear into thin air. These are the societies that profit from terrible and tangled web of causation and violence that played out on the streets of Paris. These are the people who buy their safety with the blood of innocents far away.

It’s not like this is any kind of secret. In 2010, thanks to WikiLeaks, we learned that the State Department, under the direction of then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, knew full well where the money for foreign terrorism came from. It came from countries and not from a faith. It came from sovereign states and not from an organized religion. It came from politicians and dictators, not from clerics, at least not directly. It was paid to maintain a political and social order, not to promulgate a religious revival or to launch a religious war. Religion was the fuel, the ammonium nitrate and the diesel fuel.Authoritarian oligarchy built the bomb. As long as people are dying in Paris, nobody important is dying in Doha or Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to Hillary Clinton. “More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups,” says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The cables highlight an often ignored factor in the Pakistani and Afghan conflicts: that the violence is partly bankrolled by rich, conservative donors across the Arabian Sea whose governments do little to stop them. The problem is particularly acute in Saudi Arabia, where militants soliciting funds slip into the country disguised as holy pilgrims, set up front companies to launder funds and receive money from government-sanctioned charities.

It’s time for this to stop. It’s time to be pitiless against the bankers and against the people who invest in murder to assure their own survival in power. Assets from these states should be frozen, all over the west. Money trails should be followed, wherever they lead. People should go to jail, in every country in the world. It should be done state-to-state. Stop funding the murder of our citizens and you can have your money back. Maybe. If we’re satisfied that you’ll stop doing it. And, it goes without saying, but we’ll say it anyway – not another bullet will be sold to you, let alone advanced warplanes, until this act gets cleaned up to our satisfaction. If that endangers your political position back home, that’s your problem, not ours. You are no longer trusted allies. Complain, and your diplomats will be going home. Complain more loudly, and your diplomats will be investigated and, if necessary, detained. Retaliate, and you do not want to know what will happen, but it will done with cold, reasoned and, yes, pitiless calculation. It will not be a blind punch. You will not see it coming. It will not be an attack on your faith. It will be an attack on how you conduct your business as sovereign states in a world full of sovereign states.

And the still, stately progress of the news from Paris continues. There are arrests today in Brussels, of alleged co-conspirators. The body count has stabilized. New information comes at its own pace, as if out of respect for the dead. In the stillness of the news itself, there is refuge and reason and a kind of wounded, ragged peace, as whatever rolled up from the depths of the sickness of the human heart rolls back again, like the tide and, like the tide, one day will return.

How legalized pot affects impaired driving charges in DC

~ susie

I have a close friend who works on marijuana legislation, and it’s an amazingly complex legal field. So this story about D.C. is just one facet:

Since it became legal to possess and even cultivate small amounts of recreational marijuana in Washington, D.C., lawmakers and law enforcement officials alike have been forced to reconsider the way they approach impaired driving charges. This year, The Governors Highway Safety Association (an organization based in Washington, D.C.) published a report indicating that almost as many individuals operate vehicles high on pot or pills on the road as they do impaired by alcohol. This begs the question of whether it is necessary for Washington, D.C. to take further steps to monitor drugged driving, specifically when it comes to marijuana.

The report, Drug Impaired Driving: A Guide for What States Can Do, found that nearly 40 percent of victims in fatal crashes were found to have drugs in their system. Of this 40 percent, one-third of this group tested positive for marijuana. However, the report concedes that this data is not always reliable because even when blood tests positive for marijuana, it does not necessarily mean that the individual was significantly impaired by marijuana at the time. This is because chemicals associated with marijuana use can stay in the blood even after the effects have worn off.

According to D.C. DUI lawyer Shawn Sukumar, “The question in most DUI cases is whether an individual was actually impaired at the time of the DUI stop. Police officers have ways of measuring the amount of alcohol in a person’s breath, blood or urine, and these measurements are used as direct evidence of a person’s intoxication level at the point of arrest. However, when it comes to marijuana, there is no device or test that can accurately indicate the degree of impairment or the time that has elapsed since the drug was consumed.”

While more research is conducted on the effects of marijuana on driving, the report suggests that the District of Columbia should continue to educate the public regarding the possible dangerous effects of driving under the influence of drugs. In the meantime, you can be charged with a drug-related DUI offense in DC if law enforcement believes that your ability to drive has been impaired by a drug. Signs that a police officer will look for when determining whether you are under the influence of marijuana include the odor, tremors, and incomplete or incoherent thoughts.

As time passes, it is entirely possible that the District’s policies regarding marijuana use and driving may become stricter and more explicit. As yet, however, no considerable changes have been made to the DUI statutes.