One of the things I love about the city is how seriously people take the task of decorating their rowhouses for Christmas. Here’s a house on Belgrade Street:
Category: Life in the Big City
Comcast down
Three-car accident here yesterday that knocked out internet access and cable TV to wide areas. So I used my phone wifi to throw up some syndicated posts for today. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon.
UPDATE: Started Working at midnight. Yay!
Chicago PD head gets the boot
Mayor Rahm Emanuel has fired Chicago’s chief of police. Saying public confidence in the Police Department “has been shaken and eroded” in the wake of the Laquan McDonald controversy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday that Police Supt. Garry McCarthy is out as the city’s top cop. The mayor said he and McCarthy began discussing the future… Continue reading “Chicago PD head gets the boot”
Virginia gives green light to red light cameras
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.
My city in the fall
Welcome home
Two newborn babies found dead in a neighborhood parking lot, and two zebras escaped from a circus that’s in town.
Another day, another terror attack
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
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.
‘Homeless’ man writes tickets for texting and driving in Bethesda
Good idea. Texting and driving is so freaking dangerous, it would be nice to catch them before they crash into someone else:
Recently, a police officer who works for the Montgomery County Police Department dressed up like a homeless man to try to catch drivers who were texting while driving. Officer Robinson accessorized his outfit with tattered gloves and débuted his grungy look on a road in Bethesda. He completed his appearance with a cardboard sign announcing that he was not in fact homeless. The sign also explained that he was a Montgomery County Police officer who was in fact on the prowl for people texting while driving.
As the “homeless” officer stood on the side of the road, he would report to police officers standing by using a concealed radio whether a person was texting behind the wheel or not wearing a seat belt. In addition to the hidden radio, he also wore a concealed camera. The footage obtained by the camera will be used if any of the cases wind up in court.
According to Kush Arora, a defense attorney in Maryland, “Relatively few people end up challenging texting while driving charges in court due to the mild repercussions relative to other traffic charges. However, the use of the body camera and concealed radio on the part of the undercover officer to record evidence certainly provide further deterrence from doing so.”
Police officers in Montgomery County are able to pull people over and issue a citation on the spot if they observe them texting while driving because it is a primary offense. During Officer Robinson’s 2-hour operation, the police ended up issuing 56 tickets and 22 warnings. Each person found guilty of texting will driving will have to pay $70 and have a point added onto their driver’s license.
Police officers involved in the operation handed out additional tickets for driving without a license, driving on the shoulder, negligent driving, and failure to display registration. A similar strategy was previously used in California by the San Bernardino Police Department to ticket distracted drivers.
Dance, don’t shoot
Loved this. As I often say, the world would be a better place if we all lived life as if it were a Broadway musical:
In Washington, police showed up in a neighborhood near Nationals Park baseball stadium to break up a fight between two groups of teens. After it was over, 17-year-old Aaliyah Taylor, a senior at Ballou High School, walked up to the officer and started playing “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” on her phone. Instead of clearing out, as the police officer had demanded that she and the rest of the crowd do, she started dancing the Nae Nae. You can totally see a teen doing this, right?
That officer had a choice: Yell at the teen for being defiant and disrespectful? Go rogue and slam the teen to the ground, South Carolina-style?
Nope. The officer began dancing, too, matching Aaliyah move for move. It was a hilarious, uplifting and refreshing 56 seconds of video that immediately went viral.
It shouldn’t be news that a police officer used her humanity to defuse a tense situation instead of escalating it, that a white cop didn’t use force against a black teen. But for many people in Aaliyah’s community, it was.