Someone who can claim credit in the comments (or send me an email if they want) suggested a T-shirt:
Front: “One down, 534 to go.”
Back: “Wearing this t-shirt is cause for revoking your civil rights. At least in Massachusetts.”
I don’t have time to work on the design (the personal situation I alluded to in an earlier post is not improving as rapidly as I would like) but if someone does want to take the ball and run with it…I would suggest that any proceeds go into TJIC’s legal fund.
We generally do not read the Huffington Post, although we do not react to it in the same way we react to that wretched hive of scum and stupidity known as Salon. However, we wanted to make note of this article, even though it has been thoroughly linked and blogged elsewhere:
We especially wanted to make note of this article in light of another recent event. Supporter and sometime commenter on this blog TJIC had his Massachusetts firearms license suspended over postings on his blog. Yes, you read that correctly: Jay G. has a more detailed account, which also preempts much of the commentary I would otherwise offer on this subject.
TJIC’s commentary may be disagreeable, even reprehensible to some. But if being disagreeable and running contrary to popular opinion was a reason to revoke someone’s civil rights, where would we be today? Jay says it better that we can:
Or how does it make you feel to know that Martin Luther King was denied the ability to defend himself and his family, because he was black and unpopular?
Can we get an “Amen!” for Brother Jay?
Since we have, in the past, noted cases where Austin Police Department (and Austin Fire Department) officers have won arbitrator’s rulings over disciplinary actions, simple fairness requires us to note this article in yesterday’s Statesman:
Certainly not the impression I had. However, if you read down a little more in the article…
So if the arbitrators have upheld 10 of 23, that implies they haven’t upheld the remaining 13, right? So is it fair to say “employees have lost that battle more frequently than not”?
In fairness to the author of the article, he goes on to state:
• Arbitrators have overturned only a single police disciplinary case.
• Arbitrators have agreed that officers erred in five cases but reduced their punishment.
My impression is that he’s grouping those as “wins” for the employees. That accounts for six out of 13. What of the other seven?
I think the author is counting the five settlements as “wins” for the city, where I would count a settlement as a “win” for the employee. Reasonable people can differ on this, and I’m not sure there’s enough evidence in the article to resolve that difference. Let’s be fair and count a settlement as a “tie”. By that count, I make it 11-6-5 (counting the withdrawn appeal as a “win” for the city).
Also interesting:
Well, it is that season, or will be soon:
It just gets stranger from there. I am amused by the detail that he was also carrying a Mexican flag.
We previously blogged about the local store clerk who was charged with murder after shooting at a fleeing thief who’d stolen a 12-pack. The thief was found dead in an abandoned car a few hours later, and the clerk apparently tried to cover his tracks after the shooting.
The clerk was just convicted of murder and evidence tampering.
We repeat what we said at the time, “If you had a good reason for shooting, the evidence is only going to help you. Altering or destroying evidence only makes you look bad.” And it will probably get you convicted.
Edited to add: The jury that was deadlocked for several days does not appear to have had much trouble returning a sentence; eight years probation.
…what Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator for the city of Bell, now under indictment, was doing, the answer is:
He’s working as a parking lot attendant at the “International Surfing Museum” in Huntington Beach.
I think I speak for many of my readers when I say: there’s an “International Surfing Museum”?
Edited to add 1/14: Well, that was quick. Rizzo is no longer working at the International Surfing Museum.
This happened Friday night, but we’re only just now hearing about it:
(Statesman link includes dashcam video.)
It appears that the DWI charge against the horse rider have been dropped, but police are going forward with the DWI charge against the guy on the mule. In addition,
(The horse and mule are apparently being held at an animal hospital in Elgin; ownership of the two animals has not been established.)
Alex Tabarrok, one of the Marginal Revolution bloggers, has an interesting article in the latest Wilson Quarterly about the economics of bounty hunting.
Edited to add: Just for grins, I thought I’d throw in a couple of links to Paladin Press books on bounty hunting, such as “Rex Venator”‘s Modern Bounty Hunting: A Real-Life Guide for the Bail Fugitive Recovery Agent
I intended to post this yesterday, but got sidetracked: the SF Weekly and the Bay Guardian have reached a settlement in their legal dispute. I’ve previously blogged about the dispute here, here, and here. (Hattip: Jimbo.)
I’m posting this only because it amuses me: the Statesman has posted the APD’s annual list of “local bars where drunken driving suspects reported having their last drink before hitting the road”. Particularly chuckleworthy to me is the large cluster of places in one block of 6th Street…
Speaking of the Statesman, there’s also a kind of neat profile of Austin writer, former Dell employee, and MonkeyBrain Books publisher Chris Roberson, who is taking over the current “Superman” story line with issue 707.
And speaking of things that amuse me, “Never Said About Restaurant Websites” pretty much hits all of my peeves (and Lawrence’s) save one. And we’ve both submitted that one. (Hattip: Daring Fireball.)
Edited to add: Here’s something else I wanted to blog but forgot: “The Now-You-See-It Restaurant“.
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I’m running a bit behind today due to a personal matter this morning, so here’s a quick roundup of some things I felt were worth rounding up.
Day after coverage of the Kubiak situation from the HouChron. Kubby stays, four assistants get the axe. And it looks like the Wade Phillips thing is moving closer to happening.
Fire last night in one of our downtown condo complexes. A close friend of WCD and many of our readers (who shall remain nameless here to protect his privacy, but the people who know him know who I’m talking about) lives in that condo one floor above the fire. He’s fine, and his condo suffered what he describes as minor smoke and soot damage.
Local gun store (McBride’s) robbed. This is the second break-in at McBride’s that I can remember; I have it in my head that the perps were caught in the act the first time, but I can’t confirm that now. It struck me as odd that they only stole “several” handguns, but this KXAN article describes them as high-end .45 autos. I think I know which guns were taken, as I’ve seen them in the display case. My recollection is that they were Wilson Combat and Les Baeur 1911s. Nice to know that our local crooks have good taste, but I don’t think they’re going to be able to move those easily. Assuming that they want to move them, as opposed to using them personally…
The Macy’s store in Highland Mall is closing. I’m thinking this is probably the end of Highland Mall. I haven’t been there in…I can’t remember how long. And I haven’t been to that Macy’s since shortly after they dropped the Foley’s branding. (I miss Foley’s.) Highland Mall attempted to file for bankruptcy last year, but had the petition dismissed. The mall itself has been in decline for several years; there are a lot of allegations that it has become a hangout for gangs, and a hotbed of criminal activity. The more recent Statesman articles avoid discussing those issues, but you can pick up on them by reading the discussion and this older Statesman article.
Question: if you level the mall, what do you put there as part of the redevelopment process?
So we’ve mentioned previously the theft and recovery of one local food trailer.
We were not aware, until we happened to catch a local television newscast last night, that a second food trailer is also missing.
We have been unable to find any photos of the Hook ‘Em Up Tacos trailer. Nor have we been able to find any media coverage elsewhere (not even a Statesman blog entry), which makes us wonder.
In any case, we suggest that you be on the lookout for any unexplained trailers that mysteriously show up in fields or behind garages near you.
The LAT has a longish summary of how the city of Bell got to where it is today, along with some background on Robert “Ratso” Rizzo.
A few choice quotes:
Hmmm. Perhaps someone should have been reading documents.
…
Wait a minute. There was a former mayor who did time? That’s an interesting detail I don’t recall hearing before.
What a day! Once again, we get to combine two more pet obsessions: food and the police blotter!
The Grinch, or someone equally mean, has stolen the main trailer of Lucky J’s Chicken & Waffles, an establishment we have not yet had the chance to try.
Luckily for Lucky J’s, they do have a second trailer (and I thought they were opening a sit-down eatery on Burnet as well), but in the meantime, please be on the lookout for a trailer that looks something like this:
The actual trailer, as far as I know, does not have a hand holding a giant plate of chicken and waffles in front of it.
Edited to add 12/28: Put a leash back on the dagron. The trailer has been found. You may resume normal activities.
Edited to add 12/28 part 2: An arrest has been made.
I’m a little behind on this due to last minute shopping, but I think it is worth noting.
Late last night, an APD officer shot and killed a man after a foot pursuit. The officer and his partner originally were trying to make a traffic stop; the suspect fled, the officers pursued on foot, the officer in question found the suspect, the suspect stabbed the officer in the neck (with a knife he took from the officer’s duty belt), and the officer fired one killing shot. (The officer is still in the hospital.)
This is weird enough to be noteworthy; things like this don’t happen very often in Austin. But the story gets even stranger; the dead guy was Maurice Pierce.
For those of you outside of Austin, or those who don’t remember, Maurice Pierce was one of four men who were charged in the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in north Austin.
The “yogurt shop murders” were, and are, a big deal in Austin. So far, nobody’s been convicted in these murders; the case against Pierce was dropped when prosecutors said they didn’t have enough evidence against him. One other suspect was freed before trial; the other two suspects stood trial, were convicted, and had their convictions overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals due to “unexplained DNA” that didn’t match any of the four suspects.
I’m not sure what to make of this; Pierce had earlier violent run-ins with APD and Lubbock police officers, according to the Statesman. Clearly, he wasn’t a choir boy, but nobody’s been able to come up with enough evidence to pin the murders on him. The only thing it seems like we can say is that this is going to make the truth about the murders much harder to find; I’m hoping APD doesn’t seize on this as a chance for “exceptional clearance“.