Anyone remember “Thicke of the Night”? I do, but only as being synonymous with “legendary disaster”.
Archive for December, 2016
Obit watch: December 14, 2016.
Wednesday, December 14th, 2016Lab watch.
Tuesday, December 13th, 2016Lawrence forwarded a story from “Community Impact”, one of those free neighborhood papers, that I thought was worthy of note.
The gist of it is that the Capital Area Private Defender Service (CAPDS from this point forward because I don’t want to keep typing that) is willing to get involved with fixing the DNA testing issues in the APD forensics lab.
Well, that sounds great. But what do they need? Money. And what does Travis County not have a whole lot of? Money.
Meanwhile, the Statesman is saying that fixing the DNA lab problems could cost…well…
More:
According to the organization, county officials could assign an attorney to each case that used DNA evidence analyzed by the lab to review it and “file appropriate motions” for a minimum cost of $13.2 million. Or it could choose a more expensive option in which attorneys would do a deeper review of cases using two attorneys from the outset to learn which might have potential issues — for $14.4 million.
The last option — at a cost of $6 million — would involve the county or city hiring new lawyers to handle the cases instead of using outside attorneys.
Oh, by the way, this doesn’t include the costs associated with actually getting the lab up and running again.
And, in an also related story: after the lab was closed, the APD asked the Texas DPS crime lab to do retraining of some of the DNA analysts.
But Monday, DPS officials told the department they had lost faith in most of the staffers they were working with — and wouldn’t be returning.
Instead, according to a one-page letter obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, only a select two from a staff of six DNA analysts are invited to a state facility to continue training in a “supportive environment.”
More:
In a letter to the Travis County district attorney’s office, Brady Mills, deputy assistant director of the DPS crime lab, wrote that the last four months of working together have shown that “there are significant challenges that impact confidence in the work product” of some of the lab’s DNA analysts.
“This has been demonstrated through our personal interactions with the group as well as the practical work product that has been completed and reviewed thus far,” Mills wrote. “Coupled with the expressed belief by your office that those senior analysts may no longer be utilized for expert testimony, APD and DPS plan to move forward with a new course of action.”
The position of DNA analyst (which requires a bachelor’s degree) in the APD lab starts at $23.44 an hour. I believe when I started doing enterprise tech support at Dell, I was making $22 an hour and that was in 2006: I would expect that by now, Dell’s paying closer to $23.44, if not more, and I also suspect enterprise tech support is easier than DNA analysis.
I want to be very very careful with what I say here. I don’t want to seem like I’m sneering at anyone. I couldn’t do this work, and I believe the people who do are motivated by things other than pay. But when DPS says 2/3rds of the people sent over for retraining, can’t be retrained? Is the DPS training that much more demanding than APD’s? Is there something else going on here? Or is the simple explanation also the correct one: APD’s been hiring people who are wrong for the job, and it finally caught up with them?
Murum Aries Attigit.
Monday, December 12th, 2016Jeff Fisher out as head coach of the Los Angeles Rams.
The Rams are 4-9 so far this season. Fisher was 31-45-1 overall with the Rams (including their pre-LA incarnation).
Actual headline on a column in the LAT:
Rams’ return to L.A. is officially an embarrassment. Coach Jeff Fisher needs to go — now
Hey, remember when all the NFL talk was about how LA desperately needed a NFL team, and how wonderful things would be when LA got a NFL team, and how much the league and the city would benefit from a NFL team? Wasn’t that a time.
(Hattop on the title to First Amendment badass Marc Randazza, who didn’t originate the term (as he makes clear) but is the person who introduced me to it. He would probably want to punch me in the face for using it in this context, but I couldn’t pass up a little bit of wordplay.)
Your NFL loser update: week 14, 2016
Sunday, December 11th, 2016NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
Three games left:
- at Buffalo (currently 6-7)
- San Diego (currently 5-8) in Cleveland
- at Pittsburgh (currently 8-5, and already beat Cleveland in Cleveland earlier this season)
I still wouldn’t bet this way, but I think it is at least possible that Cleveland could win one or two of these games.
Obit watch: December 9, 2016.
Friday, December 9th, 2016John Glenn roundup: NYT. Lawrence. WP. Sweet story about Mrs. Glenn: they were married for 73 years. LAT. NASA Glenn Research Center.
(My dad worked at the Glenn Research Center a long time ago; so long ago, it wasn’t called the Glenn Research Center back then.)
Edited to add: Borepatch on Glenn. NYT obit for Greg Lake.
Meta obit watch.
Thursday, December 8th, 2016John Glenn obits to come tomorrow, after everyone has had a chance to write and correct them. I’m sure the NYT obit has been in the can for a while now – it wouldn’t surprise me if at least one of the credited writers has died or left the paper – but sure as god made little green apples, there will be at least one correction.
More weird intersections.
Thursday, December 8th, 2016This is kind of a weird three-fer. Sort of one of those triangle intersections.
A woman bought “$23,000” worth of “Hatchimals” which I am given to understand is this year’s hot Christmas toy. (Personally, they sound stupid to me, but I am not a small child.)
Interestingly, eBay has apparently imposed limits on “Hatchimals” sales.
…
So why is some random woman’s attempt to profit on the backs of hard-working parents who just want to get their children a toy for Christmas interesting?
Intersection number 1: the random woman is author Sara “Water for Elephants” Gruen.
This raises questions: namely, why would Ms. Gruen, who is surely rolling in all that sweet Oprah’s Book Club and movie money, embark on this quest to profit on the backs yadda yadda? And why wouldn’t she have checked eBay polices before spending $23,000?
I don’t have an answer for the second question. As for the first, that’s intersection number 2:
More:
Curious. I might watch that series, if shows up anyplace I have access to, mostly because I wonder how she got involved in this case.
Edited to add: Got to remember. Always, always do the math.
$189 times 156 is $29,484. Subtract the $23,595.31 she paid, and that leaves a gross profit of $5888.69. And that’s before the cost of the batteries, whatever she’s paying for the copies of her books (unless she just has 156 copies lying around the house), and assuming she sells all of them. (The article says she’s given four away to “needy kids”, which reduces her gross that much more.)
Doesn’t $5,000 seem like a relatively paltry amount to fund a documentary? Heck, couldn’t she have raised that on Kickstarter without the whole exploiting parents yadda yadda angle?
Obit watch: December 8, 2016.
Thursday, December 8th, 2016Greg Lake, noted prog-rock guy. (King Crimson, Emerson Lake and Palmer)
We don’t need no education…
Thursday, December 8th, 2016Show your children the classic Chris Rock video, “How To Not Get Your Ass Kicked By the Police”. Problem solved in five minutes. No need for a course. As a public service to those of you who have children, I’ll even embed it here for you.
I’m really about 80% serious when I say that: there’s actually a lot of really sound advice in that video.
And I wouldn’t mind a class that taught “how to interact with law officers”, but I think that should just be part of a larger class. I’d also teach how the DA’s office works and how crimes are prosecuted, how civil court works, and I’d bring in defense attorneys (maybe even someone from the ACLU) to go over what your rights as a suspect are. I almost want to say that they used to call this “Civics”.
But I’d probably teach this as part of a larger year-long class for high school students which I’ve been calling “S–t You Need To Know”. I’d also want to cover things like basic car maintenance (how to check fluid levels and change a flat), basic gun safety, strategies for avoiding being a crime victim, statistical fallacies and how to recognize them, bad science and how to recognize it…there’s a whole bunch of things that I think graduating seniors need to know, but aren’t getting taught unless they have exceptional parents.
Feel free to leave your proposed curriculum item in the comments.
On the legal beat.
Wednesday, December 7th, 2016Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg, as promised, did not seek re-election. Margaret Moore is the new DA, and will take over January 3rd.
But she’s already making her mark: she’s fired 27 people.
Seventeen attorneys, 12 investigators and six administrative staff are retiring or have been told they will no longer have jobs when Moore takes over on Jan. 3. Additionally, 13 lawyers are being bumped to a lower classification and will take paycuts. And more changes may be coming. Moore told the American-Statesman on Tuesday she still has decisions to make on some administrative positions after wrapping up interviews this week.
in all, 48 people in the 238-employee agency have been affected by the moves. Twenty-seven were told their services will no longer be needed; they will not receive severance pay.
Is this good or bad? The DA’s office seems to want to spin it as “good”:
And it isn’t unprecedented for a new DA to want their own people. See Pat Lykos. Okay, maybe that was a bad example…
But there also seem to be some possibly legitimate concerns:
,,,
In other news, here’s an idea: why don’t we separate the crime lab from the APD? This makes a lot of sense to me: one of my ideas for criminal justice reform is to make crime labs arms of the court system itself, reporting to the judiciary, rather than arms of law enforcement. I’m sure that the vast majority of people who work in these labs remain independent, but it still looks and feels unseemly to me to have that kind of reporting relationship.
It seems like Grits agrees, though he calls for the lab to be “truly independent, as was done in Houston“.
I could live with that. They might need a new building, which probably means more bonds and more taxes, which does not excite me. But I think I could vote for that, too, as long as they put two quotes over the doorways:
I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.
Memo from the police beat.
Friday, December 2nd, 2016The APD officer who shot and killed a naked 17-year-old earlier this year, and who was fired by Chief Acevedo, has settled with the city.
Basically, what’s going to happen is that:
- The arbitration process stops. So the officer won’t get his job back.
- His firing gets reclassified as “a general discharge”. In theory, this means that he could get a job in law enforcement somewhere else. At least, according to the Statesman.
- The fired officer gets $35,000. That seems kind of low to me, even if his lawyers aren’t getting a percentage.
Why settle, though? Well, the city may have felt like $35,000 was a cheap price to pay not to go through the hassle. And what if…
So you get the mayor, you probably get Acevedo, maybe you get Chief Manley (no idea how involved he was in the decision making…
…and I hate to play the “I know more than you do” card, but I’ve heard some things through the grapevine that indicate the arbitration hearing could have gotten complicated and possibly embarrassing for some of the parties involved. The circumstances under which I heard this make me uncomfortable going into detail, but let’s just say: it seems like there was a chance (and not a “Chicago Cubs winning the World Series” chance; oh, wait, never mind) that the chief’s decision could have been overturned, and the fired officer placed back on the force.
It would have been interesting to see how that played out: does the APD need two people on pager duty? (Actually, by now, that guy would have 29 or 30 years in: he’s probably retired and collecting at least 76% of $98,000 a year, if not more and if I remember my APD pension math right.)
Obit watch: December 2, 2016.
Friday, December 2nd, 2016Andrew Sachs, perhaps most famous as Manuel the waiter in “Fawlty Towers”.
Milt Moss passed away on September 26th, though his death was just announced by his family this week. He was perhaps most famous as the “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” guy from the Alka-Seltzer ads of the early 1970s.
Well. Well well well. Well.
Thursday, December 1st, 2016Y’all read that Christmas story I linked to a few days ago, right?
Obit watch: December 1, 2016.
Thursday, December 1st, 2016Art (Acevedo), damn it! watch. (#AD of a series)
Thursday, December 1st, 2016Chief Acevedo’s last day on the job was Tuesday. Yesterday, he was officially confirmed as Houston’s police chief, and takes over today.
Before he left, Chief Acevedo did an “exit interview” with the Statesman. It is fairly short, but there’s one interesting quote that I’ll pull:
Why is this interesting? Well, there’s a story that came out in the past day or so. Seems like the DNA lab had a problem with a freezer that wasn’t working.
This is the kind of thing that could compromise the integrity of the stored evidence. So what did the lab do about it?
… they decided to keep mum. They alerted no one outside the lab — not investigators, prosecutors, defense attorneys or judges.
“If, in the future, the laboratory determines that a sample has been affected by this incident, the customer will be notified,” interim DNA technical leader Diana Morales wrote in a March 16 letter to her bosses.
That’s…not good, in my opinion. I might even go so far as to say: