Strict knife control.
You know what China needs?
March 1st, 2014Free Bubble-Up.
February 28th, 2014You may be wondering why this boxcar is so important to preservationists. After all, aren’t there plenty of boxcars in the world?
Yes. But this isn’t just any boxcar: this is Merle Haggard’s childhood home.
I wanted to drop some Haggard into this post, but I had a lot of trouble finding a performance of “Rainbow Stew” or “Fighting Side of Me” on YouTube that allowed embedding. So how about this: Merle Haggard in 1978 on “Austin City Limits”.
Banana republicans watch: February 27, 2014.
February 27th, 2014Somebody has been looking very closely at California police departments.
The criminal indictments appear to be a result of this series of events:
Razzak and Yick are also accused of falsifying incident reports.
Other high points:
- Razzak, Elias and Yick were sued by “two men and a woman” for violating their civil rights after a 2012 arrest. “The suit was settled earlier this year for an undisclosed sum.”
- “Furminger was one of three police officers named in a 2005 lawsuit in which a man said officers caught him urinating in the street, then forced him to kneel down and use his hair to mop up after himself. The city settled the suit for $83,000.”
- Furminger also received the Gold Medal for Valor as a result of a 1998 shooting.
- Former officer Vargas was fired by the SFPD “for putting in for overtime while testifying in court cases during regular hours”, and has a lawsuit pending against the department.
- “In 2002, Vargas was suspended for six months after being accused of gouging a man’s face with a broken crack pipe after he took him off a cable car for fare evasion. He admitted in 2005 to using excessive force, and the city paid the victim $60,000 to settle a lawsuit.”
- The San Francisco Public Defender has a YouTube channel. You can watch excerpts of their surveillance videos at the above link.
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 11 in a series)
February 26th, 2014Yes, this is a gossip column in a NYC paper. As much as I dislike Piers Morgan (and hope he spends time in prison for phone hacking), I would recommend taking the report itself with a grain of salt.
It does, however, give me an opportunity to make a point.
I don’t remember who originated this quote: I want to say it is a Dave Barry-ism, but I could very well be wrong.
Anyway: “If someone is nice to you, but rude to the waitress, they are not a nice person.”
You come at the King (City), you best not miss.
February 26th, 2014The LAT has a second-day story on the King City PD arrests, noted in this space yesterday.
There are several interesting new aspects to the story:
- The charge against Officer Jaime Andrade is “possession of an assault weapon and illegal storage of a firearm“. Specifically, “Criminal complaints accuse Andrade of possessing a semiautomatic Colt AR-15 and storing it in a manner in which ‘a child was likely to gain access to it.'” The possession charge is interesting; I’m no expert on the gun laws of California and other places outside of the United States, but I would have expected there to be an “only ones” exemption. I’m not sure how to feel about this; happy that a California cop got hoisted on his own petard? Or should I be upset over this in the same way that I would be if it was someone who wasn’t a cop?
- Sergeant Mark Allen Baker, who is apparently the sixth man from yesterday, is charged with making criminal threats.
- The charges appear, at least in part, to have spun out of an ongoing investigation. Allegedly, members of the King City PD were confiscating cars from residents and profiting from the impounds:
- More:
Miller Tow is owned by Brian Miller, who was also arrested. Brian Miller is not a King City PD officer; he is, however, acting chief Bruce Miller’s brother.
- This has “stupid” written all over it:
- King City is, according to the LAT, “more than 80% Latino”. Not explicitly stated in the LAT article, but my guess (and I think it is probably a good one): members of the King City PD thought they could prey on illegal immigrants and get away with it.
- Still no coverage that I see in the San Francisco area papers.
GMR 4×4 update.
February 26th, 2014Linoge has posted a follow-up on his dealings with GMR 4×4. In brief, he filed a complaint with the Vermont Consumer Assistance Program, GMR was given the chance to respond…and pretty much lied through their teeth.
And apparently Linoge isn’t the only person they’ve burned. Once again, I encourage you to read the original post, and Linoge’s update, and then carefully consider whether GMR 4×4 is the kind of company you’d like to do business with.
Lord of the I Told You So Dance.
February 26th, 2014The Saxet gun shows in the Austin area are on again.
Note my careful phrasing there. Saxet did not make a deal with the Travis County commissioners. Instead, the gun show is now in Hays County; specifically, in Dripping Springs.
Travis County has lost over 100 thousand dollars with the shift of Saxet’s contract.
The next show is March 29th and 30th; Saxet does not currently have any shows listed other than that one, so we’ll see how things play out.
(And Dripping Springs is a little less convenient for me than the Travis County Expo center. But I used to drive out to Dripping on a regular basis, so it isn’t a deal breaker.)
Banana republicans watch: February 25, 2014.
February 25th, 2014Former chief Chief Nick Baldiviez is being charged with embezzlement. Bruce Miller, who was serving as the acting chief, is charged with bribery. Bobby Carrillo, who was a sergeant with the King City PD, is charged with “conspiracy to commit a crime and bribery by a public officer”. Officer Mario Mottu Sr. is charged with “embezzlement by a public official”. Officer Jaime Andrade was also charged, but the charges against him are not stated, and it is unclear if he has been arrested. There are also claims that a sixth officer, who has not been named, is also charged. The King City PD, according to the LAT, has 17 officers.
I’m trying to find information from sources closer to King City, but neither of the San Francisco newspapers seem to have anything. (King City is a little south of Salinas, putting it closer to SF than LA.)
However, I did turn up this story that I’d previously missed: Stephen Tanabe is going to serve 15 months of federal time. Tanabe was a deputy with the Contra Costa Sheriff’s Department: he was convicted of “multiple felonies including conspiracy and extortion” in the “Dirty DUI” case, which I have written about previously.
Random notes: February 25, 2014.
February 25th, 2014Harold Ramis obits: NYT. LAT. A/V Club.
So what? This is the “opulent Gold Cost estate”. You may recognize it:
More on Samuel Sheinbein.
Russell Erxleben is going to prison for 90 months. (Previously. The 90 months figure comes from the Statesman whose coverage is behind a paywall.) (Edited to add: story from KLBJ-AM.)
We’ve got questions.
February 24th, 2014I was going to leave this as a comment on Lawrence’s blog, but then I thought it’d be more fun here.
Sadly, it turns out that the gold toilet exists, but it didn’t belong to Yanukovych. Here’s another example, just to motivate discussion. Anyway, questions:
1. Why a gold toilet? I admit, I’m not exactly the dictator type, or even the guy with more money than sense type. But I’m thinking, if I have that much money, I just don’t see the utility of a gold toilet. I’d rather have one of those fancy Japanese toilets, though I’d think about disabling Bluetooth on it first.
2. Where do you go to get a gold toilet? Is this something that’s commonly stocked in plumbing supply stores in Kiev? I’m guessing this is a special order item, but who do you order it from? I didn’t turn up any on Amazon. Do you perhaps get a goldsmith to make one for you? And do you trust your plumbing to a goldsmith, rather than experts? Like an actual plumber and a company that specializes in making toilets? This seems to me to be another argument for going Japanese with your high-end plumbing.
3. How do you clean a gold toilet? Do conventional bowl cleaners attack the gold? Can you put those cleaning tablets in the tank? If you have a gold toilet, you’re probably not using a bowl brush you bought at the Dollar Tree, so where do you get a matching brush and other accessories? Perhaps you commission those with the toilet, so you get everything from the same source.
But all of this seems like a huge pain in the butt, frankly. Even if you are a dictator and have people to manage these things for you.
Obit roundup: February 24, 2014.
February 24th, 2014There will be more to say about this tomorrow, but Harold Ramis is dead. I liked this line from the Chicago Tribune:
Ramis also left behind a reputation as a mensch and all-around good guy.
I didn’t post this yesterday, because I couldn’t find any obits I wanted to link to. While this has been well covered, I wanted to mention the passing of Maria von Trapp, last of the singing von Trapps.
And I missed this earlier in the week, but Richard Cabela, founder of the eponymous chain, passed away.
Mr. Cabela was a vocal supporter of the National Rifle Association. In a video posted on the group’s website this week, Mr. Cabela was asked what he would say to someone who identifies as a hunter but who does not belong to the N.R.A.
“How are you going to hunt without a gun?” he responded. “These guys protect your right to own a gun. That’s what it’s all about.”
And another bulletin from Bizarro world.
February 23rd, 2014Missed this until the NYT picked it up today: Steven Mandell was convicted on Friday of one set of charges relating to a kidnapping plot.
Specifically, Mandell was convicted of plotting to
Apparently, Mandell and his accomplice wanted the businessman to turn over ownership of 25 buildings to them.
What’s so odd about this? Well…
1. Mandell was actually acquitted on a second set of charges; the claim was that he intended to kill another businessman, along with that guy’s wife, so he could get control of their strip club. The strip club was reportedly “mob connected”.
2. Keeping with our theme for the day, Mandell’s supposed accomplice killed himself in jail before the trial.
3. Mandell was a former officer with the Chicago Police Department. No, really, I am not making this up. He served for 10 years and left the force in 1983.
4. So why am I not making “only ones” jokes or suggesting the CPD needs adult supervision? (It does, but not because of Mandell.) Because Mandell’s history since 1983 has been “colorful”.
Framed by the F.B.I. But wait, the story gets even better!
In 1993, Mandell was convicted of murdering Jimmy Pellegrino in 1990. Pellegrino owned a trucking company, and was allegedly murdered by Mandell as part of a drug deal, according to an informant with Mafia ties.
Mandell spent eight years on death row. And I bet you know what happened next: that’s right, the conviction was overturned on appeal, and Mandell walked in that case as well. (That KansasCity.com link has some more background on why both of these convictions were thrown out. And Mandell’s supposed accomplice in the current case? The one who killed himself in jail? He was also convicted in the KC kidnapping, and also had his conviction overturned on appeal, based in large part on the evidence Mandell collected in his civil case.)
So I’m avoiding cop snark in general here, and CPD snark in particular, because I don’t know what to make of this. It seems like there’s two possibilities: Mandell is a really bad guy who got lucky twice in having his convictions thrown out. Or somebody in law enforcement has a real problem with Mandell, has gone after him three times, lost twice (“Jurors also found that the investigators encouraged perjury, fabricated evidence, and concealed those facts from Clay County prosecutors.“), and now they have at least a temporary victory. It’ll be interesting to see if this holds up.
(I suppose there is a third possibility: why not both? But if Mandell really is such a bad guy, why did law enforcement need to fabricate evidence against him?)
It will also be interesting to read the true-crime book that I’m sure someone is writing about this case.
Here’s an ending for you.
February 23rd, 2014The case of Alfredo Enrique Tello is over. And the ending is almost as strange as the rest of the case.
Tello was murdered (according to Murderpedia, he was “beaten with the butt of a sawed-off shotgun”: there’s a “gun” death for you, Weer’d) and dismembered in 1997 by two scumbags, Samuel Sheinbein and Aaron Needle. Sheinbein was 17, and I believe (but can’t confirm) Needle was as well; Tello was 19.
Shienbein fled the US for Israel before he was arrested. As soon as he reached Israel, he claimed citizenship and argued that he couldn’t be extradited because he was an Israeli citizen.
This, of course, turned into an enormous “who struck John” that went on for a while. Ultimately the Israeli courts ruled that Sheinbein couldn’t be extradited because he was a citizen: but he could be tried for the murder in Israel and imprisoned there. He pled guilty in 1999. (Needle killed himself just before going on trial.)
Anyway, Shienbein was sentenced to 24 years in an Israeli prison, with the possibility of parole in 16 years. He was also eligible to get furloughs after four years.
So now we’re at 2014. He’s got a shot at parole in two more years. What happens next?
Yes. Somehow he obtained a gun in a maximum security jail in Israel. (Authorities are saying he didn’t grab it from one of the guards.) The Israelis called in a SWAT team and attempted to negotiate, he fired shots at the SWAT team, they shot back, and Sheinbein “was mortally wounded when they fired back and died despite medical attention.”
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes, as Jay G. likes to say.
Oh, those furloughs? According to the LAT Sheinbein was considered “so dangerous” they were denied to him until last year. And a few weeks ago, while he was on one of his furloughs from prison, he attempted to steal a handgun from somebody who had one for sale. That crime sounds about as inept as the shootout; Sheinbein jumped out of a moving car with the gun, the driver stopped, ran after him, grabbed him, and turned him over to the cops, who were quite surprised to find out they were dealing with a notorious murderer on furlough…
Obit watch: February 21, 2014.
February 21st, 2014Former NBC news correspondent Garrick Utley.
Banana republicans watch: February 21, 2014.
February 21st, 2014You may recall that last year, members of the city council of the notoriously corrupt city of Bell stood trial. One member was completely acquitted of the charges against him; the other five were found guilty on some charges, and had mistrials declared on others. The prosecution had indicated it planned to retry the cases that ended in mistrials.
However, the LAT is reporting that the prosecution is playing “Let’s Make a Deal” instead:
Five former Bell council members accused of looting the small city are scheduled to be in court Friday to consider an offer of a maximum four-year prison term in exchange for their guilty pleas.
The former leaders already face possible eight-year prison terms after being convicted on related corruption charges last year, making the four-year offer attractive.
It isn’t clear from the article, but my assumption is that the four-year terms would run concurrently with the eight-year ones, so the council members wouldn’t actually serve any additional time. But first they have to agree to the plea deal, and that doesn’t sound like a sure thing.
Edited to add: Indeed. The LAT is now reporting that only one out of five former council members expressed any desire to take the deal; the prosecution says either all five take the deal, or
Anyway, the lawyers have asked for more time, and it looks like the next hearing will be April 3rd. Watch this space for updates.