I see pictures like this from the Daily Newsand I notice one thing: the shoes.
If you’re hit by a car going too fast, the shoes will fly off your feet and be left basically where you are hit. Think of how much pressure you can apply and not get your shoes off your feet. It’s impossible if you don’t untie them, right? It freaks me out.
“The car was going really fast down 93rd St., much faster than normal.” So what’s the moral? Not don’t jaywalk… don’t friggin speed!
From Chicago, the Sun-Timesreports on the death of a Bears fan:
A skilled climber who enjoyed scaling up the side of buildings and trees, he may have even hopped over a railing to enjoy a cigarette behind one of Soldier Field’s famous columns before he fell, friends said.
But we all know that. He doesn’t keep it secret and thinks it should be legal. But since it’s not, he’s been arrested for it. Again. Of course it’s silly a supposedly free country wastes our money and law enforcement resources arresting senior-citizen for smoking a pretty harmless substance.
Of course it’s probably not a big deal for him. For Willie, getting busted yet again is almost like another feather in his bandanna. It’s more a shame when my students are arrested for such things. They can actually be hurt by a drug arrest. They don’t have much money and go to public university. When I went to college at a very rich private university, I don’t think anybody was everbeen arrested for marijuana possession. (I’m just sayin’…).
But this arrest bothers me more than usual because Willie Nelson, a US citizen, was detained at a US Border Patrol checkpoint while traveling within the US. Willie Nelson never left the Land of the Free. He was simply minding his own business being driven down US Highway 10 when he was stopped by federal agents at a border checkpoint that isn’t on the border. Seems they make a lot of low-level drug arrests here which probably brings in a little money to little Sierra Blanca and Hudspeth County, Texas.
US Border Patrol can and does stop people at “Interior Checkpoints” without cause. One needn’t be an anti-government survivalist to be slightly bothered by this. The main purpose, supposedly, is to deter illegal immigration. OK. Fine. So why arrest a guy getting stoned in the back of his tour bus? [Update: I should amend that to say the main purpose originally was to deter illegal immigration. Drugs were never mentioned in the original Supreme Court decision. But see the first comment below for yet another example of how the war on drugs creeps into everything.]
Police get power because of fear of terrorism or immigration. But once you give police that power, they can and will (and arguably should) use it as a tool for alllaw enforcement. I’ve written about this problem before, albeit in the slightly different context of airport security. If Border Patrol can stop people on trains and roads within 100 miles of an international border to look for illegal immigrants, then they should do nothing but make sure you’re not an illegal immigrant. Period.
In this case, the officer smelled weed when the door opened. This “plain smell” gives probable cause for further detention and search of a motor vehicle.
And let me just mention how nice it was of Willie to take one for the team. He said the six ounces of found marijuana was his. That’s a lot of weed, even for Willie!
At fixed check points (but not roaming ones) Border Patrol got the authority to stop people at their discretion in US v. Martinez-Fuerte (1976) when the court said:
It is agreed that checkpoint stops are “seizures” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment…. But it involves only a brief detention of travelers during which “[a]ll that is required of the vehicle’s occupants is a response to a brief question or two and possibly the production of a document evidencing a right to be in the United States.”
The decision was seven to two. The two dissenters, Brennan and Marshall, wrote:
There is no principle … which permits constitutional limitations to be dispensed with merely because they cannot be conveniently satisfied. Dispensing with reasonable suspicion as a prerequisite to stopping and inspecting motorists because the inconvenience of such a requirement would make it impossible to identify a given car as a possible carrier of aliens is no more justifiable than dispensing with probable cause as prerequisite to the search of an individual because the inconvenience of such a requirement would make it impossible to identify a given person in a high-crime area as a possible carrier of concealed weapons.
The lonely dissenters also took objection to the majority’s opinion that, “We further believe that it is constitutional to refer motorists selectively to the secondary inspection area … even if it be assumed that such referrals are made largely on the basis of apparent Mexican ancestry, we perceive no constitutional violation.” That’s a bit scary.
Is such constitutional racial profiling still law of the land or has some more recent case overturned that?
A one-year veteran was seriously shot on N. Calvert Street early Sunday morning.
He’s expected to survive. I hope he does.
From the Sun:
A man opened fire on him near the downtown nightlife hub, touching off a running gunbattle as tactical officers pursued the suspect up North Calvert Street.
The suspect fled on foot, then sped away in a silver-colored Toyota Camry before crashing into a light pole near Calvert and Franklin streets. Police apprehended him at Mercy Medical Center, where he was seeking treatment for several gunshot wounds.
…
Several tactical officers, who patrol the area on weekend evenings, shot at the gunman, firing at least 20 bullets on one city block, police said.
…
Court records show that Gross, who was identified as the suspect by law enforcement sources, had been convicted of three prior felonies. A police source said he was on parole for armed robbery at the time of the latest shooting.
Ray Rivera in the Times:
Five New York City police officers who wounded two bystanders in a shootout with a suspect in Harlem in 2005 cannot be held negligent, the state’s highest court ruled on Tuesday, ending a five-year legal battle before it went to trial.
In a 4-to-3 decision, the State Court of Appeals found that the five officers were within department guidelines when they returned fire on a robbery suspect who had opened fire on several officers. The suspect was killed, but police bullets also struck a 78-year-old man and a 39-year-old woman who was playing with her 18-month-old daughter.
I’m not certain where I stand on the legal issues, but I do want to point out the vote was only 4 to 3. And I hate to think of a world where police are legally prohibited from shooting back!
The story by Julie Scharper in the Sun. The contract would have reduced wages by 1.95 percent in exchange for five additional vacation days. The FOP president said, “It’s not just a rejection of the city’s best offer. It’s a rejection of the mayor and her inability to respect what these men and women do for the city every day and every night.”
Now if there’s no new contract, the old one stays in effect, right? When I was there, the city dragged its heals for years on giving us a contract. Now it seems like the shoe is now on the other foot.
Here’s a sad story about the costs–physically, psychologically, and financially–from one shot crime victim.
Thank you, veterans. You all have chosen to do something I am not willing to do. That doesn’t reflect well on me.
(Though I do wish we had fewer wars and fewer veterans.)
I’m strangely un-passionate about the death penalty. I think it’s wrong to kill. If I could wave a magic wand and do away with it, I would. And yet I don’t really care when criminals are executed. I certainly don’t shed a tear them.
Recent poll datashow that 83% of Americans support the death penalty (other pollshave shown this figure to be a bit lower, around 70%). But what I don’t get is that 81% of these same Americans also believe that innocent people have been executed (and just 39% believe it acts as a deterrent). That means at least 44% of Americans believe we’ve killed innocent people and still support the death penalty. How can you support the death penalty if you think we’ve killed innocent people?
I wish there were, when giving the death penalty, a standard of judicial proof higher than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Something like “we know 100% damn well for certain without anydoubt that the person is guilty.” Thenwe could debate the death penalty. Then I might even support it. Until then, I think Justice Blackmun was right when he said, “I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.”
Just FYI, in Russia, the not quite comparable figure in support of the death penalty is 44%. Many people love to think the rest of the world, compared to America, is horribly barbaric and blood-thirsty. These same people usually don’t have a passport.
Carolee Bildsten, 56, of the 5300 block of David Court, allegedly assaulted the officer on Tuesday evening with what Gurnee Police Cmdr. Jay Patrick called “a rigid feminine pleasure device.”
So says the the Trib.
[Thanks to Hephestos, my Koumbaros.]