“Chocolate City” Shows Its Class

Hey!  New Orleans!  What are you gonna do with that BP swag sent to you to help with the hit to your tourism???

Give the finger to the home country of the entity writing the check, of course!

From the UK Daily Mail:

Tourism chiefs in New Orleans are set to launch a cheeky ‘anti-British’ advertising campaign to lure tourists – paid for with $5million of oil giant BP.

The campaign comes as the gulf oil spill threatens to damage New Orleans’ fragile tourism industry, which is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina five years ago.

The New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau came up with the idea. According to blogofneworleans.com, NOCV bureau president Steve Perry said: ‘You can’t just say we’re open, come.

Stay classy, NOLA!

How Much Disrespect Is Too Much?

And now to an interesting little controversy in my own backyard.

First, the video:

And then the story.  From the Seattle Times:

In Monday’s incident, Officer Ian P. Walsh grabbed the arm of a 19-year-old woman who tried to walk away from him after he stopped her for jaywalking on Martin Luther King Jr. Way South near Rainier Avenue South. A pedestrian overpass was nearby. As he was trying to handcuff the woman, the 17-year-old girl intervened, grabbing and pushing Walsh, who responded by punching her in the face.

And this isn’t the first incident of its kind in Seattle lately.

Auditors who oversee complaints against Seattle police officers have repeatedly expressed concerns about jaywalking stops and minor street confrontations that escalate into physical altercations, and they say better training is needed.

Diaz said that although police officers hold a dangerous job and need citizens to act civilly, the department needs to take the “extra step” of maintaining good relations with the community. Police say they ticket jaywalkers because a number of people in Seattle have been injured and killed dashing out into traffic in areas where drivers can’t see them.

Because if you say “Please”, criminals and their associates will be happy to submit to authority.  Of course, with a crowd like that, if someone had grabbed Officer Walsh’s gun and decided to ventilate him, they would be perfectly justified in doing so, because he didn’t take the “extra step” of “maintaining good relations with the community”.

Of course, this is also feeding a complaint that a blind man could see coming from 100 miles away…

Leaders of Seattle’s African-American community called Walsh’s punch an overreaction, while also criticizing the 17-year-old’s behavior. Both the girl and woman are black, while Walsh is white.

Maybe they need to think a little harder about the 17-year-old’s behavior.  It seems to me that the “Static Rule” was in play here.  Perhaps it was because I went to school with and worked with the sons of the police officers back in the mid-Michigan community where I grew up, and therefore I was familiar with what they did before the became police officers that would make me think long and hard about interfering with a police officer who is clearly trying to subdue and cuff a suspect.  Police have a tougher job than most, and they really shouldn’t have to deal with attitudes from teens that they are trying to arrest. And it is the little things that are blowing up into these confrontations in Seattle right now.

In a 2006 report, Pflaumer [Seattle P.D. Civilian Auditor 2003-2009] wrote that she found it “distressing to see how many of the excessive force complaints begin with minor street confrontations: Over jay walking, possible impounding of a car, or even, in one case, refusal to show an officer a ‘receptacle’ for disposing of dog waste.”

Pflaumer noted that citizens “often do not show officers respect or attention” when confronted over minor offenses.

“When they verbally challenge or disregard orders given, it often leads officers to respond more harshly than warranted,” she wrote.

The solution?  “De-escalation training”, and a lot of second-guessing by people who weren’t present.

Last year, a new auditor, Michael Spearman, who had served as a King County Superior Court judge, cited similar concerns. “What stood out most often was the number of instances in which citizen/officer contact escalated from innocuous to the use of force situation,” he wrote in a report.

Spearman, who left the job after being appointed in March to the state Court of Appeals, noted that on many occasions, the initial contact stemmed from a jaywalking allegation that escalated when the citizen failed to comply with an officer’s order to stop.

In some cases, Spearman wrote, the failure to stop resulted from inattention or bad judgment and, in other instances, from a belief — right or wrong — that the officer was motivated by racial bias. He also urged the Police Department to intensify the training of officers in de-escalation techniques to minimize the use of force.

“Certainly, when an officer observes a jaywalking or other minor infraction, there is some obligation to make an effort to either cite the offender or in some way encourage compliance with the law,” Spearman wrote. “However, whether the use of force in this situation is a best practice is questionable.”

I like Judge Spearman.  While I have never tried a case before him, I have attended CLEs at which he lectured, and he has consistently demonstrated the demeanor and the character that I expect a judge to exhibit.  However, I think he gets this wrong.

In a crowd like the one in the video above, the officer already has to have his senses heightened that much more than normal, because he has to be watching not just the suspect, but the other people all around him.  It would be easy for this to go badly, and the 17-year-old could have just as easily been an aggressive male, or someone determined to grab the officer’s sidearm.  We charge these officers with enforcing the law.  That means the little ones as well as the big ones.  The 19-year-old may have thought it silly to be stopped for jaywalking, but it isn’t just about her.  There is a reason that there was a pedestrian overpass in the background, and it wasn’t so someone could get killed and cause significant property damage by crossing the street illegally there.  It makes a tough job that much tougher.  When the officer is in that situation, he or she needs to be able to deal with interference in a direct manner that sends a clear message and discourages other bystander participation. 

In a state where we just recently buried 4 officers killed at the same time in my community earlier this year, you wouldn’t think that this would be such a difficult concept to grasp.

Deja-Vu? Obama’s Student Loan Files Hacked between 2007 and 2009.

Last month it was reported that nine Iowa City-area Vangent employees had been accused of illegally accessing  Obama’s student loan records at some point in July 26, 2007, and March 13, 2009:

Eileen Cassidy Rivera of the Arlington, Va.-based Vangent said the nine workers, not the company, were the subject of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, and that Vangent cooperated fully with the investigation.

Vangent officials, she added, do not believe the violation of company security policies was politically motivated.

Why not? The nine face charges of exceeding computer access to a POTUS candidate’s  student loan files….and that’s thought not to be politically motivated?

Do we know the political affiliations of these nine snoopy snoopers?

Eastern Iowa News took the time to look that information up:

Those charged are Andrew J. Lage, 54, Patrick E. Roan, 51, Sandra Teague, 54, and Mercedes Costoyas, 53, all of Iowa City; Gary Grenell, 58, and Lisa Torney, 49, both of Coralville; Anna Anne C. Rhodes, 32, of Ainsworth Iowa City; Julie L. Kline, 38, of West Branch; and John P. Phommivong, 29, of North Liberty.
Grenell and his wife are now missionaries in Tanzania, his neighbor, Linda Fisher, said on Thursday.
Voting records show that four of those indicted are registered as Democrats, two are registered as Republicans and three are not registered to vote in Johnson County. The two registered as Republicans are Torney and Grenell. Those registered as Democrats are Phommivong, Roan, Lage and Kline.

Hmmm.

Yesterday, a woman pleaded guilty in a Davenport federal court  to accessing  Obama’s student loan records without permission.

Mercedes Costoyas, 53, of Iowa City, is one of nine people charged with exceeding authorized computer access.

The indictments were filed last month in U.S. District Court, Davenport. Each person faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine, if convicted.

By pleading guilty, Costoyas still faces up to a year in prison. But her attorney, Christopher Hagenow, and prosecutor Joel Barrows said she likely faces zero to six months jail time.

She also faces deportation, according to discussion during the plea hearing, but Judge James Gritzner said “that issue is for another court on another day.”

Authorities did not specify a country.

Hmmm.

Where does the deja-vu come in? There was a similar story during the ’08 election year: State Dept. workers illicitly check Obama’s passport [Updated]

Spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of “imprudent curiosity,” which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21 and March 14. He would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined.

“We believe this was out of imprudent curiosity, so we are taking steps to reassure ourselves that that is, in fact, the case,” McCormack said.

Fast forward to Jan 2009, when Ken Timmerman reported:

Obama’s top terrorism and intelligence adviser, John O. Brennan, heads a firm that was cited in March for breaching sensitive files in the State Department’s passport office, according to a State Department Inspector General’s report released this past July.

The security breach, first reported by the Washington Times and later confirmed by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, involved a contract employee of Brennan’s firm, The Analysis Corp., which has earned millions of dollars providing intelligence-related consulting services to federal agencies and private companies.

During a State Department briefing on March 21, 2008, McCormack confirmed that the contractor had accessed the passport files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain, and that the inspector general had launched an investigation.

Sources who tracked the investigation tell Newsmax that the main target of the breach was the Obama passport file, and that the contractor accessed the file in order to “cauterize” the records of potentially embarrassing information.

Flash forward to Feb, 2010, Atlas Shrugs;

You will also recall that the key witness in the presidential Passport tampering case mas murdered. Shot in the head, in his car, in front of his church.

Chief of firm involved in breach is Obama adviser.

No, I did not recall that.

Much speculation has been made about what national passport Obama used when he traveled to Pakistan in 1981.

So Obama confessed to this trip two weeks after his passport was tampered with.

Pakistan was in turmoil in 1981 and ruled of martial law. Millions of Afghan refugees were living in Pakistan, while the Afghan Mujahedeen operated from bases inside Pakistan in their war with the Soviets. One of the leaders that based his operation in Quetta, Pakistan was Usama Bin Laden (The Sheik).

Pakistan was on the banned travel list for US Citizens at the time and all non-Muslim visitors were not welcome unless sponsored by their embassy for official business. (more here)

Key witness in passport fraud case fatally shot Washington TimesApril 2008

A key witness in a federal probe into passport information stolen from the State Department was fatally shot in front of a District church, the Metropolitan Police Department said yesterday.

Lt. Quarles Harris Jr., 24, who had been cooperating with a federal investigators, was found late Thursday night slumped dead inside a car, in front of the Judah House Praise Baptist Church in Northeast, said Cmdr. Michael Anzallo, head of the department’s Criminal Investigations Division.

Cmdr. Anzallo said a police officer was patrolling the neighborhood when gunshots were heard, then Lt. Harris was found dead inside the vehicle, which investigators would describe only as a blue car.

Emergency medics pronounced him dead at the scene.

City police said they do not know whether his death was a direct result of his cooperation with federal investigators.

“We don’t have any information right now that connects his murder to that case,” Cmdr. Anzallo said.

Police say a “shot spotter” device helped an officer locate Lt. Harris.

A State Department spokeswoman yesterday declined to comment, saying the investigation into the passport fraud is ongoing.

The Washington Times reported April 5 that contractors for the State Department had improperly accessed passport information for presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain, which resulted in a series of firings that reached into the agency’s top ranks.

One agency employee, who was not identified in documents filed in U.S. District Court, was implicated in a credit-card fraud scheme after Lt. Harris told federal authorities he obtained “passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State.”

I just thought I’d mention it.