In any case, the powerboater was extremely negligent in this case and at the very least should be facing a vehicular manslaughter charge.

I’m cautiously optimistic about California, everyone I know who lives there seems to be in favor of giving it a try.

http://semiautonomouscollective.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/the-green-emperor-legalization-of-marijuana/

Diabetic shock my ass.

If that were the case, they would have called an ambulance PRONTO.

I think it’s pretty fucking obvious she was out drinking all night then passed out at the wheel of her cruiser.

And yet again, the rest of the pigs cover up for the drunk cop. These people deserve not a shred of respect.

Explain to me why I need cops again?

“To refresh your memory, the idiot sent a bunch of young boys armed with sledgehammers to tear down a house Melton says was the site of drug dealing.”

Hmm. Where have I heard this before. A band of restless youth, not officially employed by the state, sent to push people around and cause havoc. A special thug class loyal to a charismatic leader. Oh yes, that’s how the brownshirts started out. Brilliant plan, Mayor Melton.

A Miami police officer slammed her marked police car into a van in Brickell early Wednesday morning, and, according to witnesses, stumbled out of her car clad in jeans and strappy heels before officers arrived at the scene and gave her something to eat.

She was given a field sobriety test three hours later, several witnesses told The Miami Herald.

Several police closed off a portion of Southwest First Avenue after the 4:50 a.m. crash, which occurred near 10th Street. Police are now investigating what caused the crash. No one was injured.

The damaged van’s owner, Jose Victor Lewis, said internal affairs detectives suggested the woman may have experienced diabetic shock during the time of the crash.

Lewis, a regional manager at a finance firm, was in his office on the 23rd floor of the Brickell Bayview Center at the time of the crash. Lewis, who observes markets in the Middle East and North Africa long before dawn, was interrupted by the sound of a loud boom.

”It was like a bomb went off,” he said.

When Lewis looked out his window overlooking the avenue, he saw a tilted police car driving down the street with sparks shooting out its left side, he said. The car slowly drifted left toward the curb and stopped a block away. He then looked out another window to see where the loud sound came from.

He saw two security guards running up to his dark blue Dodge Caravan, which was parked near the curb in front of the building.

After calling 911, Lewis went downstairs and found the van’s damaged rear right end. Underneath his car was a flat Goodyear Touring SLE tire with a brake pad inside the wheel.

A block away: a three-wheeled police car with heavy damage to its front left side and a bright green plastic alligator on the dashboard.

Lewis said he ran up to the police car and peered inside but saw no one there. As he walked away, another police officer arrived — just as the female officer who crashed into his car walked back to her police car, wearing blue jeans and a black shirt and stumbling as she stepped down the sidewalk, Lewis said.

Miami police have not yet released the identity of the officer, who they say is a city patrol officer. Miami police spokesman Willie Moreno said several details of the crash were unclear, including whether the officer was on duty or not.

”It’s unknown what caused her to lose control of her car,” Moreno said.

Lewis said the arriving police officer told the stumbling officer to identify herself when she approached the crashed police car. She then fumbled with her gray butterfly-print purse, letting a police radio fall out onto her car’s hood, according to Lewis.

The other officer then instructed her to sit down on the sidewalk, Lewis recalled.

Lewis said he voiced concerns about the woman’s sobriety to several officers who arrived later that morning.

Three witnesses said the officer was not given a field sobriety test until about three hours after the crash, after she was given food by police officers.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/920870.html

But I’m sure that they give DUI suspects food and wait 3 hours for a field sobriety test for everyone, not just fellow cops, right?

At my college, the system for electing student association presidents is always super clean (from the candidates, anyway) because each candidate is policed in his conduct by other candidates. That way, even if they step over the line on a tiny little infraction (like spending more than is allowed on printing flyers), other candidates turn them in and give them the boot.

If there was a system to force prosecutors who are up for election to enforce ethics on each other and rat out those who have violated public trust in the past, the people may be forced to elect the one guy with his nose clean because everyone else is a lying sack.

Sweet Jesus, the British government have mastered obfuscation to an art. “You may well be in the right, but sorry old boy, taking the children AGAIN and giving them back just wouldn’t be cricket, pish tosh.” No wonder they have such stringent gun laws in the UK: if it were my kids, I’d go Gary freakin Busey!

I can’t help but imagine the fathers in these cases encountering the judges or bureaucrats in a dark corner of a parking garage and going all Joe Peschi with a tire iron on the cretins who callously stole their flesh and blood. Certainly, the victims of many of the outrages documented on this blog might be tempted to do violence to their tormentors, but the theft of children seems to be the most provocative outrage. Get between a mother Grizzly and her cub for a demonstration.

So does it take a village to steal a child?

On that show JAG didn’t the lawyers switch places every so often? This week you’re a prosecutor, next week you’re on defense? Do actual military JAGs do that? And if so, I wonder if that would be a better system, since if you half-assed one duty your Annual report would look pretty bad. Maybe not a practical idea, but I still wonder.

I believe that is the way it happens. And it would probably be a good thing to have a pool of public prosecutors AND defenders who switch off depending on the case.

Then again, who knows. My hope is that you’d have less overzealous prosecution and more evenhanded prosecution and proper defense. What I fear would really happen is that the “public” and the “government” would more or less pressure them into continuing the overzealousness as prosecutors and into half-assing the defense side of things.

here’s one expert reconstruction (in PDF), you can google search to get the HTML. http://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/dinius-report.pdf . Wes Dod – “Dodd is a highly regarded accident reconstructionist and former law enforcement officer who has investigated over 650 boating accidents.”

The light globes were taken as evidence and submitted to the California Department of Justice for examination. A report was written on April 12, 2007 with the following findings;
Masthead Light – Couldn’t determine if the bulb was on or off at the time of the incident.
Stern Light – The bulb from the stern light was not on.
Bow Light – It could not be determined whether they were on or off during the collision.

I examined the photographs of the O’Day’s light globes. I have had training on the detection of cold breaks and hot shock deformation and concur with Dr. Chilcott’s findings that the mast light and bow light was illuminated prior to the collision.
Based on witness statements, cabin light was illuminated giving additional lighting. The power cord to the mast light was severed by the Baja which would cause the mast light to go dark.
The Sacramento Sheriff’s Department report shows the switch/breaker panel was found with the switches for Running Lights – Off and Bow Lights – Off. The Cabin Light switch was on. This observation was recorded two days after the collision. This was not addressed in the Lake County Sheriff’s Department report. They were on scene following the collision and impounded both vessels.

So two independent investigators found that the lights were on while the state guy did not, but it looks like you can add evidence tampering on top of manslaughter/negligent homicide anyway as they flipped the switches. This guy says that Perdock had to be going minimum of 40 MPH in order to jump the sailboat like that, and it was actually probably more like 55 MPH. He also finds:

Mr. Perdock who was in violation of 6600.1 T-14 CCR Rules 5 (Lookout), 6 (Safe Speed), 7 (Risk of Collision), 8 (Action to Avoid Collision, 13 (Overtaking) and 18(a)(iv) Responsibilities Between Vessels, therefore is in violation of 655 (a) H&N (Reckless &
Negligent) as these violations would constitute a reckless and negligent operation of his vessel….

…Mr. Dinius was in violation of 655 (b) (c) (d) H & N as shown in 192.5 PC, however the question is, did that unlawful act of operating a sailboat at 5 miles per hour while under the influence of alcohol cause the death of Lynn Thornton? Mr. Dinius was at the tiller and if he was not intoxicated, he still would have not been able to maneuver the sailboat prior to the impact. Mr. Dinius was not the proximate cause of the death to Lynn Thornton. The proximate cause was by the unsafe speed of Mr. Perdock who said the sailboat had no lights illuminated. He said he did not see the sailboat until it was directly in front of him and he was unable to avoid collision. He was unable to see the sailboat as he was operating at an unsafe speed for the prevailing conditions of darkness and poor visibility.

also:

Dan Noyes, a television reporter who investigated the story for ABC News in San Francisco, identified nine people on the sailboat or on shore who said they had seen the sailboat’s running lights, cabin light or both shortly before the collision. But when he told the Lake County District Attorney there were witnesses who had seen the lights, Noyes was told, “No, there are not.” One of the potential witnesses, Doug Jones, told Noyes that when he tried to tell a deputy sheriff that he’d seen the sailboat’s lights, he was told they had already proven there were no lights on. This was at 8:00 a.m. on the morning after the accident. He told Noyes the deputy refused to take his statement.

There’s plenty more too