Santa Monica city council looks to ban exercise in city parks.
Baltimore man slays burglar with Samurai sword. But can he slice bread with it?
Manhattan has a new district attorney for the first time in a generation. Scott Greenfield likes him. That’s a pretty good sign.
Cretinous Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) trying to bring back law denying all federal higher ed aid to anyone convicted of a drug crime, including possession. Congress votes on the measure today.
Some states changing witness ID procedures after spate of wrongful convictions. More need to.
Louisiana appellate court says cop caught on tape beating man after Hurricane Katrina can return to the force.
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on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:40 am by Radley Balko
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TheAgitator.com
The Federal Appeals Courts have become a joke, completely biased towards police and government.
You can bet that if it were someone appealing a drug sentence on similar grounds the sentence would have been duly affirmed.
Ridiculous.
I lived in Santa Monica very recently and I can say I just don’t get this. I never had any problem with exercise equipment being in the way anywhere. You can’t take 10 steps without a bum being in the way, and they are worried about the exercise equipment?
Whoops, it was a state appeals court that made the decision. However the bias is the same.
Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.) is a prime example of how the GOP is not keeping up with the change in American values. It’s another good example of why they aren’t going to regain a majority in congress if they don’t get with the program.
The Santa Monica story is the same old same old. Some of these personal trainers are making money from these classes. The City wants a cut, but can’t figure out how to get it. So they try to ban the trainers. Here’s the best part. If somebody tries to make an issue out of this, the City will claim that they are afraid of being sued if somebody hurts themselves during one of these classes.
I love the last line of the Baltimore story. “looking into charges against the student”. We need to have our self-defence laws go back to you having the right to defend your property as well as yourself. I know there are going to be some people who are going to ask “Is your property worth someone’s life?”. They are asking the wrong people. They should be asking the burgler “Is that worth YOUR life?”.
The Souder thing disgusts me. Essentially he is saying he expects 100% recidivism, no reforming possible.
What’s wrong with ‘do the time and then move on’?
z, those aren’t bums, those are “persons using their personal liberties”.
Agree with Peter Ramins @ 9:25.
Denying people economic opportunity is almost certain to force the convicted back to the crimes that got them in trouble in the first place.
Of course Sounder will be able to go back and say how he is “tough on crime.”
One can only hope that he is on the receiving end of an isolated incident.
The beating (on video and seen globally) of Davis was pretty high profile (sometimes we forget too quickly). To be re-instated with full backpay is outrageous. Fucking full backpay! Paid vacation!
If there is a stronger union and more protected class than cops, I’d like to see it. Even politicians (our lords, gods, and saviors) sometimes lose their jobs and serve time.
First new Manhattan DA in ages? What are they talking about? I mean, first there was Adam Schiff back in the 90s, then Nora Lewin took over for a couple of years, then Arthur Branch got the job, and now it’s Jack McCoy. I mean, learn your history, Radley. Yeesh.
OH man, Mark Souder.
Like Mattocracy said, his stance is not keeping up with the change in American values, and as Peter said, somehow believes there is a 100% recidivism rate. I mean, what world is he living in???
Oh wait…
…maybe our federal government should get out of the loan business altogether.
I agree Radley, not offering federal student loans to those convicted of even the most minor drug crimes is pretty bad. There’s no dispute with this.
But it ignores a more pressing point.
A properly honed katana can cleanly cut thru a whole side of beef bones and all. If the student got a full swing at the burglar, he could easily have been cut in two (while still being alive to feel the unique sensation).
I just hope the home owner told the cops “He said he was going to kill me and I believed him”. Can’t have civilians killing people and competing with the police.
One of the officers shot himself.
Was it Schilling? Yes, found it.
“Schilling was found in a suburban Metairie home. An autopsy showed he died of a gunshot wound to the roof of the mouth, Jefferson Parish coroner’s office said.”
Gosh! I wonder how a professional organization like the N.O.P.D could lose evidence.
Followed by
*sigh* Laws for thee but not for me.
Radley-san, please refrain from using the word cretinous to refer to bad people. Frank Sinatra referred to those who play rock and roll as “cretinous goons” and I think of it as a badge of honor.
Fuck Souder. I hope he gets testicular cancer (or some other form of cancer where marijuana would be his best hope of relief).
If that kid had a gun instead the burglar would probably have had a better chance of survival. Don’t see why he needed the sword if he had friends with him when the guy lunged for them.
doh, forgot the stupid close blockquote tag
Per the Katana article,
So if a burglar robs a bank resulting in someone there to die, however in-avertedly, they can be charged with manslaughter – at the very least. Heck there’s a simple solution to who to charge for the death of this robber. Charge the robber himself. You should be scared for your life if your trying to steal from other people in there own home.
its disgusting to think that someone defending themselves would even have a possibility of being charged. The fact that it is brought up is sickening.
I think it’s Manhattan Beach that wants to ban the exercise, or at least trainers leaving their equipment behind in the parks. Which seems kind of odd to me. Is this stuff not valuable enough to put away? Wouldn’t this be littering?
Santa Monica isn’t banning exercise in parks. Several of the parks actually have exercise stations. They do seem to have some kind of issue with people exercising in the medians on some residential streets, which are typically landscaped like parks. This activity seems to really piss off some of the residents of the streets, for some reason. I’m not sure if they’re officially off limits to exercisers these days.
This kind of odd strain of territorialism among the locals seems to have a pretty long history in Santa Monica. It’s kind of an odd example for libertarians, because local government isn’t terribly inefficient. On the contrary, it’s often too efficient, enabling every petty tyrant on your street more power than they really deserve. Big government is what many residents want, what they get, and when it encroaches on their personal pet peeve, their solution is even more government.
Re Souder — Wait, are the libertarians here now saying that there should be federal higher ed aid in the first place? Or just that if the Fed is going to give it, they should not exclude based on a drug crime conviction? Seems like a libertarian ethical dilemma, where a federal government program is scaled back, but on completely paternalistic and anti-liberty grounds.
How do you know the guy acted in self defense? You just going to take his word for it? That’s why you have an investigation.
Further information has come out about this incident and it turns out the burglar wasn’t in the house as all. He was outside of the house, hiding in the bushes.
Westy,
I think the problem is that by subsidizing higher ed, the federal government makes it virtually impossible for anyone but the very wealthy to attend college without some form of federal assistance. There’s a direct correlation between tuition prices and the ceiling on student loans. So yeah, ideally I’d like to see the government out of higher ed altogether. But to artificially jack up the price, then deny aid to anyone convicted of a petty pot possession charge is a severely regressive policy.
Chuchundra, do you have a link for that?
The samurai story was linked to on the Volokh conspiracy I think yesterday. The story I read indicated the student was questioned and released and didn’t say anything about charges being filed. I don’t know if there’s any new information in. The commenters on the blog seemed mostly skeptical he would be charged.
The Baltimore Sun version of the story can be found here:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.samurai16sep16,0,114199.story
I’ve been hearing different accounts. The Sun says the burglar was in the garage (which is not attached to the house), not the bushes.
If I understand MD law right (and this is only from what my friend, a 3rd year law student has told me) the investigation will consist of: “Did you feel that your life was being threatened?” If the answer is yes, it will be ruled self defense, on his word alone. And I, for one, am happy to be living in a state that still gives the property owner the right to defend his property. The burglar was previously convicted 29 times of similar property crimes. I know we rag on law enforcement on this site, but this guy was no victim of police harrassment or profiling. This is (was) the kind of guy law enforcement should be focusing their efforts on, instead of pot heads and prostitutes.
So we convict people of felonies based on non-violent consensual crimes, like possessing pot. We then force them to spend time in prison, which they will be required to tell every employer or college they interview with about their prison conviction. We strip them of their right to vote. And now were going to make it harder for a person convicted of such a crime to get into institutions of higher education.
Wow all those after school specials were right, winners really don’t use drugs! Of course its kind of hard to be a winner when the same people who made the stuff illegal also stack the deck against you. I guess the real lesson is don’t do drugs, unless your one of those privileged non-minority types who will never get arrested and railroaded for its use.
Euler Ask and you shall recive,
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-md.samurai16sep16,0,4544259,full.story
Per Article,
“With the 3- to 5-foot-long, razor-sharp weapon in hand, police say, Pontolillo crept toward the noise. He noticed a side door in the garage had been pried open. When a man inside lunged at him, police say, the confrontation was fatal.
“He was backed up against a corner and either out of fear or out of panic, he just struck the sword with force,” said Baltimore Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. “It was probably with fear for his life.”
Pontolillo, who rents the house in the 300 block of E. University Parkway in the Oakenshawe neighborhood, struck the intruder no more than twice, police say, nearly severing his left hand and inflicting what police termed a “spear laceration.”"
I personally don’t care if the robber was still outside trying to get inside. The robber lunged toward him. Somehow I don’t think it was to give him a hug. Pontolillo was lucky enough to go and investigate the noise with some sort of weapon and used it. If the robber didn’t want to risk his life he shouldn’t be robbing. Also please remember the article says no more than two strikes. Its defiantly possible all of the damage was done in one strike.
As to the further comment on the page that you have to have some sort of training to inflict a blow like that, its incorrect. Sometimes people who have never picked up a sword before get lucky. Seen it happen during a few sparing practices when I use to practice. Freaking hurt when I got wacked in the face by acident by a kid who’d never touched a wooden practice sword. Didn’t move fast enough to block it.
This is just one example of why Mr. Balko will get a preview option with his next theagitator.com site update.
Right Radley?
Hannah, I was thinking the same thing as I read that part of the article. If it’s razor sharp, even a clumsy fool could swing it like a baseball bat and take off a limb.
I hope (probably futilely) the career thief died before he had a chance to breed. I’ve no sympathy for thieves in America. Nobody needs to steal to survive here.
Virtually impossible w/o federal assistance? What happened to saving money? What happened to talking to a loan officer at a bank? One doesn’t even talk to anyone to obtain federal funding for educational loans. Has it ever occurred to anyone that this has created an educational bubble? Has it occurred to anyone that the reason the value of a degree has been diluted is because higher education institutions see students as tools to acquire federal money – without being held accountable for the output? At some point this bubble will pop, and hopefully sooner than later.
Radley, you’ve basically made the case for state-run healthcare. “it isn’t fair”. What next? Government setting price ceilings on tuition?
Remind me – is it the federal governments who jack up the tuition at IU…or some other body that makes this decision, based off what they know the federal government will dish out to the students. And so long as the universities and colleges can bank on the federal government to match their increased tuition rates, what’s to stop them?
Higher Education is not a right – it is a good. And of higher education has gone down as a result of free money (i.e., the creation of debt) being handed out with few restraints on it. Pack the kids in, take their money, and not give a damn about their success. I’d be very surprised if anyone has not taken advantage of this cause-and-effect – this sounds like something T. Boone Pickens would have thought up. (maybe we can have a Cash 4 Certificate’s program!)
If there was any compromise, it is to grandfather a clause to enable those who seek higher education to obtain it without regard to thier drug convictions – and effective prospectively starting the following year so as to put everyone on notice – b/c that’s all this legislation appears to be – an incentive to hamper drug use.
I’m rather tickled that a libertarian not only neglects to mention that federal loans are a financial abomination, but also asserts that the number of people this free money should be given to should be expanded even further. But then, If I were to agree to this, I would only be perpetuating what I see as incredibly wrong and magnificently problematic. And that’s why I’m not complaining about it. Of course, I’m not at all surprised that a person who has admirably dedicated his life to domestic narco-politics and police abuse issues has lost sight of the bigger picture.
I’m all for decriminalization – but I’m not for strings-free loans to any kid who wants to escape from their parents and acquire a paper that says they went to classes for four years. This BS has to stop somewhere.
Here’s the updated story
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bal-sword-killing0917,0,16472.story
I don’t have any problem with what the student did here, assuming the story is correct. He was threatened and defended himself.
I also don’t have a problem with the police doing a thorough investigation. A man is dead. Yes, he was a scumbag, but he was still a human being.
How in the world did you get all of that from my post?
I agree the federal government should get out of the business of subsidizing loans and giving grants for higher ed. My whole point is that the grants and loans have created a bubble, which makes it hard for low and middle income people to afford college. A family making $35,000 can’t just waltz into a bank and get a private college loan, even for a state school, much less a private one. Government hooks people on its programs, then uses that hook to dictate behavior.
And spare me the damned lecture. I have written about all of this. Look it up. I wrote one, I think two, Fox columns about it. But I shouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong with the entire higher education system in order to make the minor point that denying federal aid specifically to people with misdemeanor pot convictions is petty and regressive. Just like I shouldn’t have to delve into a discussion of private roads to make the point that cops shouldn’t be able to pull you over on public highways and search if you you’ve done nothing wrong.
If there’s an analogy to health care it’s that government is likely to do the same thing it’s done with higher ed financing — interfere in the health care system, push many private competitors out so the vast majority of Americans have to take government care, then use their dependence on government care to dictate their behavior (smoking, drinking, etc.). I would object to that, too. Just like I object to the idea that you give up your Fourth Amendment right to privacy if you live in government housing.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125321217589620383.html#mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews
The federal government is now the SOLE provider of student college loans. This is not going to end well. Now that the federal government has fully inflated college tuition by backing all student loans, new students will have the pleasure of indebting themselves to DIRECTLY to the federal government before they ever work a day in their lives… What happens when you can’t pay your $120k of student loans because you majored in art history and can’t get a job to save your life?
H4, who do you think graduates were indebted to prior to this? While banks did originate the loans, all of them were guaranteed by Uncle Sugar. If you default, the Feds will pay off the bank and then come after you for the dough. Same same.
The only difference now is that government will be loaning you money directly so the banks won’t be able to get their vig. Obviously, banks are pretty upset about this.
Radley “Government hooks people on its programs, then uses that hook to dictate behavior.”
Brilliant comment Radley!
I lived in Santa Monica very recently and I can say I just don’t get this. I never had any problem with exercise equipment being in the way anywhere. You can’t take 10 steps without a bum being in the way, and they are worried about the exercise equipment?
I agree, this is a much more serious problem. The exercise people have been there well before Santa Monica started feeding the homeless people, who have since swarmed the town like ants on honey. Of course, the homeless can’t cough up any money for permits, taxes, et cetera…
I’ve spent quite a lot of time in Santa Monica – I live in Culver City, which is quite close to it…
Man, you know what I hate a lot more than redistribution? Ex post facto punishments. Ethical dilemma resolved.
Not sure why I got all the negatives. I actually agree with you Radley. My only point is that there is some tension, since it would be the scaling back of a federal program. It a question of which is the lesser of two evils, and for me (and I think you) its that if you are going to have a federal subsidies, don’t limit them on this paternalistic bullshit. Sorry if you thought I was in disagreement with your analysis on this one. More just raising a question.
Note to self: Do not attempt to burglarize Hiro Protagonist.
Even for libertarian-leaning folk, there’s an issue with the strings for student loans/aid policy: There’s a whole set of services government provides to us, which we’re broadly allowed to use or not use, but which we can’t opt out of paying for. In many cases, it winds up being more economical to just accept the service from the government, which we’ve already paid for, rather than to go buy our own.
So, when you add strings to these services to exert some control over me, you’re effectively bribing me with my own money. It’s a nasty technique for exerting social control. It also has the effect (along with sex-offender registries and deadbeat-dad license suspensions) of creating many levels of second-class citizens.