Police who busted a Fort Lee, N.J., house party over the weekend forgot a van full of suspects — some of them teens — for more than 12 hours, leaving them locked up and parked outside in the freezing cold.
Officials only realized what had happened after a passerby heard screams and banging from the police van, NBC New York has learned.
Police had raided the house party at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday because of noise complaints from neighbors, according to Fort Lee borough attorney Lee Cohen.
Temps on Saturday morning were in the 20s and 30s.
Gift idea for that hard-to-buy-for Mississippi governor in your life.
And you thought libertarians were being hypberpolic when we said the same logic behind the Four Loko ban would soon have regulators and Nanny Statists gunning for Irish coffee. Well . . . away we go.
Knight Kiplinger wants to make 401(k)s mandatory. Contributing to them, too. Really. Note the justification at the end. Hey, we can force people to purchase health care. So why not? The door has been thrown wide open. Expect more of this.
I write about this stuff every day, yet sentences like this one never cease to blow my mind: “Tchachoua has the right to file charges in civil court and prove that he had the money legally, police said.”
Nashville DUI arrests are down by about 35 percent in 2010 due to funding cutbacks. Effect on drunk driving fatalities: None.
Here’s another fun Steven Hayne case. Hayne determined a woman died of stab wounds to the face and neck even though the body he examined had no head. Note his explanation, which refers to witness testimony. It’s a good example showing why a medical examiner shouldn’t be given that kind of information before he conducts an autopsy.
Harvey Silverglate on the folly of anti-bullying laws. Naming a proposed law after a dead person is a pretty reliable indicator that it’s going to be a crappy law.
I promised to share the hate mail responses to my column on abolishing drunk driving laws. I’m happy to say I actually haven’t received any. I have, however, received about a half-dozen emails from law enforcement officials like this one:
I spent 11 years in police work, from 1978 until 1989. The second most time-consuming thing I could do was arrest an intoxicated driver (second only to committing a mental person). Officers are taken off the street for hours at a time over someone who is barely, if at all, impaired. Meanwhile, grandma is driving the wrong way down a one-way street or driving 30 miles per hour on the freeway, and if you write her a ticket you’re accused of picking on old people….I’m with you all the way. Thanks.
I’ve also done three radio interviews on the column. All of the hosts were supportive. And only one caller was hostile. I’m really pleasantly surprised at the reception. Of course, there’s not a chance in hell that’s going to translate into policy changes any time soon. But still. Feels like public opinion might be turning just a little against MADD and the temperance crowd.
Excellent dissection of the latest government scare study about “binge drinking.” Just absurd that the NIAA now defines a “binge” as drinking until your BAC hits .08.
Investment tip: Buy beach-front property in western Ethiopia.
Salmon-flavored vodka. Related: This Agitator guest post from Jacob Grier on how to make bacon-infused bourbon still gets linked about once a week. Here in Nashville (right around the corner from me, actually), there’s a great cocktail spot called the Patterson House that makes a delicious maple bacon bourbon drink.
If you had dreams of going dwile flonking in Britain this summer, well you can just forget it.
Georgia prosecutor orders a defense lawyer off a death penalty case. Bonus: The state’s supreme court upheld the defendant’s conviction. Double bonus: Same prosecutor is now angling to become a judge.
Puppycide: Cops shoot man’s medical dog while looking for a burglary suspect.
Pretty sure this law isn’t going to have the effect its supporters think it will.
Just so I have this straight: The suicide rate at the Chinese Foxconn factory is no higher than the rate in the rest of the country, the workers are paid more than they’re paid in other factories, and they’re certainly better off than if the plants had never been built. But consumers should feel guilty about it all anyway?
NFL Films + Hulu = A whole lot of awesome. Problem is, I don’t need the temptation to procrastinate right now.
The New York Times would have you believe that the free market and free association are responsible for Jim Crow. Big government advocates have an incredible ability to blind themselves from the sins of government.
Anyone else get the feeling that illegal immigrants are the new sex offenders? Want to get elected (or at least win your GOP primary)? Find something new and mean we can to do them.
Alcohol regulators in California don’t seem to understand the process of infusing spirits with flavors like orange or vanilla. So naturally, they’re prohibiting that which they don’t understand, invoking a ban on on-site distilling that really has nothing to do with the infusion process.
The state of California has suddenly started issuing warnings to bars and restaurants prohibiting them from “infusing” liquors such as vodka with herbs or fruits—a popular and widespread practice. But the state’s Alcoholic Beverage Control Department has no clear explanation for why it has targeted several establishments in the San Francisco Bay Area in recent weeks. And it can’t, or won’t, definitively answer the fundamental question of why it’s illegal in the first place to make infusions without having a special license.
In fact, the law under which the warnings were issued doesn’t have anything to say about infusion, but rather seems aimed at preventing bars from making their own hooch, creating dangerous brews, or adulterating liquor to increase its alcohol content.
“It’s totally insane,” said Bill Owens, president of the American Distilling Institute, which happens to be headquartered in the Bay Area. “I’d never heard of such a thing. It baffles me beyond my wildest dreams.”
Chris Albrecht, an ABCD deputy division chief, said that despite the enforcement actions, the department “does not consider this a priority.” The warnings, he said, were issued to a few establishments where enforcement agents showed up in response to unrelated complaints. Agents saw that infused drinks were being offered for sale, issued the warnings, and, in at least one case, asked an employee to pour the illicit concoctions down the drain, Albrecht said.
State alcohol regulators have to be among the most petty and arbitrary bureaucrats in government. Witness my state of Virginia, where they recently resurrected a Prohibition-era law to arrest a bartender for serving sangria (the state legislature had to pass a bill legalizing sangria and martinis), and went after my favorite bar a couple years ago for serving delicious frozen beer on a stick.
Various jurisdictions in Texas have made news over the last several years for sending vice squads into bars and arresting patrons for drinking. Not drinking and driving, mind you. Just drinking. In a bar.
In a scary piece for Mother Jones, Adam Weinstein delves into just how ridiculously broad and vague the state’s public intoxication laws really are. Exceprt:
The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer’s hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. “Having no standard allows the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI,” he says, adding, “If you have a violent, homophobic, or just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI, you can expect violent, homophobic, and asshole-ic behavior.”
For some officers, PI has provided a ready-made reason for detaining minorities. A Houston defense attorney, who asks to be unnamed since he specializes in misdemeanors such as PI, puts it this way: “If you’re brown and you’re around—you’re going down.” Nick Novello, a 27-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, blew the whistle on three colleagues who he claims filled their arrest quotas by picking up people, mostly minorities, for PI. “They were illegally arrested,” Novello says. “It’s an absolute perversion.” (Two were removed from the force.)
According to a recent report by sociology and law professors at the University of California-Berkeley, the Dallas suburb of Irving has used “discretionary” public intoxication arrests to fish for undocumented immigrants.
Just so we’re clear, minors who send explicit photos of themselves to other minors get hit with child porn charges. Cops who send explicit photos of themselves to minors get probation.
A quick roundup of recent stories on law enforcement officials and DWI laws…
Ten police officers in Westchester County, New York admit to local newspaper that they routinely let other officers off after catching them driving drunk off duty.
Off-duty, possibly drunk South Carolina officer pulled over after a chase demands “professional courtesy” she says is customarily granted to other officers. She was charged with reckless driving and disorderly conduct, but wasn’t arrested or given a breath test, and was allowed to go home.
Off-duty Massachusetts state police lieutenant crashes into pickup truck, causing the truck to flip several times. Officer admitted drinking earlier in the day and two open beer cans were found in his car. Other officers don’t administer field sobriety test for 2 1/2 hours, after allowing him to talk to his attorney. He was also never given breath or blood tests. He did get a $20 traffic ticket.
From last year, DWI charges dropped against Nevada DA who caused two crashes within six hours while in California, and tested over the legal limit after the second. He was allowed to plead to reckless driving.
Thank goodness the Washington Postdidn’t perpetuate irresponsible Internet rumors on that snowball fight story. Instead, they went straight to MPDC for the official version of events, unskeptically published the resulting lies from the department’s spokesman, after which WaPo columnist Marc Fisherput up a smug blog post gloating about how responsibly the paper treated the story, as opposed to those hysterical blogs and Internet sites. Never mind that the blogs and videos had proof the WaPo got the damned story wrong. Facts aren’t as important as who followed journalistic protocol.
Interesting piece by Adam Liptak on the politicization of Supreme Court clerks.
Been re-watching the entire series the last few weeks. Just caught the episode with Bunny Colvin’s brilliant paper bag speech below. This is my third time watching the entire series. If I were running a university, I’d institute a class that did nothing but watch, study, and discuss the show. And passing it would be required to get a degree.
Eliot Spitzer’s call girl now has an advice column with the NY Post. First question: How can I turn a life turning tricks into an advice column gig with the NY Post?
So the Max Baucus nominating his paramour to be a U.S. Attorney scandal is getting pretty interesting. Turns out she at one point was also sleeping with a forensic pathologist who had a history of questionable diagnoses in infant death cases. Oh, and he was a state medical examiner for the state of Mississippi in the 1980s. Why am I not surprised?
The L.A. Times rounds up the many incidences in which Joe Arpaio has launched investigations into people who have dared to question his tactics. Scariest line from the story: “Though he has said he’s not interested in running for governor, a recent poll showed him crushing the presumptive Democratic nominee, state Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard, 51% to 39%.”
Yahoo, Verizon refuse to release information related to their capability of and cooperation with the government for the purposes of spying on their customers. Their reasoning? Releasing the info would “shock” and “confuse” their customers.
Your daily outrage. IRS agents target single mother of two. Just infuriating.
All about Argentina’s piqueteros, essentially professional, federally-subsidized protesters who shut down the country’s highways. I saw some of this when I spent a month down there a couple years ago. It’s really odd.
TheAgitator.com
