Deja Vu all over again! Got some comments yesterday on the blog from old friends in Virginia, and I ran into another old friend at work yesterday. This job is great, I've met people I haven't seen in years! One of the comments was from Anonymous who told me I have opinions on everything (now who could that be??? Hhuummmm) so here I go:
IMHO
In today's paper, DA Paul Howard is seeking criminal charges against narcotics officers stemming from the raid in November that left an eldery woman dead. The police were serving a 'No Knock' warrant on the house due to an 'informant' saying there was cocaine being sold from the house. They broke in, startled the woman (88 or 91, depending on the source) who lived there alone and she came out with her gun and fired one shot. The officers fired on her and killed her, injured several other policemen and found a small bit of pot. Turns out the cops really didn't check out their 'source', a drug dealer or user or some such lot, nor did they check out the accuracy of the information. So the cops did mess up, and maybe even tried to cover it up. I'm sitting on the fence about these criminal charges, though. They were police, and the law states that you can't fire on police. This woman was probably very confused and scared and was trying to protect herself, and with the testosterone flush of a raid, the cops weren't thinking too clearly either. A society cannot start second guessing their law enforcement agencies. Granted, some of these agencies can become corrupt, but, for the most part, we have to trust and obey our laws. If DA's or citizens start suing the police, then that has rendered the police force incapable of enforcing laws. This is a horrible tragedy and the police force must deal with the officers and their procedures to ensure this type of sloppy police work doesn't happen again. But the real problem I have with all this is, it was over a $50 crack cocaine buy. A police informant said he bought the cocaine at that address, but the police never checked it out. All over $50. Instead of questioning the actions of the police force, why don't we question the validity of our 'Drug War'?
No More Excuses
Last night, I attended a bike maintenance 'party', put on by some friends of mine who do lots of Off-road biking. It was quite interesting, lots of new faces, new ideas and fresh stories. I made some connections, it turns out a lot of these bikers are also Coders, programmers who like to code. I was never that geeky (or maybe I was), I enjoyed doing code, and learning, but I don't want to do it any more. Of course, these 'kids' have only been coding (professionally) for 10 years or less. Anyway, I gave out some business cards, telling these guys to look for BA positions. Might as well go in with recommendations from the working grunts, the one the specs are really written for.
So now my bike works, I got a cheaper offer from another gym ($99/yr vs $34/monthly, duh!) so I have no excuses for not exercising. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I have a treadmill, tennis shoes and can walk to work, but that hasn't happened.
More to come...
As things happen, I'll be posting. Thanks for taking the time to read. You're opinions are welcome but if you have to start calling me names, don't bother, I won't read them. As my Dad says 'Opinions are like a**holes, everyone has one.'
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2 comments:
You got your bike to shift gears? Wow, now you have no excuse to not come to a Wheelhopper. (that doesn't seem to be correct english, but I can't seem to figure out a better way to say it.)
oh - on the police thing, this is a BAD thing, it is hard enough to get anyone to take that crappy job with crappy pay......
It isn't like the crazy firemen, they are just little kids at heart playing with fire.
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