Peon's Place

Why can’t we all just get along? Are you SURE that you want the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland Raiders sharing a new stadium, down in Santa Clara? Really? I wouldn’t think so.

Thanks to the hopeless fans that have very little sense of reality and competition, Raiders versus 49ers have been suspended until further notice, in the preseason. It was all fun and games until a few bullet holes killed a couple of fans.

How many of you spot a police officer, of any uniform, and feel a sense of trepidation more than a sense of relief? Let’s say you’re driving on the freeway, at a comfortable 64 miles per hour, and you see a California Highway Patrol officer sitting on the side of the freeway. Engine on. Radar gun targeted. What do you do?

If you’re anything like the majority of the population, you ease off the gas pedal, even though you were already traveling under the speed limit. You may even tap your brakes slightly our of a “slow down” reflex. Why is that? Are we more scared of the CHP and other law enforcement than we should be? Shouldn’t you feel safety and security as opposed to fear?

It is in my mind that officers these days are substantially more worried about being a California Highway Ticketing System than they are a patrol unit. Allow me to give you two examples:

1. I was in court watching a man defend himself for being given a ticket for driving around a cluster of vehicles in the far-right lane. The vehicles were completely stopped in a cluster, which would typically indicate that there was an accident. He utilized, completely safely, the right-hand shoulder to move around the vehicles at a slow pace. However because he had all 4 wheels of his minivan off of the freeway to engage in this maneuver, he was given a traffic ticket by a parked CHP officer 100 yards away. An officer that would rather sit and snipe at his prey than to assist in a poor traffic environment.
2. I received a ticket myself for occupying the diamond-lane. I was driving in lane #2, the left-most non carpool lane, going to work in the morning. I came upon an accident covering lanes #2-3. Instead of merging twice to the right to go around the accident, I merged one lane to the left, into the carpool, and back into the normal traffic lane once I had passed the accident. It was 2 minutes later that I was then pulled over by a CHP officer, who would rather write $1000 tickets than to clear an accident off of the freeway. My intention is only to get to work safely and in a reasonable amount of time, so that I may pay taxes which go into your paycheck, sir. Thank you for instilling the belief that you are “out to get me” rather than the statement that you are here to “serve & protect”.

I feel that my justification in this is solidified by increasing fines given out by the traffic court system over the past several years. While fines may start out at a meager $30, the addition of more fines and fees of the court system ups fines to a nominal $494 to a $620+ range. And that’s for any speeding or other minor traffic violation which could have designated a patrol or city police officer’s to substantially better use. Is it not enough that my taxes increase to pay for city “services” such as the ability to fine citizens?

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When health inspectors cite you for it, get famous.

Julie Murphy, a 7-year-old Oregonian, set up a lemonade stand on July 29 at an art fair in northeast Portland. County health inspectors shut her down, however, telling Julie and her mother, Maria Fife, that they needed a temporary restaurant license, which costs $120. The penalty for selling food without a permit, they warned, was $500. At 50 cents a cup, that’s a lot of lemonade.

Read the rest of this entry » Bootlegging lemonade as a...

San Jose’s 15th homicide this year means we’re edging closer to Oakland, woohoo! But seriously, that’s a nicer part of town (compared to many areas of the city). And police, why again aren’t you letting paramedics take care of someone with a gunshot wound? There was clearly no more threat upstairs, no one else was getting shot.

A woman who was attacked in an apartment complex near San Jose City College on Wednesday night has died, marking the city’s 15th homicide this year. The Santa Clara County coroner’s office has confirmed the death but is referring all calls to San Jose police.

Read the rest of this entry » SJPD negligence leads to ...

A former police officer who is white was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Thursday in the killing of an unarmed black man in Oakland, California.

Johannes Mehserle, who was a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer at the time of the incident, was convicted in the shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant on a California train platform on January 1, 2009. Mehserle, who was on duty at the time, said at the trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun, CNN affiliate KTVU reported.

The shooting was captured on a bystander’s cell-phone video camera. The video was widely circulated, and it spurred several protests and riots in and around Oakland.