police

A Dangerous Thing to do

~ randyaa ~ 8 Comments

1997 CavalierAs we look back on the years we’ve all said the phrase

“man I was dumb”

or

“what was I thinking?”

This one tops the cake, but it happened a long time ago so don’t worry, it’s just a tale of what could have been and almost was.

It was July 25th, the weekend of the democratic national convention in 2004 (Where Barack Obama was to speak ironically enough). My good friend (and roommate at the time) Brian and I were on our way to Boston to see some friends for the Whiskey Company BBQ. We were driving my stupid (pseudo) pimped-out cavalier (pictured at the Grand Canyon). Tinted windows, sound system, headlight covers, mirror-tint Chevy symbols in the rear windows, you get the idea. At about 1:30 in the morning on an empty 6 lane highway somewhere near Boston we got pulled over.

This cop came out of nowhere. I still don’t know whether he was in a turn-around watching for cars or whether he was just driving along. Either way he came up on us at about 90Mph lights blazing. I pulled off to the side thinking he was headed to some emergency but no he pulled up right behind us.

Awesome.

License and registration

“Sure thing” I answered while fumbling in my glove box. As I handed them over I politely asked, “Is there something wrong officer?”

I know everyone says they weren’t doing anything wrong but in this case we really weren’t. I couldn’t even fathom why he had pulled us over. He made some lame excuse about how we had changed lanes too quickly while passing a car and headed back to his car with my license and registration. This couldn’t have been farther from the truth since there was nobody else on the road. We hadn’t even been passed since being pulled over.

When the cop came back to my car it was the only time in my life he came back without a ticket. However he came back up on the PASSENGER side. He then asked for Brian’s license.  He handed it over without question.

The officer then proceeded to pester us both about “items we have in the car which he should be aware of”. After about the 8th time (no joke) I said “look, you can search the car if it’ll make you feel better”. He immediately responded “I’m gonna take you up on that, step out of the car please.”. wow, not the first and definitely not the last, but a BIG mistake on our part.

He had us walk away from the car and sit on the guard rail facing AWAY from the car while he searched.

We’re just gonna stop there for a second, let you absorb this picture.

He comes back to us, twirling my baseball bat in his fingers. ‘What’s this for?’

‘baseball’ I say. not much else to tell…

To be honest I don’t even remember what happened after that. The next thing I remember is driving down the road thinking ‘holy shit what the hell was that about’.

It could have ended a lot worse. a LOT worse.

Don’t ever turn your back on the only evidence proving your innocence.

If you’ve done nothing wrong and a police officer is harassing you, call the local police department or 911. don’t just put up with it and think “holy crap” after the fact like we did. it might not end that well for you.

We were lucky, very lucky.

Protest in Rochester NY Erupts in Violence

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Those who make peaceful revolution protest impossible, make violent revolution protest inevitable ~JFK

I’m not sure how I missed this but it seems last Wednesday October 7th there was a protest by the Students for a Democratic Society in Downtown Rochester NY that ended in a lot of violence and brutality.

If you read section 240.20 of the New York State Penal Code it’s pretty clear that the protesters broke the law. To me it’s also pretty clear that the police overstepped their bounds.

Although it’s pretty hard to tell exactly what happened, it’s pretty easy to see the police were excessively violent.  Two protesters were even sent to the hospital and 12 were arrested by brutal means like throwing them to the ground.  The video clearly shows several officers pushing and shoving, yelling, screaming and pulling out their billy clubs.

Frankly, I don’t see how this type of blatant power trip can be tolerated.  They should all be fired.

The following is a press conference the SDS gave after the protest.  There’s tons more interviews and articles about the SDS protest online if you’re interested in reading more.

http://blip.tv/play/AYGmpAYC

Municipal Failure

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago I took my Father to lunch at Donnelly’s. We had some great food and beer and shared a few laughs. When we got back out to the parking lot we discovered that someone had hit Rachel’s car and had done a decent amount of damage. Nothing left for us to identify the perpetrator but the scrapes and dents.

06-14-08_1710

A phone call to the police later and we had information on a good lead. Apparently the parking lot for Donnelly’s is monitored by a fancy new $25k security system at Fairport Electric. Sweet. Only problem is nobody working that day had access to the system (or more likely knew how to work it). Good thing is it’s all digital and its kept for an undetermined amount of time. The police officer takes our information and tells us he’ll call when he gets a copy of the video.

A few days ago we got the phone call. Wouldn’t you know it, that fancy new $25k security system? Well the one video camera trained on the parking lot was broken that day. Fantastic. (Edit: more than likely, the perp? a cop or other municipal worker and the camera was fine)

I just wish people took some responsibility for their actions.

Snowmobile Tickets and Skylines

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

White Face MountainToday was bright and sunny too. They sky was so clear we had to go up Littl Blue Mountain(edit: the previous link was wrong and linked to little blue not littl blue) again. We did and there were actually other people at the top! Some guys were fiddling with a broken down 2007 Yamaha and I had to snicker. Give me a Polaris any day. Mine is a 2006 but my parents have a 1979, 1995 and 1997 which are all still running solid and they’ve never had to do much to any of them.

From the top of Littl Blue we could see White Face Mountain crystal clear almost 70 miles away. The picture doesn’t come close to doing it justice but it’s the best I could do. Just the shear vastness of the space you can see up in the mountains like this is always impressive. I created the panorama to demonstrate.

View From Little Blue Mountain - Panorama

We had our snacks on Littl Blue and then headed down for some scenic riding. Along one of the main trails we hit a snowmobile traffic stop. Yes, on easter sunday the cops have nothing better to do than look for snowmobilers riding without insurance and with expired registrations. We were all valid and were just about to go when the cop noticed my insurance paper had expired a few weeks earlier. Great. I explained to him that it definately is still covered I just had forgotton to grab the new paperwork. “We have no way to tell” he said as he issued me a ticket. Awesome, now I have to deal with getting that dropped when I get home. This crap irritates me for lots of reasons but I’m not going to complain about it here.

Ice Formation on North Side of the HillAfter getting delayed by the traffic cops we headed on to horseshoe lake. The trail had been cleaned up since we were there a few days ago and it was a much better ride. It’s a good thing because I was tired of bouncing up and down on moguls.

The sun was a lot warmer today. It was just warm enough to melt some of the snow on the south side of the hills. The air was still cold however; that when the water ran down and started to drip it would freeze instantly creating some very neat ice formations.

Jeffrey Mullin

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

My niece’s brother, Jeffrey Mullin, was recently shot and killed in Rochester NY. It’s always extremely sad when someone so young passes away but when it’s from such a violent act it hits twice as deep. Unfortunately Rochester is one of the most violent cities in America and we live and work right smack dab in the middle of it. People here often dismiss the murders in Rochester to the gangs and somehow believe it doesn’t happen to good citizens. Try telling that to Cassandra, my niece. Somehow I think you will come away with a different opinion.

It’s time to wake up Rochester. We need more police presence and we need better schools. According to the 2006 census there’s roughly 200,000 people living in the city of Rochester. There were 54 Murders here in 2005 and 50 so far in 2007. That’s roughly 1 in every 3700 people. Put another way, thats almost 27 people for every 100,000. That’s almost four times the national average (which is only 7)!

The Democrat and Chronicle has a piece entitled Not Forgotten where they list each of this year’s murders and have short slide shows dedicated to them. I think this is important. I think people forget that these murders are more than just statistics and that every one of the people lost was important to someone.

I copied Jeff’s slide show for my niece and I thought I’d share it with everyone, so they could learn a little bit about Jeff instead of hearing about number 50.

I’ve also uploaded the original in case anyone wanted a copy to share.