Showing posts with label Chicago Tribune. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chicago Tribune. Show all posts

Friday, May 17, 2013

In Florida, red-light camera supporters at FDOT HQ tinker with yellow-light timing and make FL roads MORE UNSAFE -but more profitable for greedy cities- while in Chicago, the city's Inspector General has blasted the city's red-light ticket program (designed by Redflex) after an audit, saying that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's "City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer"; $100 Million in revenue in FL off of red-light cameras!

City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer, according to a watchdog's report released Tuesday.

Now THAT'S how you start a news article about a municipal government intentionally engaging
in fraud to keep propping-up a program largely for revenue!
And it isn't even Hallandale Beach, though it would be equally true if an audit was done here.

Chicago Tribune
Inspector general blasts red light ticket program
By Hal Dardick, Clout Street, 
6:42 p.m. CDT, May 14, 2013 
City Hall cannot back up claims that its controversial red-light camera program is designed to make intersections safer, according to a watchdog's report released Tuesday.
Inspector General Joseph Ferguson said the city cannot provide documents to prove that the cameras went up at intersections with the most side-impact crashes. He also questioned why cameras remain at intersections with no recent history of such crashes, which the $100 ticket-issuing "cops-in-a-box" are designed to prevent.

A predicate for understsnding thsi IG report is my previous post of November 24th, 2012 on the shenanigans taking place in Chicago, titled, :
More Red-Light Camera shenanigans: National Journal's Mike Magner has warning for U.S. drivers about unscrupulous cities' amber-colored money trap: Yellow means Green & $$$ - "Dreaded Yellow Light May Be Trap for Traffic Violations" -on purpose. And Rahm Emanuel's Chicago, with Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., is the most brazen of all

So when will we see this sort of news headline about Hallandale Beach's red-light camera program that for years has been Exhibit A for South Florida municipal governments greed and willingness to look the other way on public safety, and as was the case here, the Police Dept.s refusal to make records public that would allow citizens to see whether the city was putting them where they'd do the most good or where they'd get the most revenue?

Or a reasonable explanation from FDOT District 4 Secretary James Wolfe about why it took them a year to place a red-light camera warning sign somewhere on west-bound Hallandale Beach Blvd./State Road 858 near NW 9th Terr., that was actually visible to drivers, instead of the one that was hidden between palm trees, as photos I've taken and posted here for years have proven?

Or an explanation from Wolfe about why, YEARS LATER, there are STILL ZERO red-light camera warning signs on HBB/State Road 858 approaching U.S.-1/South Federal Highway in either direction, unlike the approaches to HBB at that same intersection?

Unbeknowst to most of you, some of us have actually been talking seriously about timing certain HB and Hollywood intersections with stop-watches to see if they even meet the federal DOT legal standards.
I'll be filming some of them this weekend if the weather looks okay. 

Why?
Because of what we already know and can see with our own eyes, and great enterprising reporting like this by Noah Pransky of WTSP-TV that proves what we've long thought: $100 Million in revenue in FL off of red-light cameras

Shorter yellow lights criticized as trap for drivers: A subtle, but significant tweak to Florida's rules regarding traffic signals has allowed local cities and counties to shorten yellow light intervals, resulting in millions of dollars in additional red light camera fines. Quoted in story: FL state Senator Jeff Brandes, FL state Rep. Ed Hooper, FL state Rep. Mike Fasano and FL state Senator Jack Latvala.
http://www.floridatoday.com/videonetwork/2384133376001/Shorter-yellow-lights-criticized-as-trap-for-drivers

Florida quietly shortens yellow lights, resulting in more red light camera tickets
Noah Pransky, WTSP-TV, Tampa/St. Petersburg

Sunday, April 22, 2012

A very curious-but-pleasant surprise for some South Florida bloggers from the Miami Herald, but there's still so much more blogger knowledge & synergy that ought to be publicly displayed on a regular basis. South Florida needs a weekly Broward/Miami-Dade Politics Hour on radio!

Above, my screenshot of today's Miami Herald website showing where the link to their South Florida Blogs are shown on the page by the orange circle, at the bottom of the default, with no icons of any sort to identify it.
Could it be more hidden?

Wow! Very curious but pleasant surprise from Miami Herald

Just noticed this NEW change from last week at Miami Herald -they're linking my (our) blog posts under their extant "city" pages, i.e. http://www.miamiherald.com/hallandale-beach/

Example: 

It's not as easy to navigate as my actual blog page, esp. moving from right-to-left because they seem to have shrunken the blog's page it to fit within their own "window," but while you have to know to navigate to your right to see the important fact-filled right-hand column of the blog, which doesn't show up immediately on their "window," my three Google Adsense ads are included, so that's very good. 
(This'll make more sense when you see the URL above.)

After I watch the Duke-North Carolina ACC Lacrosse title game that starts on ESPNU at 3 p.m., I need to spend some time checking whether they're doing this for every city in Broward and Miami-Dade that has a blog I'm aware of, or whether they're now including bloggers on those "city" pages who are not currently on their own "South Florida Blogs" list, which I know might include some of you reading this.

If the Herald really wanted to play this smart, they'd greatly expand that list of blogs -after asking them first- and then link to the "city" page in their online version of their articles via a link at the end of the article, not unlike a label or tag at the end of a blog post.

That would make it a lot easier for news junkies like me to see if anyone else has already written on the subject at hand, perhaps -likely- even better and with more knowledge of the actual facts and context, the lack of which is one of the biggest and most-constant criticisms of the current group of Herald reporters in either county.

As it happens, about ten days ago, partly out of curiosity as much as boredom, I actually checked their "South Florida Blogs" homepage on the Herald's blah website for the first time in about 6-8 months, and it seemed the way it always was -neglected and with zero colorful icons to catch a reader's attention as they scrolled almost all the way down the page, compared to it being located near the top when they first initiated it, when hopes were high I suppose.

Frankly, as I'm sure is NOT a surprise to many of you reading this given how often I've taken the Herald's website to task, that link is very easy to miss and to my thinking, has represented a terrible blunder by the Herald 


Unlike has been the case in cities like Seattle and Chicago, where lots of creativity, energy and outside-the-box thinking took place as how to best utilize the bloggers to help them and get more information out to the public via a media platform, the Herald seemed largely satisfied with just having a link and nothing else.


Now sometimes that outside-the-box thinking doesn't live up to anyone's expectations, most especially the bloggers, as happened with the experiment that was the Tribune's Chicago Now Radio Show that first aired in 2009 on WGN radio from 9 am-Noon on Saturdays
http://www.wgnradio.com/shows/chicagonow/wgnam-chicago-now-about-show,0,4398318.story but which was killed after about a year, despite this sort of attention:

Still, the axe fell on the radio show -see 6th paragraph of 

The whole dysfunctional episode in Chicago between the legacy media's Tribune Company, ChicagoNOW and the bloggers makes even more sense when you read what was really going on behind-the-scenes as Mike Doyle recounts in his blog post, The Past Imperfect of ChicagoNow, or, as I prefer to remember it using one of his funnier lines, "You can’t run a 21st-century blog network at the speed of a 19th-century newspaper" which ran a few months before the radio show was killed.

This seems to be yet another instance where bloggers were the bait for a legacy media company that wanted to be more relevant, but where the management and bureaucracy of the media powers-that-be and the media platform company weren't too terribly interested in making the product not only more useful for readers, but work for the bloggers, too.

When you consider how many smart and creative people there are in South Florida who have some experience of a sort to add something interesting and new to the news and conversation mix, and yet see how poorly the Herald has reacted to New Media and technology, as I've mentioned here previously in my November 27, 2010 blog post titled
How a video of Paramore in Stockholm & Razorlight in London proves the Miami Herald is too damn slow. Iceberg dead ahead!
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/how-video-of-paramore-in-stockholm.html 
it's amazing to me that McClatchy's Herald or one of the local Miami TV stations -or even these bewildering sycophantic TV production outfits like Plum TVwhich seem so focused on very shallow topics and celebs for their affluent or wannabe affluent viewers that they fail to appreciate how silly they appearhaven't yet figured out a way to regularly get knowledgeable and articulate people in South Florida who are bloggers on the air to share a story in an interesting and original way, getting much-deserved attention to news stories or issues that people do care about but which the local news media is largely ignoring, for whatever reason.

But then South Florida is the year 2012 is an area without an All-News radio station and
despite all its pretensions, still hasn't figured out a way to have a weekly one-hour radio show on Miami-Dade politics, govt. and local current events one hour, and then Broward the next -or vice-versa.
Say on Friday morning or at Noon, or Saturday mornings from 10-Noon.

The template for this sort of weekly format already exists on Washington, D.C.'s NPR 

affiliate WAMU, which has had this hugely-popular show on Friday afternoon's from Noon-2 p.m. for over 25 years, with D.C. and Maryland/Virginia.

It also features the two governors and the DC mayor, separately, regularly taking questions from their well-informed callers, flanked by savvy area reporters to ask questions as well, and not just folks from the WaPo, either.
I listened to it every week for 15 years and so did almost everyone I know, as well as nearly every serious civic activist and news junkie in the area.

There's nothing even remotely like that currently on South Florida radio/TV.

I'm curious what's happened to the Herald to at least in a small way, shake them out of their longstanding doldrums, since they should've been integrating knowledgeable bloggers into their own coverage over two-and-a-half years ago, when they first introduced the South Florida blog directory and I was included under "Communities
and didn't even know about it because they never contacted me.

As I've mentioned here previously, I only found out about it in the first place because a friend saw it and asked me why I hadn't told her about it.

Could it be that some of my recent (better!) posts re the Broward IG investigation into Hallandale Beach and some other areas to check into, which I'd sent originally as a bcc email to Rick Hirsch, the Herald's Executive Editor -he's Anders Gyllenhaal's successor- the number-two person, directly under the publisher David Landsberg, caused Hirsch or someone else to re-think about some of those accurate verbal darts I threw last December -and some good ideas I suggested to him and others at Herald HQ- which I then posted online here? I highly doubt it but still...

I'm kind of dismayed, since I'd not usually have even checked that HB city page, since given the way the Herald has largely ignored the city for many years, due in part to the fact that Hollywood also holds their City Commission meetings on the same days, that city page of theirs has usually served as nothing but the dusty attic of an archive of recent stories, all of which I'd already read. 
And nothing else the least bit useful to readers here.

Hmm-m... it figures that given how things over there have been managed the past few years, even when the Herald does something good, like this probably will turn out to be, they do so in such an odd and confusing way.
And again, with me knowing nothing about it beforehand.

Yes, a very curious-but-pleasant surprise, indeed!
But is it just the first step or the one-and-only change?
Wish I knew.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Question in L.A. Times column after USA-Mexico debacle: "In what other country would the visitors have home-field advantage?" Answer: Miami


U.S. Mens National Team vs. Mexico: Highlights - June 25, 2011, Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California: Mexico 4, USA 2.
http://youtu.be/6fTvZqC-ycE

Answer: Miami, the Capital of Latin America.
At least it is according to the Miami Herald and their super-sensitive Editorial Board and cronies in the South Florida community that not only DON'T welcome honest discussions of U.S. immigration policies and related issues, but that also has shown over the years that it is NOT interested in dealing with valid, fact-based complaints about their reporters and editors' personal bias bleeding into actual news coverage and reporting of facts.

Question asked at the end of sports columnist Bill Plaschke's column in the Los Angeles Times about the ugly scene at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena Saturday after Mexico's 4-2 win over the USA Mens National Team: "In what other country would the visitors have home-field advantage?"

(Saturday's match was, to soccer-loving me, a completely meaningless game that has about as much portent for the future of the U.S. team as the Dolphins' 1973 exhibition game loss at the Vikings had for their success later that season. That loss got me so upset I almost cried after it was over, which sounds even more ridiculous to me as I write it than it could possibly sound to you reading it since... well, a.) I was there, and b.) they still won the NFL title again, beating -yes- the Vikings in the Super Bowl in New Orleans.)


Less than 24 hours after this Bill Plaschke column went online, approximately 887 reader comments bombarded the L.A. Times forum site.




In fact, 21 hours after column was posted online, the L.A. Times, showing they'd learned little from the Chicago Tribune after their politically-correct news stories on flash mob criminal activity in downtown Chicago by African-American youths, wherein the Trib intentionally refused to describe what the assailants looked like or had in common, rushed this warning online:
L.A. Times Moderator at 7:42 PM June 26, 2011
Note to readers and commenters: Because of repeated inappropriate posts, we will now be reviewing comments on this article before they are posted. We are also in the process of removing comments that violate our terms of service.
My blog post on that situation, from June 12th, is here:

-----
Los Angeles Times
In Gold Cup final, it's red, white and boo again
Mexico rallies for a 4-2 win over U.S. behind overwhelming support at Rose Bowl. In what other country would the visitors have home-field advantage?
By Bill Plaschke
June 25, 2011, 10:15 p.m.

It was imperfectly odd. It was strangely unsettling. It was uniquely American.

On a balmy early Saturday summer evening, the U.S soccer team played for a prestigious championship in a U.S. stadium … and was smothered in boos.

Its fans were vastly outnumbered. Its goalkeeper was bathed in a chanted obscenity. Even its national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls.

Read the rest of the column at:

Reader comments at:


IF the game was really so important, how come the Miami Herald only devoted 13 sentences to coverage of the game in Sunday's newspaper? Thirteen.

IF the Women's World Cup in Germany is so important, and women deserve as much coverage as the men -which I believe they do- then why does the Herald not send their soccer writer, Michelle Kauffman to cover it?

Because it has degenerated into a third-rate, yet-pretentious newspaper that won't put its money where its mouth is.
Which we already knew, didn't we?

-----
U.S. National Team YouTube Channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/ussoccerdotcom

View more videos at: http://www.nbclosangeles.com.



For those of you seeing this outside of South Florida, it should be noted for the record that these Mexican/M-A fans in SoCal talking about rooting for Mexico, despite living in the U.S., sound remarkably like South Florida Jews talking about any subject involving Israel for local Miami TV newscasts. Entirely predictable!

The video above of the man who has been living in the U.S. for 40 years but who speaks Spanish to the KNBC reporter instead of English, is too good to be true as far as local TV cliches go.
In that sense, it sounds exactly like Miami TV.

If only the reporter had interviewed him at a sports bar, THAT would've been a sports cliche grand slam!

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Chicago Trib readers screw w/Trib execs: "The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies"


WBBM-TV, Chicago video

WBBM-TV, Chicago video: Walter Jacobson: Time to be upfront about mob violence
Story at

Upset Chicago Tribune readers are continuing to screw with Trib execs over the paper's fact-free reporting on the rash of mob attacks that have struck the Chicagoland area, prompting the execs to have to shut down their own comment forums.
That these forums, like their blogs, are among the best in the country, and light-years ahead of anything in South Florida goes without saying.

See Chicagoist on "mobs", including this headline, Did Gang Bangers Force Cops to Close North Avenue Beach?, at

This sort of politically correct writing has provoked the counter-force you could expect and that criticism of the Tribune policies and execs has led to the following embarrassing disclaimer being placed at the bottom of news articles:
"The board for this story has been closed because of excessive violations of the Tribune's comment policies. Details of those policies are described below."
Yes, on account of the Trib's self-serving, heavy-handed, condescending and parochial, not-to-mention Politically Correct polices, readers all over Chicagoland are saying f-em and 'shut 'em down!'

Chicago Tribune
3 teens held in downtown attack
By Jeremy Gorner and Dawn Rhodes
Tribune reporters
8:20 a.m. CDT, June 8, 2011

Two teens have told police they were attacked by a group of at least five youths downtown Tuesday evening just west of North Michigan Avenue.
A witness described the incident as similar to last weekend’s downtown attacks when 20 youths were arrested, including five who allegedly robbed and beat several people inStreeterville and on the Magnificent Mile.

Read the rest of the story at:

(Reminder for late arrivals to the blog -I lived in Chicago, Evanston and Wilmette in the mid-80's, including the Bears Super Bowl season.)

Later in the day, under the headline Rahm on the spot over youth mobs this appeared:
The most disturbing feature of the mob crimes is that they seem largely recreational. As early as February, police were warning merchants and residents in the Water Tower neighborhood about "flash mob offenders" — groups of teens who arrived via mass transit to stage shoplifting raids sometimes organized on social media networks. One unruly crowd took over the dining room of a McDonald's in April, forcing it to remain closed for hours after police broke things up.

That led to this eye-roller of a headline on Friday:
Teens feel they're being watched downtown
Most youths don't want to cause trouble, many students say in wake of mob attacks

Well at least the Trib didn't call them "youths" in the story.

Sure, because when you're a news reporter, when something happens, rather than trying to get some answers as to why someone or some group is or was engaged in a particular behavior, you interview a group of people that are NOT doing that, and tell how they feel victimized.
OH, PLEASE!

They still won't interview anyone who was actually involved in any of this because that would involve some work and enterprise, so instead they interview the United Colors of Benneton kids who attend the school for wannabe social activists.
How precious.

Oh, sorry, I mean the Urban Outfitter Crew.

This was all the perfect predicate for the following piece by the Editor of the newspaper which ran in Saturday's Trib.
It tells you almost everything you need to know about the state of American journalism in the year 2011.

Or, put another way, I could've headlined this post "When the PC Police run a newspaper: Chicago Tribune editor writes "When race is relevant in news coverage" Still waiting for Miami Herald's own take on illegal aliens? Good luck!"

Chicago Tribune
When race is relevant in news coverage
By Gerould W. Kern
4:52 p.m. CDT, June 10, 2011

This week the Chicago Tribune published several news stories and related columns about assaults by groups of youths in the Streeterville area of downtown Chicago. More coverage appears Sunday.

A number of readers have asked why we have not included racial descriptions of the assailants and the victims in these incidents.
Read the rest of the editorial at:


See also: Chicago Incapable of Combatting Flash Mobs

Friday, February 4, 2011

Chicago vs. The Blizzard: The Day After. A 'buried city' thaws and claws its way back to life as mayoral election looms on Feb. 22nd



WGN-TV: Mayor, candidates weigh in on city's response to snow
Daley says he supported the Lake Shore Drive decision

http://www.cltv.com/news/wgntv-daley-snow-response-feb3,0,6295269.story


WGN-TV: Chicago Fire Dept. uses rented snow mobiles to rescue residents during the blizzard


Chicago Tribune time-lapse video: The blizzard in 60 seconds
http://www.chicagotribune.com/videobeta/73765844-5b08-4688-a06d-078fbbf4eacd/Weather/Video-time-lapse-The-blizzard-begins


Photos: Blizzard of 2011:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-110201-monster-snowstorm-2011-pictures,0,6718278.photogallery

http://blog.chicagoweathercenter.com/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/


http://www.chicagomayoralscorecard.com/

Thursday, October 15, 2009

What Angelica Huston saw that night in 1977, and why Hollywood's pleas for mercy ring hollow

Some Midwestern perspective from
Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass
reminds us what Angelica Huston saw
that night in 1977, and why Hollywood's
pleas for mercy ring hollow now.


As some of you out there already know,
I've always been a tremendous fan of
actress
Debra Winger, and have even
dragged myself to small films of hers
that only got middling reviews but
where she was personally amazing.

But her recent statements of late
supportinve of
Polanski have been
so creepy and dis-connected from reality
that I just can't fathom her saying them,
nor can I imagine being willing to make
as much effort to seek out and pay
to see her on the big screen in the future.
http://news.google.com/news?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=Roman%20Polanski&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

But if you read the comments here from
last month,
http://lebuzz.info/2009/09/32491/coup-de-gueule-mais-pourquoi-donc-fallait-il-arreter-roman-polanski/
you'll see that there are a lot of other people
who think like
Winger, and who can't just
accept the unpleasant facts as they are and
want to imagine that there is something else
in play here, because then they can trot out
their old standby canards and pat explanations
for why the world is the way it is.
Any why
Polanski was finally arrested in
la Suisse.

Unlike 99% of those of you who'll actually
see these words, I've actually seen many
of
Polanski's pre-Chinatown films.

I mention that only because so many
of the TV and newspaper reporters who
have been reporting on the current story
seem to completely forget -or don't know-
how he got to be who he was in Hollywood's
firmament in the first place, starting with
the attention he got with his films like
Knife in the Water (Nóz w wodzie)
among others, and instead, always start
their stories with the
Manson Family
murder of his wife Sharon Tate,
one of the most beautiful and beguiling
women of the era.

In that respect, it's just like the
South Florida media's usual coverage
of local news: no context or perspective
and far too often, leaving out the
most
important elements because
the reporters aren't smart enough
to
realize why they're important
in the first place
.

So you wind- up with a muddled mess
masquerading as news coverage when
it's really just gruel by any other name.

--------------
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-15-oct15,0,718687.column

Chicago Tribune

Hollywood's pleas for mercy ring hollow

John Kass

October 15, 2009


Hollywood stars, producers and directors often pride themselves on their moral compass and their compassion for the victims of outrage.

They insist upon speaking of it, even if nobody asks, on those TV talk shows while plugging their latest movie. Sometimes, to prove it, they'll run out and adopt a child from an impoverished Third World nation. The child always has big eyes, innocent, hurting, in need.

And now, in another fit of compassion, Hollywood royals are signing petitions, issuing statements, in the hope of saving one of their own:

Roman Polanski.

Polanski, the noted film director, is having trouble finishing his new thriller, "The Ghost," because he's being held in a jail cell in Zurich.

"It's a nightmare looming that the director might be in jail at the time," Polanski's film collaborator, Richard Harris, was quoted as saying Wednesday. "But we will just have to cope with this. ... I'm sure he would want the film to go ahead, having worked on it for two years."

A movie in limbo is terrible. Almost as bad as justice in limbo.

As many of you know, Polanski is otherwise indisposed because he's being held as a fugitive convicted of having sex with a minor, and is awaiting extradition to the U.S.

In 1977, when he was 44, Polanski took 13-year-old model Samantha Gailey into the home of actor Jack Nicholson, gave her a quaalude and some champagne, and then forced himself on her as she repeatedly begged to go home, according to her grand jury testimony. Polanski pleaded guilty to sex with the child, then fled to Europe when he became afraid of doing time in prison.

Polanski's great champion, Miramax studio boss Harvey Weinstein -- dismissing the outrage against a child as "the so-called crime" -- is pushing a petition for Polanski's release on moral grounds.

"Hollywood has the best moral compass, because it has compassion," Weinstein said recently. "We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe."

Anjelica Huston, Nicholson's former girlfriend, was in the home when the crime occurred. According to a probation report in Polanski's case, Huston knocked on a bedroom door and Polanski opened it, naked, and told her everything was all right. Then he closed the door and continued with the girl.

Huston said Samantha looked older than 13. Another woman in the home said Samantha seemed like one of those young women who wanted to get into the movies.

"She seemed sullen, which I thought was a little rude," Huston told investigators. Years later, Huston would direct an acclaimed movie titled "Bastard Out of Carolina," about a girl, sometimes sullen, who was repeatedly raped by her stepfather.

In Carolina, not in Hollywood.

Hollywood is the place where director Woody Allen is honored as a great talent. He once made me laugh. But then he ran off with Soon-Yi, the adopted daughter of his longtime girlfriend, Mia Farrow.

When Allen first met Soon-Yi, she was a child, young enough for bedtime stories. And I couldn't help but wonder whether Woody ever read "Winnie the Pooh" to the girl, about Piglet and the Heffalump. That killed my Woody Allen laugh buzz.

When she was little, she probably had big eyes, too. Like the eyes of the other children adopted by the stars. Like all our eyes, when we were children.

Like the eyes I remember staring at me in a movie theater years ago. The little girl was about 4 years old, her head facing away from the screen, on the seat in front of me and my wife.

Up on the screen, there was violence, physical violence, psychological violence, and then sex and more violence. It was an action movie, but action movies should really be called Kill Movies, because human beings are killed in them, but not before they have sex.

I forget the movie, but I can't forget that girl, staring. Maybe her parents couldn't get a sitter. Most likely they were morons. The little girl winced as an actor up on the screen began to scream.

Americans have a gut feeling about Hollywood. We desperately love the movies, though we don't fully understand the bargain we've made: We're thoroughly entertained, yet constantly assaulted, and the payment for the escapism is that we grow increasingly numb.

The industry has a well-documented history of exploiting young girls, their bodies in real life, their images up on the screen, to be sold as sexual objects, the age of the females ever younger and younger, just as the Kill Movies grow more graphic and gory with each passing year. It's called being "edgy."

"(The Polanski arrest) is based on a three-decades-old case that is dead but for minor technicalities," said actress Debra Winger. "We stand by him and await his release and his next masterpiece."

But isn't his masterpiece already here?

It's the story of the defense of the director who had sex with a child, as told by compassionate Hollywood royals. It says everything we need to know about what they think of themselves -- and of us.

Recent John Kass columns and videos: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-johnkass,0,5724822.columnist

Monday, January 26, 2009

Bullet-proof newspapers, the Good Cop/Bad Cop/Young Cop Conundrum;Third World Transit

FYI: Once again today, Blogger's editing software is screwing-up my blog and creating all sorts of headaches for me, leading to a jagged and uneven presentation in drafts as well as the final edits below.
Sometimes, it's almost as if someone else is editing my blog, as from moment to moment, the size and fonts on my screen seem to change from what I want to something else entirely.
So far, the only way I've found to minimize the problem is to make everything BOLD, which I usually hate in other blogs, but which for some reason, mitigates the problem slightly. 
________________
Per the attached bits of flotsam and jetsam, first the slightly amusing then onto the more-than-bewildering.  
First, per the story below, which the Chicago Tribune's headline says it all:
14-year-old boy impersonates cop, police say, Teen goes on traffic patrol wearing real police uniform, but is unarmed, authorities say.

The troubling aspect of this story is that this 14-year old kid in Chicago shows more depth of understanding, energy and moxie than Hallandale Beach's current Police Chief Thomas Magill,
who, in my opinion, based on all the known facts, at bottom, ought to be in prison now for what court juries have already found to be true about himhe used city funds and resources to attempt to
frame, prosecute and imprison innocent people, who just happened to be HB cops.

(Yet Magill's past tenure and future have never been publicly addressed by the Hallandale Beach City Commission since this was published a year ago.  In other parts of the U.S., that dogged refusal to deal forthrightly with consequences, with no punishment for Magill, would be news, but not here, apparently.)

Perhaps we can arrange to have James L. Harris, that guy who last year wanted to be a Miami-Dade bus driver so badly that he actually took a county bus, receiving compliments along South Beach for his courtesy while driving, before he was finally caught and arrested, and have him assigned as this 14-year old Kid Cop's personal chauffeur.
Part of a youth movement to get rid of all the 'dead wood' in Hallandale Beach, of which there is so much. 
TIMBER!!!!

Failing that, can we at least borrow the kid from Chicago and have him patrol the beach area in Hallandale Beach, since for years, Magill's Police Dept. has consistently shown ZERO interest in actually patrolling the public beach once in a while,
even on busy weekends, as is pretty customary in most water-side cities, to put beach-goers minds at ease.

Maybe give him a police radio, a clipboard, and a whistle on weekends so the beleaguered contractor lifeguards don't have to continue to do everything, esp. when the beach is really crowded?
As you might imagine, the reader comments on this story from Chicagoland are enthusiastic and supportive -of the kid!
That sound you just heard was the sound of the Chicago 2016 Olympic bid losing even more air...

So, onto the more serious matter at hand.
See if you can readily connect the following in your head like I did yesterday:

a.) Mayor Carlos Alvarez defending the Miami Mega-Plan in general and the Port Tunnel element in particular, over two broadcast segments yesterday with Michael Putney on TWISF, This Week in South Florida;

b.) the painfully naive and formulaic Herald Letter to the Editor on page 3L yesterday titled Public-works plan worth the money, written by an FIU prof named Alex Lichtenstein, which sounded like it was really straight from the PR desk of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce.

c.) The Herald's own Action Line column of yesterday on page 5B, complete with photo,
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/action-line/story/869684.html titled After two years of promises, escalator still not running, on the sad case of the Park West Metromover, which seems to be a typical Miami combination of Twilight Zone and Banana Republic.

I can only imagine how many times that the letter writer, Matthew Gissen, must've thought about that letter of his in his mind, as he passed it, week-after-week, month-after-month.

Apparently, in the rather oblivious world of Prof. Lichtenstein, basic repairs and upkeep are neither sexy nor necessary.
Sounds to me like he actually needs to get out-and-about and see what's really going on around here, perhaps even have a "scared straight" intervention, so he can get his bearings and see that unlike Chicago, Miami is not exactly the city of "Big Shoulders.

To me, the most devastating thing of all was this passage in the Action Line response: "...work on the escalator has been completed and that the safety inspection should be finished by the end of February."

Should be? Really? After being broken for two years, does it really take a month to "inspect" something that's supposedly been fixed?
And if it does, or it's not actually fixed, finally, how many other projects are those particular engineers or contractors "fixing" elsewhere?

The official response here only raises more troubling questions.

Now maybe I'm wrong, since I was only coming back down here from Washington at the holidays when the William 
Lehman Causeway was being built in North Miami Beach/Aventura -just down the road from me now- but did it even take two whole years to build the bridge over the Intercoastal, linking A1A to Biscayne Boulevard?

And yet it's taking that long to "fix" a transit escalator? 

Those are the folks that Mayor Alvarez wants us to have faith in?
The ones that yesterday, on the air with Michael, he kept claiming 'really weren't government' when Michael earnestly but continually reminded him of the decidedly notorious track record of South Florida government construction projects,
Mega or otherwise?

As I mentioned in an email about two weeks ago, the small square in front of the entrance to The National Archives that I entered and walked past hundreds of times during the 15 years I lived and worked up there, already has our future written there.
It has a variation of Shakespeare's line from The Tempest"The past is prologue."

This statue, depicting

If I were making a documentary film on the possible consequences of the so-called Miami Mega-Plan, feeling as I do now, I'd call it "The Curious Case of Caveat Emptor."

Sadly, the past will continue to be prologue in South Florida as long as we have the same general cast of characters, who continually fight transparency, accountability and common sense, of which the case of the broken escalator is but a small window into that upside-down world.
_________________

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-teen-cop-26-jan26,0,6467334.story

Chicago Tribune

14-year-old boy impersonates cop, police say

Teen goes on traffic patrol wearing real police uniform, but is unarmed, authorities say

By Angela Rozas, Jeremy Gorner and Azam Ahmed

Tribune reporters

January 26, 2009

Chicago police arrested a 14-year-old boy for allegedly impersonating one of their own Saturday.


The boy, who has been charged as a juvenile for impersonating an officer, walked into the Grand Crossing District station, 7040 S. Cottage Grove Ave., dressed in a Chicago police uniform, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said. The boy, who reported for duty about 1:30 p.m., partnered with another police officer for about five hours.

The boy identified himself as an officer from another district but was detailed for the day to Grand Crossing and also was savvy enough to sign out a police radio and a ticket book, according to a source. The source also said the boy went on traffic stops with the officer he went on the street with.

Bond said the boy "did not write tickets" and said there was "no information to indicate that he [was] ever behind the wheel."

At an afternoon news conference, police said the boy had no interaction with the public.

After his tour was over, a ranking officer became suspicious of the boy. Police said the officer discovered the teen was not a real police officer when he couldn't produce any credentials. The boy was wearing police-issued pants, shirt, vest, sweater and skull cap, police said. 

He was missing his police star, but that was not discovered until after he returned from traffic patrol. Police said the 14-year-old's partner on the traffic assignment did not recognize the boy was underage.

The source said the boy had an empty holster and a 
newspaper in place of a ballistic vest in his vest carrier.

Police described the boy as a former "police explorer," which means he was part of a community program run through the Police Department's Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) that allows youths to interact with Chicago police officers. He was part of the explorer program in 2008 in the Englewood District.

"The boy was not armed, and the matter is under investigation with Internal Affairs," Bond said.

Bond also said that how the boy acquired the police uniform was under investigation. Police officers need to present identification while acquiring their uniforms, police said.

The boy "has identified an egregious breach in security," Deputy Supt. of Patrol Dan Dugan said.

The boy, whom authorities did not identify since he's a juvenile, is scheduled to appear in Juvenile Court at 10 a.m. Monday.

Reader comments at: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/chicago-tribune/TFMSRHVJVSIGH7BOC

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Tomorrow the 27th will mark one year since John Holland wrote this compelling Sun-Sentinel piece, which is still THE only media this story has received.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Hallandale Beach to pay to settle one of two former police officers' lawsuits
By John Holland
January 27, 2008
 
Hallandale Beach commissioners have agreed to pay more than $100,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging Police Chief Thomas Magill falsified evidence, a city board held an illegal meeting and detectives persuaded a felon to lie under oath about a fellow officer.
 
Mayor Joe Cooper and attorney Alberto Milian, who represents former Hallandale Beach Police Officer Talous Cirilo, confirmed the city's settlement with Cirilo but would not comment further, citing a confidentiality agreement. However, Cooper said the payment was more than $100,000, including attorney fees.
 
'I'd love to talk about this and tell people what happened, but unfortunately I can't,' Cooper said.
 
Magill referred questions to City Attorney David Jove, who could not be reached for comment.
 
The settlement comes less than two months after Cirilo filed two lawsuits against the city, alleging wrongdoing in the department and City Hall. Hallandale officials fired Cirilo, alleging excessive use of force, even though a jury acquitted him on battery charges.
 
Cooper said the secrecy is warranted because a separate lawsuit, filed in federal court by former acting Police Sgt. Mary Hagopian, has not been settled. She promised to speak about the settlement at a later date 'if I'm allowed to.'
 
Magill and City Manager Mike Good fired the officers two years ago after prosecutors charged them with misdemeanor battery on prisoner Michael Brack. Early on April 1, 2005, Brack beat his brother as they fought in a moving car, then attacked officers who tried to intervene, according to arrest records and police reports.
 
Months after the arrest, a civilian employee said Cirilo choked and used a Taser device excessively on Brack.
 
More than a year later, the State Attorney's Office charged Cirilo with three misdemeanor battery counts. Hagopian was charged with a misdemeanor for using the stun gun on Brack as he struggled with officers in a jail holding area.
 
Defense lawyers said Magill orchestrated the charges as part of a vendetta against Hagopian and to show his bosses at City Hall he was a disciplinarian. Testimony at trial showed police employees mishandled two key pieces of evidence - a video surveillance tape and software from the Taser - distorting the confrontation between the officers and Brack, defense lawyers argued.
 
Prosecutors tried the officers separately, but jurors reached the same conclusion, acquitting them after about 15 minutes of deliberation.
 
After the acquittals, the officers tried to get their jobs back, but Magill and city officials refused.
 
In one of the lawsuits, Milian accused the city civil service board of holding an illegal meeting outside City Hall on Oct. 9, 2007, one week before a scheduled hearing on the reinstatement.

Florida law mandates that all meetings be advertised and prohibits public officials from meeting out of the public eye or discussing cases with each other. At least six board members met and discussed the meeting in a 'knowing violation' of the law, according to the lawsuit.
 
Good, the city manager, could not be reached for comment.
 
Hagopian, a 15-year veteran, and Cirilo, on the force for five years, hired different lawyers and filed in different jurisdictions but made the same argument: Magill pressured his internal affairs officers and detectives to manipulate evidence and coerce false statements out of Brack so he could fire the officers and enhance his image as a reformer.
 
Magill used public money to have officers track down Brack on a Louisiana oil barge, where he ended up after leaving Broward County and forfeiting his bail, both lawsuits assert.
The State Attorney's office dropped all the assault charges against Brack, including the attack on his brother, then used him to testify against the officers.
 
The chief temporarily assigned several officers to internal affairs without any training, for the sole purpose of building a false case against the officers, Hagopian's lawyer Rhea Grossman said in court papers.
 
Magill sparked criminal charges against Hagopian 'by preparing directly or at his direction police reports containing false or misleading information,' Grossman wrote. Both lawsuits contend Magill elicited false testimony and compiled misleading evidence that he took directly to prosecutors.
 
U.S. District Judge William J. Zloch tossed out four counts last month, saying they belong in state court. He refused to dismiss two others, including one alleging Magill presented false information to prosecutors so Hagopian would be arrested. Zloch also let stand a charge that the city had a policy of not training internal affairs officers that, Hagopian argued, 'encourages fabricated evidence for the sole purpose of allowing the whims of its police chief to terminate employees.'
 
Milian said last week that the jury's quick acquittals proved the charges were bogus.

"This case was an abomination from the very beginning, and good officers were hurt," Milian said. "It could ultimately have a chilling effect on officers who want to protect themselves and their colleagues but are afraid because they could get in the same type of situation." 
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As you read the article below, tell me this isn't proof that the past is, indeed, prologue!

South Florida Sun-Sentinel
FALSE ARREST VICTIM ON GUARD BUT SAYS HE BEARS NO GRUDGES
May 1, 2000
By Tanya Weinberg Staff Writer

Henry Perez won't go anywhere without his identification. 
Not because he thinks he might get a ticket. Not because he thinks he might not be allowed into a bar. 

Because he knows that without identification, police could throw him in jail for another person's crime. He knows he could lose his job and a week of his life before his captors figure out they have the wrong man. 

The odd thing is, when Perez suffered those consequences four years ago, he did have his identification. Hallandale Beach Police arrested the then-17-year-old on his way to school because he had the same name as a teenager wanted for grand theft in Miami-Dade County. 

His driver's license showed he was two years older than Henry Perez the suspect. He kept telling the officer he had the wrong man, to check and he would see. 

"He didn't want to listen," said a soft-spoken Perez on a recent evening before starting his workout at Contenders Boxing Gym in Hollywood. 

For one week of fear and frustration, it seemed nobody would listen. Not the police, not the jail guards, not counselors who asked Perez to fill out surveys on drug use but offered little guidance. Not even a judge. He ordered Perez sent to Miami-Dade County without letting him speak. 

When Perez's lawyer convinced another judge they had the wrong Henry Perez, it took the jail another day and a half to release him. 

The state last year settled Perez's lawsuit against the juvenile justice system for $75,000. But for four years, the city of Hallandale Beach did not apologize, did not acknowledge the mistake, did not make amends. But now it will. 

The city attorney told commissioners two weeks ago that they should stop the appeals process and settle Perez's civil lawsuit for the $100,000 a jury awarded last year. This after Perez's lawyer offered to settle for $19,000. 

"They told us to go fly a kite," said Miami attorney Scott Jay Feder. 

Perez said he plans to save the settlement money. 

"I'm just happy to be done with it," said Perez, who focuses on his budding professional career as a lightweight boxer with a 5-0 record and works days as a customer service representative at Ramada Plaza Resorts in Fort Lauderdale. 
He is surprised his case prevailed. 

"I thought because I was going against the police station there was no way," he said as he wound yellow hand wraps around his knuckles. "I thought because I was young, they wouldn't take my word for it." 

And the judge and jury might not have, Feder said, if the evidence hadn't shown that the arresting officer lied at trial. 

Arrested before 9 a.m., Perez said he was not allowed to call his mother until he was taken to jail late that night. Officer Timothy Donahue testified that in the morning he contacted Perez's mother, Gloria Frances, and told her to bring her son's identification. 

According to Donahue's testimony, Frances said she noticed that Perez had left his wallet at home but she could not bring it in, so officers detained Perez. But the official log of Perez's belongings at the time police booked him showed that he had his identification with him. 

Donahue resigned as a Hallandale Beach officer in October 1998 and currently is a Davie police officer. 

Perez's case is not the only high-profile blunder the Hallandale Beach Police Department has made recently. 

A police SWAT team a year ago surprised a couple by bursting into their apartment and searching them for drugs and guns. The couple, New York horse trainers who say they now avoid South Florida, are suing Hallandale Beach after police admitted to raiding the wrong home. 

Perez and his family just moved from Hollywood to North Miami, and although he is 21, he always tries to call to let his mother know where he is and whether he'll be late to spare her the feeling of panic in his absence. 

Perez said he doesn't focus on the past, on how his pleas to check his fingerprints went unheeded, or about the days and nights in jail when he avoided the frequent fights or slept shivering after someone stole his pillow and blanket. 

Other things Perez doesn't dwell on: that he had to stand up his girlfriend the day of his arrest -- Valentine's Day -- that the nursing home where he worked wouldn't take him back although he explained the arrest was a mistake, that he wouldn't leave the house for several weeks after, afraid of another false arrest, and that he had to make up the time in summer school. 

Perez said he has no grudges against police officers. He does try to stay out of Hallandale Beach, though. 

"When I see a Hallandale officer, I might get a little worried," he said with a shy smile. Then, patting at his thighs, he added: "I just check and see if I have my ID."