Author: Shawn K. Quinn

If it walks like a duck…

…it might be cops running a traffic ticket trap. This past Halloween, an undercover officer in Fort Lee, New Jersey, dressed up in a duck costume for work. From the article:

Last week, an undercover officer was dressed in a giant Donald Duck costume and paced back and forth on the sidewalk and street on a busy road.

Officers would then pull over drivers who failed to yield for the duck, and hit them with $230 traffic tickets. Police issued a whopping 130 tickets that day for a total take of $29,900.00.

Note the numbers. Even if well over half of those motorists challenge the tickets, that’s still a take well into five figures.

I am quite alarmed by the way the agency did this. It would be one thing if there was a full-scale public awareness campaign, either in the weeks leading up to Halloween or at some other time in the year (say, as summer vacation for school-age children approaches in late April and May) and then the cops started writing tickets. The duck costume could well be considered a distraction in and of itself given the hour of the day; this appeared to have taken place during the daylight hours, well before most kids would be out for trick-or-treating. Also, stated later in the article:

However, video footage of the operation shows that the officer dressed in the duck suit was intentionally confusing motorists, walking back and forth between the street and the sidewalk, and making confusing hand gestures.

At the very least, this toes right up to the dividing line of entrapment. In all likelihood, it goes way over it.

I have not seen a followup story to this stating anything along the lines that Fort Lee cancelled the tickets or refunded any fines paid by drivers. In the words of another famous cartoon duck, this is just despicable.

Food blogging and comps: my take on the revelations of Ian Harrison

Recently in Eater Montreal, Ian Harrison wrote a piece about comps (free meals) for food bloggers. In particular, the bulk of the piece describes the one time that Ian got a comped meal from a restaurant. From the article (I’ve snipped a bit for brevity):

Last summer I celebrated a family event with lunch at Maison Boulud in the Ritz-Carlton hotel. It was close to flawless. My wife was unable to attend so when the restaurant announced in August that Daniel Boulud was going to preside over a menu from his cookbook, Daniel: My French Cuisine, I saw it as an opportunity to try the restaurant together (and, truthfully, spend some quality alone time away from our energetic and relentless daycare-age daughter).

But first I wrote about the event on Eater. When Daniel Boulud comes to town, you do that. […]

Midway through our meal, we spotted Daniel Boulud hobnobbing in the dining room. When he eventually made his way to our table, he couldn’t have been more gracious. But he said something that gave me a twinge of discomfort: “It’s our pleasure to have you here tonight.”

There was a nudge, nudge, wink, wink quality to it. I don’t think it was intended as such but I felt it.

[…]

When the bill never came, we left what we hoped was a nice tip and [left]. On the way home we didn’t speak about the food or the excellent bottle of wine we shared. […] Our focus was on the freebie. A freebie in the order of $250.

I am guessing that’s $250 in Canadian, which is about $208.50 or so in US dollars (UK £137, €179.25) at the time of this writing. Even accounting for this, that’s still a pretty lavish meal for just about anyone in the 99% and maybe even a few in the 1%. It’s the kind of meal that some of us, including people like me, usually only dream of.

And apparently, that’s the going rate for good publicity. What’s alarming, though, is that this is clearly unethical PR, in that the food bloggers are implicitly expected to remain opaque about this. Worse than that, though, are this burning questions: How often does this happen in, say, places like Houston, TX? Dallas, TX? Columbus, OH? Jackson, MS? Memphis, TN? Atlanta, GA? (Just to name a few.) How many otherwise great restaurants are barely getting the chance to last longer than a few months because of unscrupulous and unethical behavior in what amounts to outright bribery of the press?

I don’t really rely on news coverage or food blogs to decide on new restaurants to try. Usually, it’s places I have heard about from friends and acquaintances (over a decade ago I found out what Fogo de Chao was all about from one of the companies I was working for at the time, and I have wanted to try the place since). Sometimes, it’s places I have seen while traveling around the city, or occasionally outside of the city. However, I know a lot of people do rely on traditional media or blogs and may go to a restaurant reviewed well in the local paper whereas they would completely ignore a comparable television or print advertisement. By the same token I know that the local television stations continue to publicize the city food inspectors’ violation reports for similar reasons (so people know where not to go to). The value of publicity cannot be ignored, either way.

Blurring the line between news/publicity and advertising is bad not only for the reporter/blogger, but also for those who would otherwise benefit from good publicity. It also potentially gives the entire businesses (PR and news reporting) a bad name, as well as undermining the trust that people place in bloggers and news media to be transparent. A few unscrupulous bloggers out there who take the comps and write what’s been paid for have the potential to ruin it for all of us long term.

Time served, money won

People get arrested every day. Accused criminals get found guilty and convicted every day. Convicted criminals get released from jail and prison, and start the road towards reintegrating into society every day. People play the lottery every day. Some of those players win every day.

So it stands to follow, every once in a while, someone with a criminal record is going to win playing the lottery. Every once in a while, a former felon is going to win a large payout. Such was the case with Timothy Poole in central Florida, as detailed in this CW39 NewsFix story among others. It was quickly found out he had served time for a sexual abuse offense some years prior, and was released in 2006.

There is, of course, no law against playing the lottery due to criminal history. Nor should there be. Yet some people think Timothy shouldn’t be allowed to keep the money because of the nature of his crime. The only way I’d possibly take the side that the winnings should be forfeited, is in cases where the winner was still on probation or parole and had a specific prohibition against buying lottery tickets or even gambling in general as a condition of release. Even then, it’s a stretch, as I’d question why the hell such a condition was there to begin with.

It is unrealistic to sentence more than the worst offenders to either life without possibility of parole or death. Not to mention, it’s a violation of their Eighth Amendment rights (in the US). So, at some point, the vast majority of individuals convicted of crimes will be released either from confinement, or even from parole or probation to unsupervised life in the free world. State lotteries, casino gambling, and many other things are part of life in the free world.

The stark reality is that Timothy did his time and his debt to society is paid; it’s not unlike paying off, say, a $10,000 credit card balance. It’s unfair to him to say just because he’s now $3 million richer from playing the lottery that there’s suddenly a larger balance due on that debt. It would be like a credit card bank deciding years later after one gets a large windfall, that one suddenly owes another $5,000 in interest for a debt paid off years ago. Most people would be outraged at this, and rightfully so. It’s the same principle here, except there’s a lot more than $5,000 at stake.

I’m not condoning what Timothy did years ago. Sex crimes are some of the most heinous. I’m not going to get into any details of the crime itself because it doesn’t matter, the sentence is discharged and I’m not even going to get into Timothy’s proclamations of innocence; if it develops into more of a story I may revisit it later. What I am going to get into is this: those who feel Timothy wasn’t sentenced properly should take it up with the judge who presided over his case, and/or the prosecuting attorney(s) who handled it. If that doesn’t work, vote them out, vote out the people who appointed them, hell, vote against every incumbent still around from 2006 if that makes you feel any better. But today, Timothy’s a law abiding citizen until proven otherwise, and to go after the $3 million that he won honestly playing the lottery is attempted theft. And I think you know by now how I feel about thieves.

A disappointing turn of events: in re Victor Trevino

(Due to technical problems during editing, this post was not able to be posted until today, Tuesday 2014-11-18. It was written in its entirety before the sentencing, and the original text has remained unedited since the night of Sunday 2014-11-16.)

This will be one of the more difficult posts to write for this blog. But it needs to be written. For the new people, it’s honestly quite rare I feel comfortable putting in a good word for a good cop. And this post, not surprisingly, is going to be about one of those cops I had a reason to say something good thing about, at one time.

If you haven’t read my post Nightmare on Shepherd Drive from 2010 November (just a little over four years ago to the day!), you may want to go back and take a look at it. In that post I quote then-Precinct 6 Constable Victor Trevino where he rips the cops running a questionable speed trap on North Shepherd Drive and North Durham Drive. Some months later, Constable Trevino gets indicted on four criminal counts: two counts of tampering with a governmental record, one count of abuse of official capacity, and one count of misappropriation of fiduciary property. It was this last count that he was being tried on until a few days ago when he changed his plea to guilty and shortly thereafter, he resigned as constable. Basically, you can stick a fork in Mr. Trevino’s law enforcement career because it’s done.

If you think I now feel like a bit of an ass for having said something good about him, you’d be at least partially right. I take a pretty dim view of those who divert money from a charitable cause for their own ends. In this regard Mr. Trevino is no better than the likes of the WordCamp Houston 2010 organizers who I have already written about at length. The difference here is, that was attempted theft, and Mr. Trevino’s actions are closer to an actual theft (“misappropriation” is really just a nicer and/or legal term for theft when it comes down to it). To say I expect better of those who work in law enforcement is an understatement. While I don’t think the charge to which Mr. Trevino pleaded guilty reflects the entirety of his career, it’s certainly going to be the main thing that many remember him for.

I didn’t know he was going to be accused of these kinds of crimes at the point in time when I wrote my post. And in the specific context where I commend him in my post from 2010, I stand by what I said; I’m not going to retract it now. I really wish some other constables or even the sheriff had spoken up about the speed trap and said the same thing that then-Constable Trevino did.

I drive through there once in a while, and it seems HPD has finally abandoned the speed trap in/near the 700 block of North Shepherd/Durham. There may be another reason for that (which I may address later) but either way, good riddance. So the story, and then-Constable Trevino’s words, may well have had a lasting impact.

Regarding Mr. Trevino’s criminal case, I may make another post in about a week after he’s sentenced, I may not. It depends on how I feel. I will say I am glad I felt well enough to write this post today (Saturday); it would have hit the wire earlier had I not been ill.

Rural Pennsylvania cop causes accident, kills woman, not charged (yet)

A recent post on The Free Thought Project details yet another case of inexcusable police conduct. Trooper (for now) Frederick Schimp was on patrol at 3:30 am on Saturday, July 5. He failed to yield to cross traffic before crossing an intersection controlled by a stop sign, in this case a vehicle being driven by a 57-year old woman. Both Mr. Schimp and his partner were injured. The woman was not so lucky; she wound up not surviving the accident after being transported to a hospital. The trooper was not responding to a call, making his reason for either running the stop sign or not yielding all the more baffling.

If an average citizen did this, an arrest would be made immediately. No charges have been announced yet for Mr. Schimp, and it’s entirely possible he’ll be put on leave with pay (in effect, a paid vacation) while this is investigated. Kill someone, wreck a police vehicle in the process, and get a paid vacation? What kind of message does it send when our cops screw up and that’s how it’s handled?

It’s time for the Pennsylvania State Police to set the example on how this should be handled. I think a fairer solution: Officer is put on leave without pay, and only receives back pay only if and when cleared of wrongdoing. If there is wrongdoing in this case, the officer is subject to the same criminal charges as everyone else. Enforcing the law does not mean above the law. Blowing through a stop sign and causing a fatality to get to the doughnut shop a few minutes sooner or whatever should be punished severely, ideally as severely as it would be if one of us did it. I’m quite horrified that it’s taking this long to file and announce charges.