The Raven

Wednesday, January 8, 2003

The Last Rights

We'll conclude our look at rights today and with any luck get off cops and crime for a while. I don't know why I find these stories so fascinating. It isn't the fear of being arrested or that pathetic cop-groupie thing some people get into, no, it's something else.

Could be that a lot of these true-life dramas are where the rubber of freedom and liberty meets the road of rules and order, the exact place in time and space where free will abuts an inflexible wall of social opprobrium. And sometimes we see cases where people are trying out new ideas, looking for solutions, and others come along and try to shut down the experiment. It's something more like that. Something like this:

Repro Cops

If you're stuck for dinner conversation at a dull party, you might mention that there's a group in New York right now run by Barbara Harris that's "paying drug addicts and alcoholics $200 apiece not to have babies." Turns out there's a catch.

Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK), also known as Project Prevention, seeks to stop addicts from giving birth by offering money in exchange for sterilization or long-term birth control. It also offers vasectomies for the same deal.

This seems like a sensible idea that follows the same logic of spaying and neutering dogs and cats. Let's consider the pros: fewer kids growing up in dysfunctional environments, taxing our social support services, and winding up in the criminal justice system. How about the arguments against?

The National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPR), Mrs. Harris' chief antagonist, accused her of "racial targeting" and says that her group's activities are reminiscent of Nazi Germany's sterilization programs of the 1930s.

And less polemically, New York's Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs 11 municipal hospitals, has said in a statement that it is "philosophically opposed to coercing women, economically or otherwise, to make reproductive choices." Read the article before you decide.

Chicken Cops

Actually, it's "cop" singular—the dean of safety at New York's "troubled" Brandeis High School. Dean Roger Fudim is calling it quits because the school's just too dangerous.

"The bottom line is I'm not going to put myself at risk anymore. It's not worth it. The school is unsafe for a dean who is actively involved in investigating things. If you look the other way, it's safer." Fudim said.

This must be one tough joint, you'd figure. I don't know. According to the story, there's some gang activity, mostly Bloods and Dominicans Don't Play. A few kids threatened Fudim, but he hasn't been hurt—yet. Guess he wants to keep it that way. We say he's a wimp and those kids need all the help they can get. Let's hope they bring in someone with cajones.

Sex Cops

Long Island cops just busted two alleged cyberperverts who were trying to seduce a 13-year-old Wisconsin girl. Donald Sparling, 50, met the girl in a chat room and was planning with James Teal, 38, to make her their "sex slave." Sparling had already bought the airline ticket at the time of his arrest. Says here he "planned to impregnate her because he wanted kids." We think he needs to visit the folks over at CRACK and get his $200.

Al Jolson Cops

Police are supposed to be fairly bright because they need to outsmart the bad guys. By the looks of this, some of them are a few floats short of a Rose Bowl parade.

Meet New York cop Joseph Locurto, an officer from Queens. What, you may rightly ask, is he doing on a float in blackface?

Locurto said he was told to paint his face black just before the parade and took part only because he wanted to "make people laugh and win a trophy" for the most humorous float.

Wearing blackface, one of the firefighters, Jonathan Walters, was pulled from the back of the float in a parody of the death of James Byrd Jr.

This happened back in 1998, during a Labor Day parade and when then-Mayor Giuliani heard about it, he said he wanted those guys "gone." Now they're in court arguing to get their former jobs back. Won't be easy.

Anatomy Cops

In Tampa, Florida, they're putting in a new electric streetcar system. These things are expensive, so the people involved solicit donations and if you put up enough cash, you get to name a streetcar station—maybe.

The group behind Tampa's new electric streetcar system has rejected a $150,000 offer by Joe Redner, owner of Tampa's storied Mons Venus strip club, to name one of its 11 stops the Mons Venus Streetcar Station.

Redner isn't too happy about that. "Totally expected," he says. "Very subjective, nothing objective." We can think of mounds of reasons why they turned him down. Redner, for his part, is undaunted:

"Any time I could get the Mons Venus name on something that became available, I would do it," he said.

Beverage Cops

If you drink and drive, expect trouble. On the other hand, you'd figure you're safe as long as you stay inside the bar, right? Wrong. In Virginia's Fairfax County, police have begun a new pro-active campaign in which they come into the bar and bust you for public intoxication if you can't pass a sobriety test.

During the holiday period, undercover agents went to 20 bars in Reston and Herndon looking for examples of bartenders "overserving" customers. Police ultimately raided three bars and arrested nine patrons who failed sobriety tests. They were charged with public drunkenness and spent the night in jail.

The ACLU says that whereas .08 blood alcohol content is defined as "too drunk to drive," no such level has yet been determined for public intoxication. The Year of the Crackdown is getting ugly, and it's probably going to get worse before they lighten up.

4:22:29 PM

The Right Stuff

A quick look around this morning shows that it's all about rights—yours and mine—and responsibility. See what you think.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

In the "Good Cop" category, we've got a story about David Westerfield, who's in the news this morning after the release of an interrogation videotape showing him all but confessing to the murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam. I watched this on the Today Show this morning, and saw Westerfield saying "My life is over," then asking detectives to leave him alone with a gun. A copy of the video is archived here. The AP story linked to above also has video of the sentencing. Nice to see some free news video is still out there. We wonder why the footage wasn't shown to the jury, and we're glad they reached a guilty verdict even without it.

When detectives questioned him about child pornography found on computer disks in his home office, Westerfield said it was downloaded accidentally off the Internet.

Why do people still try to get away with that excuse? "Darling, what's this I found on our computer?" "Ah...That...That just sort of got on the hard drive by accident, you know those crazy browsers, heh heh..." Give it up, folks.

Wrong Cop

Federal police are backing away from a hawala money transfer case in Detroit, turning the investigation over to the U.S. Customs department. We covered hawala transfers here last year, so Raven readers got a pre-briefing on this complex system of moving money around informally.

The US Customs people are pursuing charges against 6 Detroit muslim men who They were accused of transferring money without a proper license in violation of the USA Patriot Act of 2001.

I noticed that my local bank has signs up at the counter warning me that I may be requested to produce all kinds of ID prior to doing business with them, pursuant to the Patriot Act, and it looks like we're cracking down hard on do-it-yourself fiduciary instruments. There are some very serious implications to this.

Bad Cop

Also in Detroit, Officer Anthony Johnson is in the news because Joni Gullas gave him the finger—literally. In a bizarre traffic stop incident that went horribly wrong, Johnson was attempting to forcibly subdue Gullas:

He cuffed her right hand but couldn't get to her left hand, which she had tucked under her body. He pulled on her coat sleeve and she pulled her hand inside, he wrote. Gullas denied doing that and said the sleeves on the coat normally hang over her hands.

Concerned that she might be reaching for a weapon, Johnson pulled out a pocket knife and cut the sleeve off "to speed up" thecuffing process, he wrote.

And in all the excitement he cut off her "left ring finger at the first knuckle." Her lawyer is one lucky attorney.

More Raven this afternoon.

10:15:16 AM