Out you go!

This makes me happy.

In short, the mayor of Stockon tried to fire a policeman who gave his son a ticket. Talk about your sense of entitlement. The town was rightly angered, and the situation was made worse by the mayor's refusal to talk about the situation at a town meeting.

Fortunately, the town was in the middle of elections, and the mayor was promptly kicked out, garnering less than 25% of the vote. Some of those votes were from people who voted (by mail) before the incident happened and wanted to change their votes after, but were denied.

The system still works on occasion.

Prime Reporting

Here's a prime bit of reporting from an article on ksl.com, referring to a man found murdered:

"In fact there are no witnesses and therefore no suspects."

So I gather two things from this: the only possible suspects are people who are witnesses, and all witnesses are instantly suspects. "Well, that wraps up THIS case! We don't have any witnesses, so we don't have any suspects. Too bad someone wasn't watching out the window when the crime was committed, so we could have suspected them."

Powderpuff Police

Provo High and Mountain View unofficially got together tonight to play a game of Powderpuff football.

Apparently, the principal wasn't too happy with this, and even after officially distancing Provo High from the event, he followed the event to the new location (Westridge Elementary) to try to break things up.


People weren't too happy about that, or about the fact that he called the cops (below picture, see the badge on the guy in the blue checkered shirt?). Some guy made the point (anyone know who the guy was?) that like it or not, the event was not being held on Provo High grounds, so the principal couldn't really do anything about it.


I couldn't really understand the principal's reasoning. At first I thought he didn't want the game to happen because he was afraid the students would be injured, and that made sense to me, even if I didn't think it was an adequate reason to cancel the game. People die canyoneering, but do I stop doing it?

Then I found out that apparently there's an "official" game later on this year. Will less people get injured at that? Would the assembled parents be any less quick to get their children to the hospital at this "unofficial" game than at the "official" one? Anyway, the principal finally realized that as good as his intentions were, he didn't really have a leg to stand on. He made a final announcement to the crowd and left.


Let the games begin!

Why, if I had a nickle for every time I've been shot...

There's been a story in the local (and apparently not-so-local) news recently. A police officer showed up at a 70-year-old lady's house, and asked for her name so he could write her a ticket for not taking care of her lawn. Apparently they were talking near the street, and the lady refused to give her name, then tried to go back to her house. When the police officer tried to stop her (apparently afraid she might be going for a weapon or something), she started resisting, and he ended up arresting her.

I'm not going to discuss the story. Instead, I was having an amusing time reading the discussion thread that followed the argument. Some people made good points, both for and against the officer's actions. One guy on the anti-cop side, however, made me laugh,

See this is why Police enFORCEment is sad, it's all about Force, What happened to the good Peace officers, I have had more guns pointed at me by police Officers in Utah then by anyone else, and that's when I have called them...

Really? I have yet to have a single gun pointed at me by ANYONE, much less a police officer. Am I doing something wrong? Offending the wrong people? Hanging out with the wrong crowd? Antagonizing the wrong gun-wielding demographic? I would love to ask him exactly how many times he's had a gun pointed at him, and what he was doing at the time.

(BTW, a picture someone posted in that same discussion thread is the one I used to the "You're doin' it wrong" post I just made.)

Oh, the usual...I got peed on...

It's been a long day: a praying mantis tried to assault a shelter employee, a policeman beat it back with his baton, and a dog peed on my leg.

Alright, it's not really as exciting as it sounds. I was in the kitchen eating some inmate-grown corn when there was a sudden burst of shrieking from the hallway. I went to investigate and found two of the girls that work at the shelter trying to alternately catch a praying mantis and fleeing in terror when it would fly at them. Once it landed in one of the girl's hair and the girl ran shrieking down the hall.

At the same time, an ACO came in bringing a squirrel. He heard the noise and came to investigate, then caught the mantis himself once he realized what they were doing. The girls were trying to catch it to feed our chameleon, so the officer tossed it in the cage, but it landed out of sight of the chameleon. Next thing I know, the ACO whips out his beat-stick (billy club? baton?) and starts poking the mantis, trying to get it to move. It doesn't work, so the ACO sticks a piece of tape on the end of his baton and picks the mantis up with it.

On an unrelated note, a dog peed on my leg. Oh well, part of the job.


A less fun side of the job is the disease we get occasionally. Right now the shelter is abnormally empty, we have pans of bleach everywhere to sanitize our shoe-soles, and there's practically armed guards patrolling the halls to make sure no one touches any of the animals. It started when a dog became sick, but it was an internal disease and we couldn't tell until it died suddenly. Since visitors (and even a couple shelter workers--we won't name names) can't seem to get the concept of "germs" through their head, the dog had been petted, then the people went on to pet half the other dogs in the place without sanitizing their hands between dogs.

The first dog died, as did a couple others that were adopted out. The decision was made to clean house, so we euthanized anything that looked in the least bit sick, or who's time was up. So the shelter is spookily quiet, no one is allowed to adopt a dog for a while until we're sure everything is safe, and we're keeping a close eye out for any more sick dogs.

The happy (sad?) thing is that in a week, we'll be back to full capacity. So many dogs...