The FBI just reported that hate crimes across the country rose 8% in 2006. However, if you read the AP story, it becomes obvious that some of the rise is due to statistical tomfoolery. The number is affected by the amount of participating police agencies, which fluctuates from year to year, leading to a (surprise!) fluctuation in the amount of reported hate crimes. But since we’re having such a good time playing with statistics, I thought I’d throw out a few of my own. (more…)

The National Action Network, led by Reverend Al Sharpton, is leading a march on the U.S. Justice Department in Washington today. This is in response to Jena-6 as well as to “hate crimes and noose hangings on the rise across the country”.

(more…)

The ongoing quality issues that have plagued Chinese imports and spurred waves of recalls took a turn for the absurd recently, when doctors in Australia discovered that “Aqua Dots”, a brand of water-fusing bead toys, creates a chemical related to GHB, a banned “date rape drug,” when eaten by children. Apparently doctors thought that a kid had been roofied by his parents, before discovering that “an obscure industrial chemical used to prevent water-soluble glues from becoming sticky before they are needed” actually turned into GHB when ingested, which resulted in parents finding children with coma and seizure-like symptoms and vomiting beads.  Now, we all know that kids have the inalienable right to put anything they want in their mouths without ever running any risk of consequences, and we also know without a doubt that GHB is bad. So what do we do about this grave risk to our precious little future Americans? Several local fraternities have offered to buy up remaining stocks of the GHB-producing beads for “proper disposal.”

The Register-Guard ran a story today about the use of newly introduced tasers in Lane County Jail, and the news (surprisingly) wasn’t all that bad. According to the RG, officers have drawn their tasers 96 times since they were introduced in June 2006 and only used them 19 times. This is probably thanks to the strict regulations governing taser use in the jail, as well as a training program that requires officers to be tased.

However, all is not well. The RG also reports that the Eugene Police Department will soon be arming some of its officers with tasers. While the devices’ use in a highly structured environment like a jail works well, their track record on the street is notorious. Arm a few hothead police officers with non-lethal weapons, send them out with minimal oversight and anything can happen.

But here’s the most curious part of the article:

Former jail Capt. Kevin Williams was instrumental in arming corrections deputies with the Tasers.

Williams, now director of campus security at the University of Oregon, spent 20 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, which arms its jail guards with Tasers. He suggested that Lane County Sheriff Russ Burger do the same.

Uh-oh. (more…)

The Daily Emerald, in their infinite wisdom, continues to push for more police on campus. In an editorial today, the Emerald cites that the University of Oregon only has one EPD officer per 5,000 students. According to the Emerald, Oregon has the lowest ratio of officers to students when compared to schools of similar size.

While the Emerald complains about a lack of police, they fail to mention why we need more officers on campus. No stats are given about a rise in crime, and the editorial does not mention any recent emergency where DPS failed to respond.

DPS can barely keep itself together, and adding more officers to mess things up isn’t going to help. The Emerald should attack DPS for being inefficient and mismanaged before it starts calling for more officers.

As an update to the item that CJ Posted below, over at H&R Radley Balko weighs in on the Jena Reality Check article. I haven’t been following the case, other than to note that it is definitely bad to beat a guy that severely, but I think this seems relevant.

I think we all knew that this story would come back (the comments are a fun read), but who could have guessed it would have been so gleefully, spectacularly embarassing for everyone involved? That’s right folks, everyone’s favorite former Con Court justice Jerome Roberts promised that he would pay back the $375 he collected in stipends while he was not a student, but he has yet to send a solitary ducat back to the ASUO. According to the Emerald, Roberts was supposed to pay back $50 a month until the sum was redeemed. Let’s see now, the story came to light in May, so you have payments for June through October missing, that’s $250 the ASUO should have back in it’s gullible little mitts by now, instead of a big, fat bupkis. Oh well, it’s not that much money… hell, why doesn’t the Exec just have him work it off over at the Con Court? After all, it’s not like the court could become any more of a joke than it already is…

***UPDATE***

Awesome raging against the unfairness of making Roberts pay the money back here (scroll down), from everyone’s favorite Senator. Of course enforcing rules is the product of “personal bias” Nate… it has nothing to do with the responsibilities of fair play in government. Hell, why don’t you just go straight for your favorite chestnut and call the whole Senate racist again? Damn, just when you think a situation can’t become any more embarassing…

So I was walking into the game on Saturday with a student ticket, but I didn’t have my student ID on me. The squirrelly looking ticket person said I cannot go in without my student ID. I stood there for a minute – at this point I probably could have just walked in with the crowd, but I thought it would be fun to see what happens. The ticket person walked over to this lady and I was cordial enough to follow him. Now usually I don’t like to use harsh words when describing people, but because of the way this lady treated me, I will call her swamp donkey. Instead of attempting to converse with me, the swamp donkey walks up to me, snatches my ticket, and starts yelling. My gut reaction was to reach back for my ticket because it was my ticket; I should have been given the chance to take my ticket out, go get my student ID and return.

The swamp donkey instantly grabbed one of my arms and screamed “DPS.” A DPS jerk swooped me from behind, grabbed me with some force, damn near knocked me over and started pushing me forward, yelling “don’t fight me, don’t fight me.” For the record I was not fighting at all, only stabilizing myself while being shoved, nor was I anywhere near blatantly intoxicated at this point (I have witnesses).

We hear week after week all the statistics from Autzen about people getting kicked out. The numbers obviously are helped by over-anxious security who have little skills other than physical force, unable to handle situations any other way. And that is why I’m giving this week’s “Shake of the Fist” to the Autzen Crowd Management Service and the dirty rotten DPS. Way to protect and serve, ya bunch of assholes.

By the way, after being kicked out, I walked and had a couple beers, then bought a ticket for $4 and went into the game, making the whole ordeal that much more asinine.

On Monday, the centerpiece feature in the Ol’ Dirty was about the alleged under staffing of public safety on campus. There are 14 DPS officers and four sworn EPD officers - three officers and one sergeant - that cover the University campus. The feature highlights the administrations goal to create an official police department on campus. The article, of course, uses the Virginia Tech shootings for leverage.

The ODE followed this up with a article about rising bike theft on campus. Good. Great. Grand. Nice “unbiased” news reporting. Today, however, the Ol’ Dirty Editorial Board had this to say:

“The state should recognize the importance of providing adequate police on a campus of 20,000 and give the University the right to have a fully-functioning police department on campus.”

Is it too hard to understand that creating a full-fledged police force will increase violence on campus? A good majority of University students feel safe walking on campus at any time of the day or night as it is. Furthermore, most students don’t like police figures.

But hey, I say bring it on. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good ole fashioned riot. Let’s bring in a couple dozen ego-driven, trigger-happy authority figures who will eventually get on a power trip and mishandle a situation - and you know it will eventually happen - leading to serious abuse to a student or a group of students. Then, the students can retaliate by rioting and smashing the windows of the police cars. Then, the EPD can join the campus police to stop the surge with tear gas and rubber bullets. Then, more students will be outraged and join in the carnage. Then, the National Guard can be called in. By the end of it all, the scoreboard will be: 53 students hospitalized; 2 students dead; 2 officers hospitalized; $375,000 of damage; 2,780 broken or chipped teeth; 1 embarrassed University; and one hell of a bar tab at Rennie’s Landing. Trust me, my Magic 8-ball told me so.

Also, check out the illustration. It depicts the University campus as Gotham City. Ridiculous.

Reason Hit & Run has posted a great news clip from Texas showing floor votes in the Texas legislature.  In the era of hanging chads, dead men voting, and lost absentee ballots, it seems that politicians in Texas just don’t seem to understand what “one person, one vote” means.  It’s worth a watch.

Hot on the heels of a severe and unwarranted electrocution at the University of Florida, the City of Eugene has decided to give those who serve and protect some cattle prods Tasers. Prompted by the shooting death of a mentally ill teen late last year, the committee has taken all of ten months to decide that giving police one more weapon to use against drunken college students is the right solution. I might have fired the officers involved, maybe tried to have them arrested for murder, and considered taking away options for force rather than granting more, just a thought. It’s nice they have another committee studying mental illness intervention, but wouldn’t proper intervention technique obviate the need for Tasers which will inevitably get misused?

Most disturbing, however, is that the EPD will be in charge of evaluating the success of the pilot program:

Although the policy has been written, the work is not over for this committee. It will need to shape the evaluation process and decide how police will determine the success or failure of the pilot project.

Brown stressed the policy was designed just for the pilot project.

“The Police Commission will take the data and community reaction and input and then decide whether Tasers are going to be a permanent part of the police arsenal,” he said.

So they’re going to buy a bunch of Tasers, give them to the police, and let the police decide how well the community reacts…hmmm…does anyone else see a potential problem with that approach? No conflict of interest there or anything, move along.

As if the UO Athletic Department wasn’t already having PR issues, now their public face has been suspended for next weeks home game against Fresno State for delivering this brutal smackdown to the Houston Cougar. No word yet on why the Duck decided to run wild on the Cougar, nor why he felt compelled to savagely teabag his hapless victim as he lay quivering on the turf of Autzen Stadium. Needless to say, this comes as a blow to the ASUO’s much-vaunted (by them) “Classy Fan Initiative.”

Watch the Ducks teabag the Michigan Wolverines today at 12:30 on ABC.

Edit: If you missed this, it was quite the teabagging. Go Ducks!

Kevin Williams has been named as the first permanent director of DPS in four years, according to a Daily Emerald report. Williams has been a Lane County Sheriff for the past two years, where he was responsible for introducing Tasers into the Lane County Jail. According to the Emerald story, Williams is “in favor of arming DPS officers with Tasers” and has “said he would support turning DPS into a full-blown police department.” He also “has ideas to alleviate parking pressures at the University,” and is a fan of Duck football.

Although the hiring process has been open to students, the final two choices for DPS director were both strong proponents of transitioning DPS into a full-fledged, armed police force, a position which is hardly popular among students. Naturally the “DPS serves students” rhetoric has been splashed around throughout the hiring process, but the Administration has made it clear that the DPS is headed towards police department status, and that issuing Tasers to officers is now practically an inevitability. Choosing Williams not only brings in the public face of Taser advocacy in Lane County, but compliments that with what seems to be a deep suspicion of the students he has been hired to protect. During the hiring process, Williams “said he would also like to encourage a training day on campus for area police officers, to prepare for what might occur should a riot start or a group of student protesters get out of hand.”

The choice has been made, in a “fair” and “open” process, which was only guaranteed to have a minimum of student input because it occured in the middle of summer. This allowed the Administration to push its agenda of a a tougher, armed DPS while reinforcing in their minds the perception that students are too lazy or ignorant to care.  That’s cool though, because we will just have to continue to be highly suspicious of the DPS and its  institutional drift towards ever more power and interference into the lives of students. So with that, allow me to extend a hearty welcome to Mr. Williams. You have your agenda, we have ours… as long as you are willing to talk to us (unlike the late, lamented, lamentable Mr Driscoll) we’ll all manage to get along somehow. At least until the first on-campus Tasing.

Everyone’s buddies at the Recording Industry Association of America are suing 17 UO students for illegaly downloading copywrited material over the Universities network, according to local news reports. Apparently the RIAA asked the University to identify a number of network users, and offer them settlements in their ongoing legal struggle to prevent people from stealing food from Lars Urich’s children. The pre-litigation settlement offers were not forwarded to the John Doe defendants, according to UO General Counsel Randy Gellar.

“It’s our policy not to send those letters along because we are neither the agent of the RIAA or any students,” Geller said. “As far as I know no students have been sued by the RIAA.”

Similar attempts by the RIAA to discover the identity of illegal downloaders on University networks failed at the University of New Mexico earlier this year. Although the UO may pose as the defender of student privacy, it did block network access to as many as 24 students per week last year for illegal downloads on the University network. Thank god someone is looking out for these poor people.

This story comes from the Cincinnati Enquirer.  I am going to take a little creative license with the general gist of this story.

“Excuse me miss, got any change.”

Woman reaches into her pocket as if she is digging for change, but instead of producing a quarter, she is now wielding a gun.

“Here’s your change.”

Yes, a woman in Cincinnati shot and killed a homeless man after he asked her for change.  I can only imagine how well this woman would cope in Eugene.

“Want to buy the world’s funniest joke books?”  BAM!

“Can I take your empty beer cans?” BAM!

“Want to buy a bicycle seat I stole from a college kid to fuel my meth addiction?”  BAM! 

It would be like a slightly sadder but still entertaining Death Wish sequel.