Category: Politics

Dallas County loves sheriff revenue patrols

Recently, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department (DCSD) aggressively increased revenue enhancement traffic patrols. Now the DCSD patrols all freeways in the southern half of Dallas County and is seeking more freeway patrol duties.

The Dallas Morning News explains:

The department patrols unincorporated areas of Dallas County in the southern sector – a shrinking area of only about 9,000 residents. (source)

Texas sheriffs have full countywide jurisdiction, but their traditional police mandate is to patrol unincorporated county land. The DCSD’s policing mandate is shrinking with this unincorporated land.

Dallas County Commissioners are loathe to spend scarce resources only to duplicate city police. An impending $20 million county deficit seals this point.

As the rural mandate and dollars go away, all incentive is–literally–on revenue enhancement. (Disagree? See why Dallas County started constable traffic patrols.)

Dallas County, meet your new sheriff’s department: home of Texas’s most incompetently-managed jails and revenue patrols.

I feel so much safer!

Industrial Boulevard poll = Dallas City Council looks like dummies

Dallas City Council members have traded entertaining barbs over a recent poll about renaming Industrial Boulevard. The winning choice was Cesar Chavez.

The problem is the poll is complete bunk. In no way could it accurately represent the voice of Dallas citizens.

The poll allowed people to vote over fax, email, and phone. How do you ensure that voters only vote once, and how do you ensure that voters are actual Dallas citizens? You can’t!

The Dallas Morning News says that city staff attempted to “weed out vote-stacking” by eliminating “more than one vote … from the same computer” Also, “a three-vote maximum was allowed per phone…” (link)

First, there is no way to accurately enforce one vote per computer on this poll. Since the site did not let users log in (and reference some kind of credential), there are only two ways to ensure uniqueness:

  • One vote per IP address. I doubt they chose that; it would effectively block most users of ISPs that proxy users behind few IP addresses, such as AOL.
  • Set a cookie. The cookie can easily be discarded. As soon as that is done, the vote server would have no idea it was the same old browser!

Second, there is nothing preventing someone from calling, faxing, and computer voting (several times). It’s impossible to accurately cross-reference computer votes to phone calls!

Third, without some kind of pervasive, city-issued ID system, it is utterly impossible to validate that votes came from Dallas residents. Without advanced techniques well beyond the scope of this survey, it is utterly impossible to link computers to specific cities. And even if phone numbers were validated, how do you know the person on the other end of the line isn’t a commuter from the ‘burbs?

City council: please stop. You’re making yourself look like idiots.

With way it was conducted, this poll is only good for entertainment value. Nothing else!

Case for FLDS raid keeps collapsing

Today, the Texas Supreme Court further proved that the Texas Child Protective Service‘s jihad against the FLDS church is phenomenal bureaucratic ineptitude.

The Supreme Court rightly ruled that CPS never had sufficient grounds to remove the kids from the compound.

This comes after weeks of curious revelations, including that the phone calls instigating this raid were fake and, unlike the original allegations, that the CPS remains unable to substantiate any current pregnancies are with underage girls.

It’s even worse.

So far the CPS only suspects that 1.25% of the seized kids may have been physically or sexually abused. Let’s put that in context. In 2002, 4.6 million children were checked for abuse in the USA. Of them, approximately:

  • 20% showed any sign of abuse.
  • 6% showed signs of sexual or physical abuse (either one or both).

1.25% of the FLDS population is 94% lower than the physical or sexual abuse rate of the general population of investigated children. (source of stats) The point here is that the FLDS raid was grossly overbroad in including so many children.

<digression>

The media adds a humorous element to this saga: they are fascinated at how the FLDS members aren’t cooperating with officials, intentionally making it difficult for the government to investigate them.

Why is that weird? Why are the FLDS members’ actions any different than normal citizens? When you see a cop doing revenue enhancement running a speed trap, do you 1. brake and take other reasonable steps to avoid a citation or 2. drive up to the cop and ask to pay the speed tax ask for a ticket? (And don’t respond and say you never do this; almost everyone drives slowly around cops.) Ladies and gentlemen of the media, it’s normal for people not to submit to government intervention. Big Brother is not our friend. The rest of us get it. When will you?

</digression>

Now, don’t get me wrong about the FLDS. That church is very strange. It has bizarre, weird, heretical beliefs. It comes close to a cult.

Their founder is a pederast. Here are pictures of him passionately kissing a 12 and 14 year old girls he may have “married”:

(source)

How would you feel if those were your daughters? Fortunately, he’s in jail. Which means he’s not in Texas.

Memo to the Texas CPS: It’s legal to be strange! And thank God for that right.

Unless things start changing quickly, heads must roll at the CPS. A failure to soundly scourge that agency will set a precedent that the government is the chief child abuser in Texas!

1 more year! 1 more year!

Last night, I was unanimously* elected to a third term as president of Lake Park Estates Neighborhood Association, Inc.

That quarterly meeting went well: I did little talking. I had people lined up for each of these tasks:

  • Community policing representative from our local police substation (arranged by our crime watch chair)
  • Discussion of Volunteers In Patrol program initiative by our crime watch chair
  • Discussion of a nascent crime camera committee by its chair
  • Report on our membership drive by our treasurer (we’re at 33% of the neighborhood, the highest I have ever seen it since I lived here!)
  • Running the election (two people I appointed at the last minute)
  • Room arrangements made by our VP
  • Snacks arranged by our Welcome Committee chairwoman

It was a well oiled machine for a small neighborhood association.

I know that the “textbook answer” to leadership is to help people be motivated to take on projects. However, when talking about small volunteer organizations, translating that into practice is an art. Small nonprofits have scarce resources and limited zones of success (too many parties to please), and we compete for volunteer attention. In other words, you have to provide an unusual amount of motivation and direction to achieve success.

I wrote “art” because leadership techniques vary wildly depending on personalities, the organization’s mission, community support, etc.

I really appreciate people who are given direction and take off with it. At the meeting, I recognized three people who did a fantastic job:

  • A lady who started a pet watch program from scratch.
  • A lady who revived a defunct welcome committee.
  • Our treasurer who provided exceptional support for our membership drive.

The award is sincere but has a farscial title: YOU WILL RESPECT MY AUTHORITY. Here’s what it looked like:

The reference is from a South Park episode named Chickenlover. I did a bad imitation of Cartman’s “authority” line, making a fool of myself. The attendees enjoyed it even though most didn’t get it.

*One person wrote in Cartman for president but scratched it out and voted for me. Oh, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I was the only nominee for president.

Thanks for ignoring me, Lupe Valdez

(Scroll down if you just want to see the pictures.)

This post is emblematic of why Lupe Valdez, Dallas County’s Democrat Sheriff (yes, the sheriff–as in the one elected by the entire county), is so criticized for her lack of people skills.

It’s March 15, 2008. The St. Patrick’s day parade had just ended. My family got out of a movie at Northpark Mall AMC and got stuck in the traffic.

As we were slowing to a stop, I noticed democrat Sheriff Lupe Valdez in the back of a Sheriff’s truck, also parked in traffic, right by us. All of us were stuck in a standstill.

After stopping, BANG! A car rear ended us.

Shaken hard, we pull right over. I got out, armed with my camera.

I looked over the roof of my car right at democrat Lupe, who was staring at me, and incredulously shouted, “Did you see what just happened?” Democrat Lupe only kept her stare.

I know the she heard me. I could hear the voices from her truck. (Note for democrat sheriffs: when someone yells at you while standing near a parked vehicle where vehicles aren’t supposed to park, that means something is up. Investigate.)

I know she heard the crash. She was maybe 25 feet away? (Note for democrat sheriffs: a loud bang could mean a crash just happened.)

I know she saw two cars pulled over on a congested road, with both drivers getting out. (Note for democrat sheriffs: Red flag! Cars pulling over and drivers getting out after a crash sound could mean a crash just happened!)

I know she could see something moving in the back seat if she wanted to. (Note for democrat sheriffs: Bells should be going off in your head! The movement in a child seat means a child is on board this just-crashed vehicle!)

I know she could see we were in busy traffic. (Note to democrat sheriffs: it’s not safe for motorists to stand on the driver’s side of of a car when moving traffic is zipping by!)

Democrat Lupe did nothing. No asking me to repeat my question. No sign of concern. No stopping the truck and helping with the scene. Nothing.

No need for our democrat sheriff to bother with regular peons!

About 1 minute later (time estimated from photograph timestamps), noticing the democrat sheriff was still busy doing nothing, I snapped this picture:

The democrat sheriff didn’t get far because traffic was backed up. (Full size original picture. If you check the EXIF data, note that I hadn’t yet “sprung forward” my camera’s clock, so it was reading CST/GMT-6.)

Close up of our democrat sheriff’s unconcerned, sun squinting smirk:

Here’s my car:


Fortunately, my car’s main damage was two pockmarks on the rear bumper. Nothing got shifted around, no seams were any different. Even the styrofoam under the bumper was uncracked, looking as good as new from the bottom. We’re not fixing anything; eliminating the dimples is more hassle than it’s worth.

Here’s the car that hit us:

I think I spooked that lady by whipping out my camera and taking pictures so quickly. She was very cooperative.

What a great performance by our democrat sheriff! Thanks, Lupe!