Life Stories: January 2004 Archives
... by me.
As the union gets more desperate, the strikers are getting more obnoxious. Last night when I went to the grocery store I had to almost push my way through a small crowd of chanting sign-wavers. I've generally got no problem with people who want to strike, but these guys were going way over the line and making life miserable for everyone around them in a public area.
That's not what really set me off, though.
When I was leaving, some of the strikers were yelling at me and calling me a traitor and so forth (what group do they assume I owe allegiance to?), and I stopped walking and calmly told them that I really do appreciate what they're doing. "I've never seen the lines inside so short before; you're really making my life easier."
That didn't make them happy, and one girl came forward to yell something else at me, but I couldn't hear what she was saying because her shirt spoke more loudly than any scream:
... the date the strike started. I almost socked her in the face. How utterly repulsive to equate their stupid strike over paying $5 a week for medical insurance with terrorist attacks that killed over 3,000 people.
What else can I say about it? I'll go back and try to get a picture of someone on the shirts, if I can find more.
Update:
Xrlq encounters a similar (or possibly the same) shirt in Rancho Santa Margarita. I just know if I can get a picture of the shirt I can get a mention on Instapundit... grrr... I've gotta beat him to it!
I'm back from Reno, and I had a great time. The city's beautiful in the winter: snowy mountains vying with neon casinos in every direction. The casinos win, at night anyway.
I rolled the bones and won $100 or so before quitting, thereby breaking my 26-year losing streak. Well, 5-year anyway, since I wasn't doing much gambling as a child. I love craps, and I also enjoy the video poker games where you can play 100 hands at once. It's neat to see how the odds play out depending on what cards you hold, but it's easy to lose money when you hold strange things just to see what happens.
Reno's airport is remarkably easy to get into and out of, compared to LAX anyway (which has at least 20 times the capacity and traffic). There were about 15 DHS employees screening an equal number of passengers at my gate, and they opened all my checked luggage and inspected it for bombs. They didn't find any, but they weren't quite sure what to do with my telescope -- it doesn't open, and it's made of metal so there's no way to tell what's inside it. I suggested they look through it to verify that there wasn't a knife or gun inside, and that seemed to satisfy them.
Back to the grindstone tomorrow. Sleep well.
My PRAR was fulfilled for the nominal cost of $0.10 per page, a total of 105 pages. (For the history, see here.) The gist of it:
- six CCW applicants in five years;
- three CCWs granted, one to the mayor and two to city councilmen;
- three CCWs denied to non-office-holders, one of whom was not a resident of the city.
They also attached the city's CCW policy, which doesn't really describe good cause except to say that the Chief of Police will make the determination. In total:
Good cause: Both Penal Code section 12050(a)(1) and the Police Department's responsibility for the public's safety dictate that good cause be established prior to the Chief of Police issuing a CCW permit. In evaluating good cause and determining whether it has been established, the Chief of Police will give careful consideration of the reason(s) for requesting the permit that is/are documented on the application. Personal convenience alone will not constitute good cause for the issuance of a permit. Job position, classification, or an asserted need for personal protection will not alone establish good cause, but they may weigh significantly in determining good cause.There's a bit more that says (redundantly) that felons and people with CCWs revoked for cause will be denied (as required by law).
What's most interesting is that there's a section on "Application Processing" that says the Chief of Police will take fingerprints and send the application on to the Department of Justice, but they never took my fingerprints and so they couldn't have sent my application to the DoJ.
I was given the approved applications of the two councilmen (I was assured the mayor's is on the way), and I'm reading through them.
Let's see. The first councilman apparently had a current restraining order against him when he applied. That doesn't sound good. He was also the victim of domestic violence -- his ex-wife threw food at him. Maybe this is related to the restraining order against him? According to his good cause statement, he was held at gunpoint in 2000, but there's no further information indicating a further future threat.
For the second councilman, his entire good cause was redacted. There is a short answer to a later question asking why there are no other means of protection other than a CCW: "It is not possible or realistic for me to conceal myself from the public. Both my occupation and position with the city require me to be easily and readily accessible." Translation: I'm a city councilman.
Pursuant to Salute vs. Pitchess (61 Cal. App. 3d 557, 1976):
To determine, in advance, as a uniform rule, that only selected public officials can show good cause is to refuse to consider the existence of good cause on the part of citizens generally and is an abuse of, and not an exercise of, discretion" and "It is the duty of the sheriff [or police chief] to make such an investigation and determination, on an individual basis, on every application under section 12050.That's basically it. The CCW policy outlines an appeal process, which I might follow. I need to examine the matter further and consider my options.
Some of my professors said my Ph.D. project was too complicated to work, but tonight I finally got a tribe of learning animats to seriously kick the crap out of three non-learning tribes at the same time. Yay for me!
Red's the learner, in case you didn't guess. The white dots are resource points (evenly distributed on this map); the dark-colored squares are territory controlled by each of the four tribes (black is uncontrolled); the light-colored dots are individual animats (you can see three red animats near the center of this snapshot). There are five animats from each tribe, but some of them may be overlapping.
After having my application for a CCW denied, I submitted a public records act request on December 15th, 2003, for information on the Hawthorne Police Department's CCW history (here's the PRAR itself). The law allows the recipient 10 days to respond to the request, and since I hadn't heard back from the HPD for almost three weeks I called the city attorney last Friday, January 2, 2004. He told me he had reviewed the PRAR and told the police to respond to it; he was surprised they hadn't, and said he'd get back to me. That brings you up to date.
Today I got another call from the city attorney (who has been quite helpful) who told me that my PRAR had been lost and asked me to fax over another copy, which I did. Shortly thereafter I received a call from an Internal Affairs officer at the HPD who wanted to go over the PRAR with me on the phone, which I did. The gist of the conversation was that the department now claims that they don't issue any CCWs to anyone -- although this directly contradicts the information I was given last month when I first applied. The officer I spoke to on the phone wanted drop the whole issue, claiming that since they don't issue CCWs they don't have any information with which to respond to my PRAR.
But my PRAR asks for information on denied applications, not just permits that have been granted. I also want a copy of the CCW-issuing-policy handbook they're supposed to have and make public by law. The officer I spoke with told me that they don't have such a handbook, and that they don't have any records on denied permit applications. I informed him that they have at least one record of a denied application, because my application was denied last month. I also informed him that the department should have a policy handbook, because it's required by law. He said he'd speak to the city attorney and their own private attorney and get back to me.
I submitted my public records act request on December 15th, 2003, and by law the police department had 10 days to respond. It's been almost three weeks with no reply, so this morning I called the City Attorney and asked him about the situation. He was very polite and told me that he'd reviewed the PRAR and told the police department to respond to it, and he was surprised that they haven't done so. He said he'd look into it and give me a call back.
My brother and I were planning to drive up to Reno to see our dad early this morning, but alas, the roads are closed due to blizzard conditions. What the heck? Isn't this America? Since when do interstate highways get shut down due to mere weather? Eh, maybe I'm just spoiled living here in SoCal. So, the trip's cancelled and I've got to make new plans for my weekend.
It's pouring down rain outside, so I can't go running. I love the rain though, it's so perfect. I wish I had someone here to cuddle up with and watch Buffy or The Sopranos, but I guess I don't really have time for that anyway -- I've still got more cleaning to do from NYE, and my dissertation is continually beckoning.
My New Year's Eve party went off pretty well... but it looks like I'll spend all day cleaning. Which is ironic, because that's what I did yesterday before the party. Sigh.
I took pictures, but then the batteries in my camera died so I can't download them now. I'll show you later, if any came out particularly good.
It was pretty fun. We played pool and ping-pong, poker, Taboo, roasted marshmallows over my fire pit, ate lots of junk food, listened to music, got in fights, and covered every single room in my house with confetti. A good time was had by all, and as far as I know everyone made it home safely.
As Google notes, it's 2004. Yippie.
