Of curfews and protests - Part 2

My previous post on this topic tried to state the facts without injecting my own opinion. This post is just the opposite, all opinion. I should point out that last night was the final reading of the bill in city council. The bill passed 4-3. The curfew is now permanent, restricting unaccompanied teens from 10pm to 6am on Friday and Saturday nights.

I do not live in the city of Greenville. I don't directly pay taxes in the city, however, when I eat in downtown, a part of my meal costs (and the taxes on the meal) and my parking fees pay for city protection including police. On two of the nights recently, that protection failed and skirmishes resulted. As a patron of the restaurants, I can choose to eat on Main Street or out in the suburbs. Had city council not enacted this law, I would simply go somewhere else to eat. There are some nice restaurants outside downtown. I also recommend downtown to people visiting our city, if teens had been allowed to roam in packs, I would have stopped this recommendation. I don't do this out of protest, I simply take my money elsewhere and won't suggest a friend go to a dangerous place.

As a parent, I'm not directly affected by the curfew. My youngest is 19, so he can still "go with the flow" on Main Street without fear of arrest. When my kids were under 19, I would not have allowed them to go just to hang out. In fact, they rarely went anywhere just to hang out (except to a friend's house). I asked one of my children and they said that they did, on one occasion, go to one of the coffee houses before she was 18 and stayed after 10pm. This is allowed under the new law as she was visiting a particular downtown business.

In my opinion, teens have no reason to go downtown or anywhere else just to hang out. When they do, problems result. In a perfect world, parents would realize this and be aware where their teens were going. However, we live in a fallen world and a lot of parents either don't know or don't care. The law gives the police a method to get these teens off of Main St. It's likely they will go somewhere else, but hopefully in smaller numbers where they can be better managed.

One of the protests against the curfew was that it restricted freedom of speech and freedom of assembly - two parts of the Bill of Rights. My kids may remember that when they were teenagers, I told them they had no rights. Teens don't have the mental maturity to deal with situations that will come up.

I can easily envision my son, when he was 16, going down to the Falls Park to hang out (if he had been allowed - or under the guise of being at a friend's house). If this had happened and a 31 year old man had been passing out flyers for a sit-in, I can see him joining the protest. Had this happened and he had been arrested, I would have been very angry at someone organizing the protest. I think the case for contributing to the delinquency (arrest) of a minor would be strong.

Of curfews and protests - Part 1

I live outside the city of Greenville, but visit the downtown area regularly. The city has done an excellent job of renovating the area and has a park that is outstanding (see here for details). It's nice for a romantic stroll with your significant other, a playdate with the kids, or just a place to meet and talk. We occasionally have street performers and even Shakespeare plays in the park (which is more culture than I can stand). Dinners downtown are a little pricey and you have to work at finding a parking place (or just break down and pay for it), but it's worth the price once in a while.

Recently, however, there have been some problems. Back in August, there were "between 500 and 800 young people at the park" and there were reports of them blocking streets and impacting business (source). As a result, the city implemented a temporary curfew affecting children under 18. The curfew starts at 10pm.

More recently, we had our Fall for Greenville festival - A "three-day event highlighting local restaurants and musical entertainment on five music stages" (see here) - it's just a weekend to walk the streets, enjoy some food and some music with the family. Unfortunately, after the event on Saturday this year there were fights, again mostly teenagers involved.

Now, the city council is considering making the curfew permanent and has scheduled a second reading of the new ordinance. Basically, kids under 18 without an adult would not be allowed on downtown business district streets after 10pm without an adult.

However, not everyone likes the idea of a curfew. I've been watching one outspoken individual, Dan Edge, who has been fighting it. Dan has started a blog and even staged a protest against the curfew early last month. During the protest, he passed out flyers encouraging others to join his "sit-in". At least three teens did join and stayed past curfew. When they were asked to leave, two left and a third stopped to talk to Mr. Edge. The third teen was arrested, prompting one of the other two to return and he was arrested. Mr. Edge was then arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Two counts, one for each of the teens that were arrested. (The long sordid details of this battle are on Mr. Edge's blog, I invite you to read it all there).

Dan Edge has some serious squabble about the new law, starting with the fact that there is no freedom of speech allowance. Yesterday was his first court appearance and I managed to go watch. Mr. Edge acted as his own attorney and he was advised several times of his rights to an attorney. As this was just a probable cause hearing, he felt it wasn't necessary. At the end of the hearing, the judge felt there was indeed probably cause to proceed and the matter is now being sent to the city attorney. The city attorney can hand this to a grand jury, who would decide whether or not to indict and then the case would go to trial.

During the hearing, the judge warned Mr. Edge that the hearing was NOT about the constitutionality of the ordinance nor even about the ordinance itself, but was strictly about his actions and was there evidence to pursue a trial on the grounds of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He advised that he did not want to turn this into a political forum. The judge decided that since two teens were arrested (he had heard one of those cases himself) and since Edge had been conversing with the teens and passing out flyers for the protest, the case should proceed.

In addition to the above, Mr. Edge feels like his civil rights were violated when he was arrested. He has announced that he is suing the city of Greenville. He's been interviewed by the local television station and as mentioned, he's started a blog to document the issue.

I've tried to stay objective in what I've written above, I'll come back in part 2 and offer my opinion. As always, I'm interested in your opinion and ask that you be respectful in anything you say here.

Book 'em Danno

This morning our local station did a "Timeline" story, a story where they explain something significant that happened this day, June 13. Now I would have thought they would have recognized my son-in-law's birthday or maybe granddaughter #3's one month birthday, but rather they focused on a court decision, the decision of Miranda v. Arizona.

Most of us are familiar with the Miranda decision, from watching television (analog or digital). The decision (1966) marked a time when the Supreme Court ruled that an individual must be told his rights when arrested, you know, the right to remain silent, the right to an attorney, etc.

But I got to thinking, whatever happened to Mr. Miranda? Well Wikipedia is always a good source, especially if you aren't writing a paper. In this Wikipedia article, it's all spelled out. Seems 22 year old Ernesto Miranda was arrested for robbery and while under arrest, he confessed to raping a girl 2 days earlier. At trial, his victim positively identified him and his confession was entered into the courts.

The Supreme Court indicated that Miranda didn't know (or wasn't told) his rights and sent the case back to trial. Now Paul Harvey would say, here's the rest of the story. When the case went back to trial, the prosecution entered the same witnesses and "other evidence" (Wikipedia isn't known for detail). The result? Miranda was convicted, sentenced to 20 to 30 years, served 5 years in jail, was released on parole and went on to lead the life of a prosperous citizen.

Well, maybe not that last part. Seems he spent time autographing Miranda cards for police officers and then was stabbed to death in a bar argument four years later. Even when given the protection of his full rights, he was still convicted. And in his final trial, he was afforded the same rights he gave his earlier victim.

Moral of the story: Just because someone gets a big case named after them, doesn't mean they weren't guilty.

NC Law bans texting while driving

I'm traveling through NC this week, so I heard on the radio about this new law in NC that bans texting while driving (see news story here). The station I was listening to asked listeners what they thought of the idea.

I confess I only heard one or two callers and then not completely, definitely not a representative sample. One caller complained that police officers had enough to do as it was, burdening them with more workload was counterproductive. He claimed they "barely knew enough about the law to make arrests." His tone was very anti-police.

I also confess to wanting less government interference in our lives. But this one seems reasonable. I've seen people texting, sending notes on Blackberries, etc and it just doesn't seem safe. Passing a specific law, rather than having police interpret bad driving, seems like it will help.

First, some number of people will follow the law, simply because it's the law. Ok, that's a small number, but it's significant. Then, some will be afraid of the $100 (plus court costs) fine and will stop. Others will hear about friends who were ticketed and decide to save the $100 for themselves. Regardless, the number of texting drivers will decrease and that's good.

I've also heard of an increasing number of warrants being drafted for cell phone records. Seems you can't hide, they will find out if you've been texting while driving. And expect the lawsuits to be quite large.

I once held an instant messenger conversation with someone and then found out he was using his laptop while driving. My last message to him was that I was not going to do this and I shut down the instant messenger session. I have no doubt that he continued to use his laptop while driving, but I didn't want to be a part of the wreck he caused. That's been 2 or 3 years ago, he now has a Blackberry and I don't want to know what he does with it or when he does it. But I don't have to be a part of it...

Civil Union

This isn't a subject I typically discuss. It's never affected me or anyone close to me directly (at least to my knowledge). But I heard about a case today that brings this to a new light.

Janet Jenkins and Lisa Miller lived in Virginia which does not allow unions of same-sex couples. So they took a trip to Vermont to have their relationship legalized. Of course, since they lived in Virginia (which has a strong law against these unions) their relationship would still go unrecognized.

Lisa wanted a baby. Together (by one report, other reports say no) they went to the doctor's office to conceive along with the help of Donor 2309. Four months after Lisa delivered a little girl, Isabella, they decided to move to Vermont, where their relationship was legal.

But as happens in many relationships, things turned sour. Lisa moved back to Virginia and took little Isabella with her. This is when things got confusing. Seems that Janet wanted custody. The Washington Post has a LONG history of the case here, and it gets confusing. I hope you'll go read it, but you might need to take notes as you go along.

At the heart of the case is which state's laws apply? Of course, if it becomes messy enough to go to the Supreme Court, the question will be can Virginia establish a law to not recognize Vermont marriages. If a homosexual couple marries in Vermont, does Virginia have to recognize it? In the past, I felt like this was a matter best left to the states, but the supremes may decide others.

Reading the details of the story, I'd bet that the case will be decided on some technicality. There are questions about jurisdiction, improper representation and what the mother signed vs what she understood. I'm afraid the supremes will choose not to get involved with the meat of this case and dodge it instead. But be watching the case of Miller v Jenkins.

* updated spelling

Hipaa gone wild

In case you've never heard of it, HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (I won't make nasty comments about who was co-president in 1996). This law helps in a lot of ways, one of them is in the area of privacy about your medical records.

However, many health care providers have trouble understanding this law. For example, if I call to get information on my wife's health care information, they won't give it to me. That's ok, we learned the way to fix that. We have medical directives, we have power of attorney and every time we see a doctor for any reason, we fill out forms to tell the docs they can share our information with our spouse. This way, I can find out anything on her, she can find out on me. Some couples may choose not to do that and I won't argue the reasons here. It's our choice.

So, I get this call from a health provider who won't share anything with me. She says it's her policy. All she will say is that she wants my wife to call her (it's to set up or reschedule an appointment, I know that - I even know the details of the appointment).

Well, in saying she was with a health provider and leaving a message, she has already violated the HIPAA law (if I wasn't authorized). I think this lady needs an education in HIPAA.