Archive for September 26th, 2012

Holy cow.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

There seems to be no question that Lieu Tran had problems. Specifically, bipolar disorder.

Mr. Tran was a math teacher at a local high school. In April of 2011, he was told his contract wasn’t going to be renewed. This sent Mr. Tran into a downward spiral; he contacted a friend and told that friend he’d been having “scary thoughts about shooting his supervisors”. The friend gave him a ride to a mental hospital.

At the hospital, Tran repeated the thoughts to an admissions nurse, who testified that Tran cried, got into the fetal position and punched himself in the head during her interview with him. The nurse said she called an Austin police officer.

Mr. Tran engaged in a discussion with the APD officer later that day. He spent a week in the hospital, “having his medication adjusted and participating in group therapy”.

After he was released, he was arrested by APD and charged with “retaliation”, based on what APD considered to be his threats to “buy a firearm, tying up [Assistant Principal Sheila] Reed and [Principal Daniel] Garcia, shooting them in the arm and leg and making them watch him kill their families”.

The case went to trial this week. Today, the judge threw out Mr. Tran’s statements to the police officer:

[State District Judge Mike] Lynch ruled that because of Tran’s mental state, the statements to the officer could not be used against him at his trial, citing a Texas law that requires such statements be given voluntarily.

Without the statements, the state had no case, and the prosecution dismissed the charges.

That seems like the right thing to do. Now. But the right thing to do a year ago would have been not to bring charges.

Look, I understand Tran’s behavior might have been scary. But he sought help. He didn’t act on his impulses. He knew he had a problem and voluntarily committed himself. What were the APD and the Travis County DA thinking when they brought charges against a man who did the right thing? And did they even think about what impact this would have on other people facing similar situations?

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Noted.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Ewell Hunt, the former sheriff of Franklin County, Virginia, has been convicted of “misconduct by an elected official”. Mr. Hunt has been fined $500 and given a 30-day suspended jail sentence.

Former sheriff Hunt’s conviction stems from the murder of Jennifer Agee by her ex-husband, deputy Jonathan Agee. I’ve touched on this case previously here and here.

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Random crap, September 26, 2012.

Wednesday, September 26th, 2012

Let us say, hypothetically, you run a restaurant. (I’m fully aware the vast majority of my readers are not crazy or stupid, but play along here.)

You need things like stoves and refrigerators to run a restaurant, right? Those things need to work. If the stove breaks, you can’t cook food. If the cooler breaks, you’re going to lose a lot of stockpiled goods. So when things break, it is important to get them fixed, fast.

What are the economics of restaurant repair? How much can you expect to pay for service? William Grimes has an interesting piece in the NYT today about that subject.

Kitchen Works offers a basic contract for Manhattan restaurants for $425 a month, which puts it on call 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. When it was open, Tavern on the Green paid $1,000 a month. Like Kitchen Repair Specialists, also a mom-and-pop operation, Kitchen Works, based in Freeport, N.Y., has about 10 trucks that cover the five boroughs and Long Island. Techs can field up to 10 calls a day.

Kitchen Works specializes, from what I can tell, in stoves. Refrigeration contracts run roughly the same.

Speaking of Grimsey, I just finished Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York. I’m trying to decide if I want to write a longer review of it, and where I want to post that if I do, but the short version: this a swell book, and I enthusiastically recommend it. (I’d also recommend purchasing the print version. There are a lot of photos and reproductions of menus in the book, and I’m not sure how well those come across in the Kindle edition.)

She paid $362 in property taxes last year for the acre she lives on. This year, McIntosh County wants $2,312, a jump of nearly 540 percent.

More:

The county also started a new garbage pickup service and added other services, which contributed to the higher tax rates, he said. Sapelo Island residents, however, still have to haul their trash to the dump.
“Our taxes went up so high, and then you don’t have nothing to show for it,” said Cornelia Walker Bailey, the island’s unofficial historian. “Where is my fire department? Where are my water resources? Where is my paved road? Where are the things our tax dollars pay for?”

Remember yesterday’s APD press conference? Remember the chief saying that APD officers should stop putting themselves in front of moving vehicles?

A police officer shot a man who drove a stolen SUV toward him following a brief pursuit in South Austin, Chief Art Acevedo said Tuesday night.

I’m not saying the officer did anything wrong, or violated policy, at this point. Details are still coming in, but it sounds like the gentleman in question (who, according to the Statesman, had 16 felony warrants) may have deliberately driven at the officer. I just think this is worth noting.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Cops, Food, Law | 1 Comment »