One of my long standing problems the City of Winnipeg has been it’s inability to communicate with city residents via its most valuable (and lowest priced) property they own: their web site.
I’m proud to work with the guy who helped redesign and retool the new City of Winnipeg web site. The site looks clean and the usability is simply. I’m so happy I’ve added the web site to my list of links on my site. Bravo!
In a world where vampires walk the earth (my nod to Don LaFontaine)…
Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, has another interesting project: True Blood. After the invention of synthetic blood, the vampires of the world decide to come forward and demand equal rights. If that’s wasn’t enough, Anna Paquin plays a small town waitress who can read people’s thoughts.
Here’s the HBO trailer, which I’m happy includes the apt music of Concrete Blonde.
Post edit: This show does rock!
I’ve come to enjoy James Turner’s blog on the Winnipeg Free Press web site more and more, as he digs up court docket deeds barely seen as worthy by his editor bosses.
In his most recent posting, he’s found more complaints about police misconduct that you won’t see in the newspaper proper, such as this case where a boy who was released three days beforehand for car theft happened to bike by several undercover cops in the North End of Winnipeg.
According to the Crown (read: Police), the boy spots them and bolts. One calls out after him saying, “Stop playing games, I just wanted to talk with you for a second.”
Two other officers give chase, and eventually corner him at Salter Street near College Avenue.
“When did you get out? I thought you were in jail,” one says. A moment passes and then:
“You smell like weed. Do you have some on you?”
The police then claim the boy began swearing at the cops, BUT handed over his bag which contained 61 grams of marijuana ($400 value), tin foil, baggies, a swimsuit and three cell phones.
He was arrested and processed back into custody. But his defense lawyer says no videotape of his time in police custody exists – in contrast to police policy to put any suspect brought in for questioning on constant video. His other two or three arrests have all been taped.
Through his lawyer, the boy claims that police “riled him up” and had no reason to stop him on the street. He also says that he had no idea the men calling after him were police, given they were not in uniform. He even says he got spooked after the police initially tried to cut him off at a corner while on the bike.
So from the information presented, the police were the ones playing games.
They “just wanted to talk” to him, but then these plain clothes cops quickly chased after him and accused him of smelling like dope. The police claim the boy then began argumentative – this is what some cops say to impress the judge that any possible abuse was justified. So while the boy was allegedly being argumentative, he simply handed over his bag of dope.
That doesn’t sound right.
Given this information, it sounds to me that the police likely riled the boy up so he would swear at them (or they just made that up), and based on my experience, the police likely took the bag from the boy which made it an illegal search/seizure. All the more reason his experience in custody wasn’t videotaped in my opinion which is apparently policy not followed often.
Read Turner’s blog to see the other stories of abuse complaints that often go unreported in the newspaper proper.
Blog Action Day, which is the brainchild idea of a vague web company, is a challenge to bloggers world-wide to talk about poverty on one day; October 15th, 2008.
I think this is a great idea as it will jump start Google News (and the kin) to snowball information relating to a serious social problem in one day. This will also likely create a wave of debate as the newsmakers pick up on the bloggers’ content for a week after wards.
Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
Alex Reid is a Canadian who likes a lot of things. Welcome to my world.