Free Talk Live

The latest on the Southern California City of Bell probably won't surprise anyone. "The scandal-plagued city of Bell mismanaged more than $50 million in bond money, levied illegal taxes and paid exorbitant salaries to its leaders, according to a state audit released Wednesday..."

In June, the New Orleans Police Department received a federal grant that provides overtime pay to officers who help enforce seatbelt laws. Police salaries being what they are, the grant drew the attention of many officers, including one Glenn Gross.

Sobriety checkpoints in California are increasingly turning into profitable operations for local police departments that are far more likely to seize cars from unlicensed motorists than catch drunken drivers.

Armed with the knowledge that more than 250,000 tickets for civil motor vehicle infractions were challenged in the state last fiscal year, legislators have voted to charge drivers $25 for such hearings.

I enjoy a good game of "Cops and Speeders" as much as the next scofflaw. It makes driving much more interesting, and I believe actually safer due to enhanced situational awareness. But these cops don't play the game correctly. The object of the game (by "my rules" anyway) is to beat "The Man". Lacking that ticket / beat-down risk factor, apparently these cops just up the speed.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie--who has made government reform a major talking point of his administration--is coming under fire for his decision to travel in a state-owned helicopter to his son's high school baseball game Monday.
According to the Newark Star-Ledger, Christie landed in the state's $12.5 million helicopter just before the game began, buzzing over the trees in left field and distracting spectators. The GOP governor then got into a black sedan with tinted windows, which drove him about 100 yards to the baseball diamond.

When police shootings end badly, it can often cause citizens to mistrust the cops who are supposed to protect them. From the mayor of New Orleans calling in the feds to investigate that city's troubled police department, to the city of New York settling with the family of Sean Bell for more than $7 million, communities are growing increasingly weary of law and disorder. A.C.

I KNEW it! Proof that at least one police department has quotas for speeding tickets. They were even taken off normal patrols to issue moving violations. This story says they were supposed to write 18 tickets a day. Several cops are sueing LAPD for this as quotas are illegal.

The law is the law -- come what may.

So when the police sergeant in this photo gave the heave-ho to dozens of bell-ringing Mexican ice cream vendors during yesterday's San Francisco Symphony event at Dolores Park -- bell-ringing and classical music do not a mixture make -- he felt compelled to turn his attention upon the cherubic kiddies hawking lemonade and brownies...