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A Sign of the Times

So a man in Rhode Island stabs and 87 year old lady and gets brought into a police station for questioning. While being interrogated, the man grabs an officer’s gun, murders him, then smashes himself through a glass window and falls 3 stories to the ground where he’s eventually caught by police.


Let’s re-cap: stabs one person, murders another person, jumps through a window and falls 30 feet.


At his arraignment yesterday, the man’s face was badly bruised. In fact, he was wearing a plastic face guard to protect people around him from his spitting (and blood). Yet through all this, one of his family members was screaming about his condition – blaming the police for his appearance.


Um, maybe it’s because he jumped face first through glass and fell 30 feet while trying to escape from a police station? No offense to her, but how does she think the poor 87 year old lady feels right now? Or the family of the man he murdered? Why is bad guy suddenly the victim?


I don’t get it. Granted, I wasn’t there. I didn’t witness things first hand. But seeing as this man was fleeing after murdering a person, I think it might be deemed legitimate for the officers to use force in apprehending him. This man was an obvious threat (did I mention he had two previous arrests for domestic assault?)


OK – on to ligther things.


Construction crews have been working on Mass Ave in Cambridge for the past month or so. For those unfamiliar with the stretch between Cambridge Common and Porter Square there is a median down the middle of the street. It’s just a simple 3 foot wide concrete bump about the height of a sidewalk that runs down the middle of the road. To accommodate the construction workers, a porta-potty has been placed at the end of the median at an intersection.


There’s no way in hell I would use that thing! It’s bad enough it’s a porta-potty…but to put it in the middle of a busy road…at an intersection?!?!?!


 


 

7 Comments

  1. Comment by Anon on April 19, 2005 4:35 pm

    It’s illegal for police to beat up a suspect (if that is in fact what happened). Their job is to detain and to assist in prosecution, not to punish.

  2. Comment by Karl on April 19, 2005 4:38 pm

    I agree 100% (hence my disclaimer that I wasn’t there as witness).

  3. Comment by Will on April 20, 2005 8:47 am

    Oh, Karl, where’s your sense of adventure? Not only would you get to sit in the thing with cars and 18 wheelers whizzing by just inches from you on either side, there’s the whole high drama of getting to and from the thing across two lanes of Boston/Cambridge drivers running stop lights and changing lanes wildly. Sounds irresistable to me! 🙂

  4. Comment by karyn on April 20, 2005 10:33 am

    I like the way Will thinks. Still, I’ll be holding it til I get to Filene’s at Downtown Crossing.

  5. Comment by David on April 20, 2005 10:55 am

    COULD YOU IMAGINE BEING IN IT, AND A CAR JUMPING THE CURB?

  6. Comment by jeff on April 20, 2005 11:05 am

    Could you just imagine what you’d get covered with if that car did hit it and flipped you over inside…ugh!

  7. Comment by David in Chicago on April 20, 2005 1:49 pm

    Since when did “illegal” stop the police from doing it?

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